Youtube comments of (@DavidJ222).
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I don't understand why some of those Pakistanis find it so hard to believe Osama was hiding in Pakistan. I mean where else was he suppose to hide out, in Paris? He was the most wanted man on the planet. He was clearly hiding somewhere, so why not Pakistan? His last known location was right next door in Afghanistan. He had plenty of contacts with people in Pakistan that he has known since the war against the Russians. Plus, the Pakistani intelligence agency has secretly supported extremists for years. So hiding in Pakistan would have been the logical location.
Osama would not have lasted that long trying to hideout in any other country. Even most Muslims countries would have turned him over to the US to garner favor with them. If I had been Osama, I would have been hiding out in Pakistan as well. The fact that he was hiding in a compound, in a safe military town, not far from the Pakistani Military Academy was definitely not a coincidence. And to be honest, ,I seriously doubt if the Pakistani government even knew he was there. But there was definitely a small group of Osama loyalists, probably within the Pakistani intelligence agency, who were responsible for hiding Osama in Pakistan.
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Here is a shocking example of what the Republican party has become.
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "patriots."
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Trump said he didn't have an affair with Stormy Daniels. We now know that was a lie. He said he didn't pay her off with hush money. We now know that was a lie. He said he didn't know what Rudy was doing in Ukraine. We now know that was a lie.
O'Reilly: " but what was Rudy Giuliani doing in Ukraine on your behalf?"
Trump: "Well, you have to ask that to Rudy. But Rudy, I don't, I don't even know. I know he was going to go to Ukraine, and I think, he canceled a trip. But, you know, Rudy has other clients other than me. I'm one person --"
O'Reilly: So, you didn't direct him to go there on your behalf?"
Trump: No, but -- but you have to understand, Rudy is a great corruption fighter. He's one of the greatest in the last 50 years."
O'Reilly: So, you didn't direct him to go to Ukraine to do anything or put any heat on them?"
Trump: "No, I didn't direct him but he's a warrior, Rudy's a warrior. Rudy went, he possibly saw something. But you have to understand, Rudy has other people that he represents."
Trump said he didn't know Lev Parnas. We now know that was a massive lie. He said he didn't bribe Ukraine with 400 million in taxpayer dollars. We now know that was a flat out lie.
Trump said he would release his taxes. We now know that was a lie.
Trump said his father was born in Germany. We always knew that was a lie.
Trump said he was at ground zero on 9/11, and that he helped 1st responders. We now know that was a despicable lie.
Trump said Mexico would pay for the wall. We immediately knew that was an absurd lie.
In 2020, let's make FACTS great again!!! Lets Make the TRUTH great again!!!
Vote 💙
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For some strange reason, Kavanaugh and others seem to be under the impression that he is somehow entitled, or preordained to hold a seat on the Supreme Court. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kavanaugh is not entitled to a goddamn thing. However, the more than 320 million people in this country, are in fact entitled. We are entitled to have the very best people on the Supreme Court. That means that anyone, who's character, integrity, judgment, morals, and temperament is in question, has no business being a member of only 9 people who will hold sway and judgment over 320 million people. This whole thing is about us, and what we deserve. And we clearly deserve better than Kavanaugh. And we most definitely deserve better than Trump.
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Trump lives by the rules of the coward's playbook.
Rule 1. Take credit for everything, but responsibility for nothing. Always blame others for acts that you have clearly committed, and take credit for positive things that you had absolutely nothing to do with.
Rule 2. Never tell the truth, when a lie will do just fine. Lie about all things, great and small.
Rule 3. Take advantage of any crisis, and use them as an excuse to unleash your true authoritarian nature.
Rule 4. Become the victim, and the " strongman." You must master the art of playing the poor victim, juxtaposed with playing the "strongman" that always wins.
Rule 5. Never put anyone or anything before yourself, unless you're physically using that person or thing as a shield.
Rule 6. Betrayal is a good thing.
Rule 7. Loyalty is a one way street that runs from everyone else straight to you.
Rule 8. When in doubt, blame Obama.
Rule 9. In any situation, always ask yourself "what would a man of integrity do? What would a man with intestinal fortitude do? What would a man of physical and moral courage do?" And then do the exact opposite.
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"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
This quote aptly describes Meadows and many others in Trump’s orbit to a T.
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"Since Donald was elected, I’ve been surprised by nothing he’s done or said. But I have been shocked by the wholesale abdication of responsibility by the Republican party during this election campaign and throughout the past four years. I didn’t understand the extent to which they would be willing to enable him in Congress and in his cabinet. If they had done their job and acted as a separate branch of government, he would have been contained. By siding with him 100% of the time, they have ensured we are now faced with several concurrent disasters that are getting exponentially worse.
No other president in history has been able to push the envelope the way Donald does. He’s always trying to see what he can get away with and, as I have seen through the course of his life, he’s always got away with everything. No one holds him accountable. He constantly gets rewarded for failing. The Republicans understood what he was capable of and have allowed him to push through an agenda that is completely at odds with what the majority wants.
My theory about the way Donald has run his campaign is that he knows he’s in desperate shape, so he’s going to burn it all down, sow more chaos and division, because that’s where he succeeds. He knows that he’s losing – he’ll deny it mightily – and at some level he understands what’s at stake. If he loses, he’s probably going to prison. So, if he’s going down, he’s going to take us all down with him.
I’ve always believed that deep down Donald is a terrified little boy. The amount of fear he’s feeling now has got to be unhinging him. Not only did he get sick with the virus, there’s the tax story and his prospects in the election looking really bad right now. He’s got to be absolutely panicked.
He’s ignored the severity of the pandemic all year because the idea of illness as weakness is so deeply ingrained in his family, that even an association with it is unacceptable. But now his statement – you can beat it, don’t be afraid of it – is going to result in more people becoming sick, and many of those will die. Even before he said that, I believed he was engaging in ma55murder, but that sealed it for me. Anybody who’s capable of putting hundreds of millions of people at risk to avoid looking bad doesn’t care about you."
--Bob Woodward
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 100 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences..
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American was NOT true. And at least 100 thousand American citizens have died because of his lies.
Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history..
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Well what else would you call a group dressed up like terrorists, and are armed to the teeth, who are testing explosives, making plans to blow up bridges, and conducting video surveillance on a person's home for the purpose of kidnapping them, and possibly ki//ing them??? Hmmm.😞
If that isn't terrorism, then there's no such thing as terrorism.
Terrorism is defined as: The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political, religious or ideological goals. Call these people what they are.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's perfectly okay to call it a duck.
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Trump is currently going through the 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety. Currently Trump is stuck between this stage and stage 1 of grief.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, hostility, flight.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
This is the stage that a malignant narcissist like Trump will never reach, because he will NEVER allow himself to truly admit that he lost the election. In fact, Trump may spend the rest of his life waking up every morning at stage 1, and slowly working his way down to stage 4 by the end of the day, and starting the process over again the next morning. 😄
Trump reminds me of Gollum when he lost his precious. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either. 😄
"He stole it from us!!!! Trixie Bidenses!!!!!"😭😭
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A descendant of Robert E. Lee stepped down as pastor of a small NC church after his comments supporting racial justice sparked a backlash.
The general's distant nephew, the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, issued a statement saying he resigned from Bethany United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem after the congregation decided to put his tenure to a vote.
Some church members were not comfortable with Lee’s remarks during the MTV awards when he introduced the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville while protesting against white supremacy.
“We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism, and hate,” he said on the music network. “As a pastor, it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America's original sin.”
Although Lee issued an apology to church members for causing them pain with his remarks, he said he continues to “strongly support” removal of monuments to his ancestor and other Confederates..
To me, this is proof that some Christians only talk the talk. But there are some who actually walk the walk like this pastor. Kudos to you Reverend Lee.
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It's very important that we all remember the unwarranted outrage and criticism Republicans leveled on President Obama and his response to the Ebola virus outbreak. And Trump of all people, even tweeted that Obama should apologize to the American people, and resign. And this was after only 11 reported Ebola cases and 2 deaths in America.
Republican Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the ebola outbreak resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there..
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
Trump tweet, 10/23/14
"If this doctor, who is reckless flew into New York from West Africa has Ebola, then Obama should apologize to the American people & resign."
Today there have been more than 6.42 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US, and 195K deaths.
So after 195k coronavirus deaths, what should Trump do?
Well lets see, not only should he resign, he should first drop to his knees and apologize to America for the needless loss of so many American lives. He should then get on his knees, and apologize to Obama, and beg him for forgiveness. He should then turn himself into authorities and admit to his criminal negligence, dereliction duty, and to violating his oath of office.
"What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by Trump in 2018.
Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Trump's white house has been operating the same as Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.. It's nonstop chaos, pandemonium, betrayal, back-stabbing, thievery, mayhem, treason, upheaval, nepotism, bedlam, and sanctioned lawlessness.
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing. Because Republicans don't want to govern, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about...
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There's a reason why Trump is having a hard time finding good lawyers to represent him. His past lawyers say he was nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid.
Michael Cohen told the Post. “He’s also a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally.”
Trump famously shortchanged many small businesses on the money he owed them. The list includes companies that worked on Trump’s properties or supplied him with chandeliers, pianos, marble, and other luxury touches. But Trump also tried to underpay the very same lawyers who helped him save money, and some ended up suing their former client Trump.
The Atlantic City law firm of Levine Staller saved one of Trump’s companies tens of millions of dollars in taxes—and then sued the company, Trump Entertainment, after the business tried to pay Levine Staller $1.25 million less than the firm was owed.
In 2012, Levine Staller won a settlement that returned $35 million in overpaid taxes and cut $15 million from Trump Entertainment's future liabilities, leading to a total savings of $50 million for the corporation. Trump agreed to pay $7.25 million to the law firm in legal fees, but then only paid Levine Staller $6 million before trying to claim the rest as unsecured debt in ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. In response, Levine Staller sued its former client, Trump Entertainment, and in 2014, a judge rejected Trump Entertainment’s request to be absolved of this debt and told the company to pay up.
It wasn’t an isolated case. Trump underpaid at least four law firms or lawyers who worked for him. One of them, Morrison Cohen LLP of New York City, had represented Trump in a lawsuit against a construction contractor that Trump claimed had overcharged him for work on a golf course. According to USA Today, Trump sued Morrison Cohen for using the case to help promote its work, and the firm countersued for almost $500,000 in unpaid bills. The case was settled in 2009.
It wasn’t just big amounts Trump tried to get out of paying, either. Bill Scherer, a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had to sue Trump in 1994 to collect $5,000 in unpaid legal bills from a case Scherer won for the billionaire. The lawyer told Reuters last year that he had offered Trump a low rate to “curry favor” with the mogul, but still had to sue. “He’s a deadbeat,” Scherer told South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper. Trump told Reuters that he couldn’t remember Scherer or the case at all. 🤣🤣
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Samuel Johnson, the 18th century English writer said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Gore Vidal wrote, “When tyranny comes to the United States, she will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible.” How stunningly appropriate those quotes are in describing Trump's tyrannical one term as president.
Trump and his followers seem to think that wrapping themselves in the American flag, screaming FREEDOM, or standing for the anthem makes them super patriots. It no more makes them patriots than me standing in the middle of my garage makes me a Ford F-150.
As a Marine veteran, I have never seen patriotism reduced to such hollow and irrelevant stupidity. To them, patriotism is all about empty childish gestures that show a misunderstanding of America, rather than honoring it. Real Patriotism is caring about what happens to your fellow American citizens. It's about sacrifice and service to others, it's about our shared humanity, while the best of America is about kindness, hospitality, and benevolence.
A true American patriot would use our flag, and everything it's suppose to represent, to unite our country, not to divide it, and not as a weapon against those who have different views or different skin colors.
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine.
Trump has never solved a problem in his life. Trump IS the problem. He has always been an agent of chaos and destruction.
In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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In 2014, there were 11 cases of Ebola and 2 deaths in the US, and Trump demanded that President Obama resign because of it.
Trump tweet, 10/23/14
"If this doctor, who is reckless flew into New York from West Africa has Ebola, then Obama should apologize to the American people & resign."
Today there have been 3.83 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US, and 143K deaths.
So, what should Trump do? Hmmmm😞
Not only should he resign, he should turn himself into authorities and admit to criminal negligence, dereliction duty, and violating his oath of office.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and Republicans have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
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There's a reason why Trump is having a hard time finding good lawyers to represent him. His past lawyers say he was nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid.
Michael Cohen told the Post. “He’s also a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally.”
Trump famously shortchanged many small businesses on the money he owed them. The list includes companies that worked on Trump’s properties or supplied him with chandeliers, pianos, marble, and other luxury touches. But Trump also tried to underpay the very same lawyers who helped him save money, and some ended up suing their former client Trump.
The Atlantic City law firm of Levine Staller saved one of Trump’s companies tens of millions of dollars in taxes—and then sued the company, Trump Entertainment, after the business tried to pay Levine Staller $1.25 million less than the firm was owed.
In 2012, Levine Staller won a settlement that returned $35 million in overpaid taxes and cut $15 million from Trump Entertainment's future liabilities, leading to a total savings of $50 million for the corporation. Trump agreed to pay $7.25 million to the law firm in legal fees, but then only paid Levine Staller $6 million before trying to claim the rest as unsecured debt in ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. In response, Levine Staller sued its former client, Trump Entertainment, and in 2014, a judge rejected Trump Entertainment’s request to be absolved of this debt and told the company to pay up.
It wasn’t an isolated case. Trump underpaid at least four law firms or lawyers who worked for him. One of them, Morrison Cohen LLP of New York City, had represented Trump in a lawsuit against a construction contractor that Trump claimed had overcharged him for work on a golf course. According to USA Today, Trump sued Morrison Cohen for using the case to help promote its work, and the firm countersued for almost $500,000 in unpaid bills. The case was settled in 2009.
It wasn’t just big amounts Trump tried to get out of paying, either. Bill Scherer, a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had to sue Trump in 1994 to collect $5,000 in unpaid legal bills from a case Scherer won for the billionaire. The lawyer told Reuters last year that he had offered Trump a low rate to “curry favor” with the mogul, but still had to sue. “He’s a deadbeat,” Scherer told South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper. Trump told Reuters that he couldn’t remember Scherer or the case at all. 🤣🤣
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If only people could remember the lessons of the past, history wouldn't have to keep repeating itself.
In1933, A.H. became the Chancellor of Germany. Afterwards, he and his Na.zi party immediately assumed dictatorial powers over the German people. That very same year, the Na.zis opened their first concentration camp. In a time span of less than five years, Germany went from a democracy, to a dictatorship. That's how fast it can happen. And if anyone thinks that it can't happen here, then you are sadly mistaken. If you could travel back in time to Germany in 1933, and ask the German people what they thought of Adolf at that time, they would have sounded very similar to Trump cultists today. "A.H. is the chosen one. Only he knows what's best for Germany. He will make Germany great again!!!!" They didn't realize how tragically wrong they were, until after Germany laid in ruins, and more than 60 million lives had been lost. All because they traded in their democracy for a dictator.
History: "You people don't listen, and you sure as he// don't learn. How many more times must I repeat myself? For the umpteenth time, If you want to destroy a democracy, and create a despotic dictatorship, this is how you do it."
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In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life,” he added.
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Multiple Obama-era officials have said they left the Trump administration with a 2016 “pandemic playbook” that detailed exact steps to take in the event of an infectious disease outbreak.
"What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see, comprehend, or care about the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
Except experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Ronald Klain, the White House Ebola response coordinator from October 2014 to February 2015, tweeted out a link to a document titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
The document is a 69-page National Security Council guidebook developed in 2016 with the goal of assisting leaders “in coordinating a complex U.S. Government response to a high-consequence emerging disease threat anywhere in the world.” It outlined questions to ask, who should be asked to get the answers and what key decisions should be made.
Nicole Lurie, another Obama administration official, confirmed the existence of the NSC pandemic playbook and also said similar documents were created for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The playbook listed types of infectious disease threats that could emerge. “Novel coronaviruses” were among pathogens flagged as having potential to cause heightened concern.
“We absolutely did leave a plan. It was called a playbook,” said Lisa Monaco, former homeland security adviser to President Obama. The goal, she said, was to share the lessons learned during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks..
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him..
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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Our Constitution vs Project 2025. Pick a side..
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived..
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
The creation of the U.S. Constitution depended upon the knowledge, experience, and dedication of its framers, just as its endurance depends upon the knowledge and experience of each succeeding generation of Americans. For this reason, it is important for us to learn and understand the governing principles of our nation, set forth in the Constitution.
I love the fact that the first 3 words of our Constitution are "we the people." This affirms that the government of the United States, exists to serve its citizens.
Honor our Constitution, and protect it at all cost, the same way it exists to protect us.
Semper Fi...🇺🇸.
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.
Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from fox, the current president, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy. It should be reported that these traitors are all willing partners in Russia's disinformation campaign on America. And they should be treated as a threat to America, because that's exactly they are. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America...
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1988 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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Let's be honest, deep down, we all know that he said it.
We all remember what Trump said about John McCain and our PoWs. It's all on video. But I'm sure that won't stop Trump from denying that he ever said that either.
So riddle me this, how is it that every other world leader made it to the cemetery for the WW1 memorial service in France, but Trump couldn't!? Hmmm.😞
So Trump says the entire thing is a hoax, just like his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels was a hoax. Nope...no, bad example.
So just like his letter of intent to build a tower in Moscow was a hoax. Nope...no, bad example.
So just like Don Jr's Trump Tower meeting with Russian officials was a hoax. Nope....no, bad example.
So just like the coronavirus was a hoax. Nope, another bad example.
Good grief, I give up. Smh 😔 Of course Trump said it!!
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When Trump leaves the White House in January, he will lose the constitutional protection from prosecution afforded to a sitting president. It's safe to say that Trump will be in legal jeopardy for the rest of his unnatural life.
After Jan. 20, Trump will be more vulnerable than ever to a pending grand jury investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into his crooked family business and its practices, as well as his taxes.
Trump claims that the investigation by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr, is a politically motivated fishing expedition. But if the Supreme Court rules that Vance is entitled to the records, and he uncovers possible crimes, Trump could face a reckoning with law enforcement — raising the possibility of a criminal conviction, or even prison, for a former president.
Vance’s subpoena, which sought eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns and other records from his accounting firm, suggested in court papers that they were investigating a range of potential financial crimes. They include insurance fraud and criminal tax evasion, as well as grand larceny and scheming to defraud — which together are NY State’s equivalent of federal bank fraud charges.
Michael Cohen testified under oath before Congress that Trump often inflated the value of his assets when dealing with lenders or potential business partners, but deflated them when it benefited him for tax purposes.
Part of Vance's criminal investigation pertains to payments made during Trump's 2016 campaign to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to prevent them from publicly acknowledging they had affairs with him.
Cohen pleaded guilty to orchestrating the payments, which Manhattan federal prosecutors said amounted to illegal gifts to Trump's campaign. They identified Trump in court filings as having directed Cohen's efforts, but he was not charged.
Trump has said that he has the “absolute right” to pardon himself for any federal offenses, but that preposterous concept remains untested, because until now, no president has ever been so corrupt and morally depraved to attempt to do so. A 1974 Justice Department opinion said presidents could not pardon themselves because that would violate the “fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.
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The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!
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No American military base should be named after the same people that attacked an American military base. The 9/11 hijackers attacked the Pentagon, so should we name the Pentagon after one of them?
One of these bases should be named after General Ulysses S Grant.
"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other."
-- Ulysses S. Grant
“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse,”
-- Ulysses S. Grant
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The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did they do the right thing? So far, Trump has failed. And Trump has never failed to fail, because failing has always been the easiest thing for him to do.
When this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Donald "I believe in magic not science" Trump, will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 7 thousand American lives. And many of these Americans did not have to die.
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another.
So to bring order and harmony to the chaos, he create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront. Building on the Ebola experience, President Obama set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council, and another in the Department of Homeland Security—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health, and the CDC, and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.
But that’s all gone now. In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down. This was the directorate charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of shock. Because experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
In the spring of 2018, Trump pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated..
America would never survive another four years of Trump, and his criminally incompetent administration. Unfortunately, many Americans did not, and will not survive the first 3 years of his administration. May they rest in peace.
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There's a reason why some Americans are perplexed and aghast over Trump's behavior.
The mistake that many people are making, is in looking at Trump as if he's a "President". Trump is not a President in any sense of the word. Trump is only a president on paper. Trump IS, what he's always been. He is a sociopath, and a narcissist, who is the head of a criminal organization, that specializes in fraud, ponzi schemes, tax evasion, money laundering, and real estate scams. And it's about time that everyone realizes that. Once you accept the realization of who and what Trump really is, his actions and behavior starts making perfect sense.
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
Why on earth would anyone want to date someone who supports this type of behavior?
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February 2016
Ted Cruz: "Donald can't defend his own record. Whenever you point out what he's actually said, he just screams, 'liar.' He insults you. He attacks you. He makes it personal, and he gets very rattled. He doesn't like anyone pointing to his actual, substantive record. And I think that's a sign of weakness."
May 2016
Ted Cruz on Trump: "This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies — practically every word that comes out of his mouth. He's narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen."
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s krazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president, and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House..
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Isn't it funny how Parnas was working for Trump alongside Rudy, now all of a sudden Trump doesn't know him, and republicans are attacking him? Their attacks against Parnas become even more dubious whenever we see all the pictures of him hanging out at Mar-a-Lago and Trump's hotel with Rudy, Trump, McCarthy, Meadows, Graham, Pence, Eric and Don Jr, Kellyanne, Sarah Sanders, and the list goes on and on. Parnas was a permanent fixture at Trump's properties. On top of all of that, Parnas has been indicted for funneling 100s of thousands of dollars to Trump's campaign, and to the campaigns of multiple Republicans. You can't make this stuff up.
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Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem & upheaval. I am a merchant of lies & deception. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, grotesque, selfish, indecent, malevolent, debased, indifferent, inept, sociopathic, and malicious.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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From the very beginning, Trump's presidency has always been about using the office to enrich himself, ingratiating himself to authoritarian rulers who had something to offer him personally (Saudi Arabia, China, Russia) And at the same time, insulting America's longtime allies, because they had nothing to offer him personally. ( The UK, Canada, France)
Trump and his grifter family are running their criminal enterprise out of the white house . That's what the entire Trump administration has been about since the very beginning. It's why Jared and Ivanka were brought into the white house. They aren't working for the country, or the American people, they are working for themselves. They are working to enrich themselves even more. Every move they make is a calculated business move for their own financial gains.
It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, The UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president.
Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab. All anyone has to do is take a step back and open your eyes, and you'll see that what Trump and his family are doing is happening right in front of our faces.
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Trump is essentially a 73 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He is basically an indecent human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind..
Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85 and terminally ill, was in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Trump sole control over his dying father's estate..
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent..
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 100 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences..
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
May 6: Following a concerted push to reopen schools beginning in late April, Trump lied again when he suggested that children aren't susceptible to the coronavirus.
Trump: "We realize how strong children are, right? Their immune system is maybe a little bit different. Maybe it's just a little bit stronger, or maybe it's a lot stronger," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American people was NOT true. And at least 100 thousand American citizens have died because of his lies.
Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history. We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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CoronaPalooza 2020!!! Tulsa Oklahoma Trump rally.
Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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COVID-19: "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear the first time, so let me try again. I am an equal opportunity virus. To me, all of your lives are equally worthless. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, flag waving, or denial. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, maturity, unselfishness, and common sense. Medical experts like Dr Fauci make me nervous. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. Trying to ignore me won't save you. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. You may not be interested in me, but I am obsessed with you. Currently there is no vaccine for me, and that's the problem. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I may have lost some strength in other countries, but thanks to Trump, America is making me great again." 💪😆
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Jared Kusher has been given a major role in the federal response to the national health crisis that has taken more than 7 thousand American lives. Many people were shocked and even horrified that Jared, who has absolutely zero medical or health experience, and zero experience in crisis management, would be given such a role on the coronavirus task force. But it turns out that Jared is married to Trump's daughter, and Trump had an uncle who attended MIT, which automatically makes Jared qualified to help lead America through a global pandemic. According to Trump, Jared might actually be over qualified for the job.
Jared suffers from what's called Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon that leads incompetent people to overestimate their ability, because they are totally oblivious to just how ignorant and incompetent they truly are. Even though Jared has less than zero experience in dealing with foreign affairs, the Middle-East conflict, crisis management, infectious diseases, or the medical field, he automatically believes he knows everything there is to know about all of them. NOW HOW SCARY IS THAT?!?!😲
Would you be okay with Trump picking Jared to perform major surgery on you, even though he's not a surgeon, and he has no medical background? Because I promise you, Jared would not hesitate for one secomd to perform that surgical procedure on you if given the greenlight by his father-in-law. The fact that he has no idea what he's doing wouldn't even cross his mind. NOW HOW SCARY IS THAT?!?!😲
This is the type of unbridled buffoonery we've all come to expect from Trump and his backwards and reckless administration. He appoints the most unprincipled and least qualified people, to the most crucial and vital positions. So now, in an hour of existential death and horror for the country, when more than 7 thousand Americans have already died, Jared will be making life-or-death decisions for all Americans. Let that horror sink in for a moment.
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Lauren, who ran on a "law-and-order" platform, has had several dust-ups with police. This jailbird has a rap sheet unusually long for a member of Congress.
And her track record of thumbing her nose at the law continued after she tussled with Capitol Police officers over her refusal to walk through newly installed House metal detectors.
Back in June 2015, Boebert was cuffed for disorderly conduct at a country music festival near Grand Junction, Colo., after police said she attempted to interfere in the arrest of minors busted for underage drinking and encouraged the accused to run off.
While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies’ reports. She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
“Lauren continued yelling and causing the underage drinkers to become unruly,” an arresting officer said in a statement at the time.
Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015.
A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs.
In September 2010, Boebert was arrested after a neighbor accused Boebert’s two pit bulls of attackingHer dog. Boebert pleaded guilty to a single count of “dog at large."
Boebert’s future husband, Jayson, also had brushes with law enforcement. In January 2004, he was arrested after exposing his himself to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 ) was also there. Jayson Boebert pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure, earning himself four days in jail and two years probation.
In February 2004, he was booked on a domestic violenceCharge, against Lauren. He “did unlawfully strike, shove or kick … and subjected her to physical contact,” a spokesman for the Garfield associate county court clerk stated.They had been dating at the time. Jayson Boebert ultimately served seven days in jail.
In May 2004. during an altercation with Jayson at his home, she scratched his face and chest and trashed his residence, according to a police report. She was slapped with third-degree assault, criminal mischief and underage drinking charges. A rep for the Garfield County Combined Court said they could not reveal any information about the case’s final disposition.
This is what "law & order" and conservative Christian values looks like. 🤣🤣
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The sad reality is that DJT and republicans don't believe in democracy, our Constitution, or your right to vote, and that's why they're terrified of American voters. Your right to vote is the biggest threat to them.
In March, DJT openly admitted that an increase in voting numbers would hurt his party, saying proposed reforms would result in “levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
DJT and the GOP are obssessed with greed and absolute power. And the three biggest threats to them achieving those goals, are the Constitution, the free press, and the American voters. If DJT and the Republican party had their way, there would be no earlier voting or mail-in ballots. There would be only one day to vote, at one location per state, with only a 2 hour window to cast your vote.
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified."
Trump, fox, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy, are knowingly aiding and abetting Russia in it's disinformation campaign on America. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults like Trumpism.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
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Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85, and in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers cited by The Times show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Donald Trump sole control over his dying father's estate.
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are clear. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump, democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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I love how Trump thinks that Parscale is the problem. 😂😂
It reminds of when he thought Sean Spicer was the problem, and then Sarah Huckabee was the problem, and then Stephanie Grisham was the problem, and then Reince Preibus was the problem, and then John Kelly was the problem, and then Jeff Sessions was the problem, and then Mick Mulvaney was the problem, and then Michael Flynn was the problem, and then H.R McMaster was the problem, and then John Bolton was the problem, and then Anthony Scaramucci was the problem, and then General Mattis was the problem, and then Rex Tillerson was the problem, and then.....😄😆
Unfortunately no one has the guts to simply tell Trump "look Trump, it's you. The problem is you. Its always been you."
Trump: "Well I don't see any reason why it would be me." 😂
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By staying home on Dec 25 of 2018, Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn't visit military personnel on or before Christmas.
President Obama visited troops at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, in Kaneohe Bay, every Christmas he was in office, from 2009 to 2016.
President Obama traveled to Iraq in April 2009, just a few months after taking office.
Trump was in office for more than 2 years before he visited our troops in a war zone.
Trump also referred to our troop as losersAndSuckers.
In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “SuckersAndLosers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier, and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure ManBaby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
Semper Fi...
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Trump and Jared are completely compromised.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress is rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that the Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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It's always the same old and tired bait and switch tactics with republicans. They use fringe issues like abortion and religion to appeal to their base in southern states. And then once they're distracted, republicans are busy cutting things like funding for education, healthcare, foodstamps, infrastructure, and even finding ways to get rid of social security as we know it.
When Obama and Dems wanted to raise the minimum wage, republicans blocked it. How are you going to cut foodstamps for people that need it, and still refuse to raise the minimum wage? That's just pure evil. But as soon as Trump became president, republicans gave themselves, the top 1%, and corporations, the biggest tax break in history.....with no idea how to pay for it. Meanwhile, the red states of the south continue to fall behind the rest of the country in education, and healthcare. But on the bright side, they still continue to lead the country in unemployment, and poverty levels.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again, the only people that vote republican are millionaires and suckers. As a Marine veteran, I'm rooting for my Marine sister in Kentucky. Semper Fi...
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Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump? I THINK NOT.....
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Trump said it was one person coming from China. He literally said that. He should be dragged out of the White House for that comment alone.
Trump Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Trump March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.”
Trump's indifference, sincere ignorance, and conscientious stupidity, are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And no amountof lies, spin, or deflections will ever change that.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable.
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable..
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Fun fact: Arbery had every right to try and defend himself from two men with guns. The only person who's life was in danger, was Arbery's. Arbery posed no threat to them. Instead, it was the other way around. The same way Trayvon Martin had the right to defend himself from a grown man who was stalking him with a gun. Trayvon posed no threat to George Zimmerman that night, it was the other way around.
The sad truth is that thes people truly believe that Trump has given them the green light to act on their worst impulses. They are committing these heinousActs because they believe it will please Trump and other like-minded people. And it does.
"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Trivia question: "Who goes to Moscow on the 4th of July to celebrate America's Independence day?
Republicans, that's who.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not at all what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing.
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There's a reason why most Americans are perplexed and aghast over Trump's behavior.
The mistake that many people are making, is in looking at Trump as if he's a "President". Trump is not a President in any sense of the word. Trump is only a president on paper. Trump IS, what he's always been. He is a sociopath, and a narcissist, who is the head of a criminal organization, that specializes in fraud, ponzi schemes, tax evasion, money laundering, and real estate scams. And it's about time that everyone realizes that. Once you accept the realization of who and what Trump really is, his actions and behavior starts making perfect sense.
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From day one most Americans rightfully predicted that Trump's presidency was going to be one of the worst in modern history, but I don't think anyone ever imagined it would be an unmitigated catastrophe of this magnitude. And to add insult to injury, Trump announced that he's not responsible for anything that has happened. I'm assuming it's because deep down, he only considers himself to be a "pretend president." Trump has taken many things in life, but responsibility has never been one of them. But what he will do, is blame others for his clear and obvious failures.
Because of Trump, America has had the worst response to the pandemic than any country in the world. So far, more than 140 thousand Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. And many of those lives were needlessly lost due to Trump's indifference, gross incompetence, lack of leadership, criminal negligence, and dereliction of duty. I can still remember Trump telling us that everything was under control, and all we had to do was inject ourselves with disinfectants, and the virus would just magically disappear. Well today, we can all acknowledge that the virus did not disappear, but thousands of Americans did.
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The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The unredacted emails were secured through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act launched by the Center for Public Integrity. The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act..
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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In 2005, Timothy O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, had published a book called “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.” In the book, O’Brien cited people who questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people who estimated that the figure was between $150 million and $250 million.
Trump sued. He later told The Post that he intended to hurt O’Brien, whom he called a “lowlifeSleazebag.”
By filing suit, Trump hadn’t just opened himself up to questioning — he had opened a door into the opaque and secretive company he ran.
The lawsuit had given O’Brien's attorneys the power to request that Trump turn over internal company documents, and they used it. They arrived at the deposition having already identified where Trump’s public statements hadn’t matched the private truth.
Trump may not have realized it yet, but he had walked into a trap.
Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.
For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.
The lawyers confronted Trump with his own past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been patently false or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump was vulnerable — cornered, sweating, unprepared, and under oath.
Thirty times, they caught him.
Trump had lied about sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.
That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s lies were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind.
“A very clear and visible side effect of my lawyers’ questioning of Trump is that he was revealed as a routine and habitual fabulist,” said Timothy O’Brien.
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"The scale of Trump’s delusion is quite startling. This is not merely an eccentric interpretation of the facts or an interesting foible, nor is it an irrelevant example of anguished post-presidency chatter. It is a rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government. There is no Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. He//, there is nothing even approximating a Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. The election has been certified, Joe Biden is the president, and, until 2024, that is all there is to it. It does not matter what one’s view of Trump is. It does not matter whether one voted for or against Trump. It does not matter whether one views Trump’s role within the Republican Party favorably or unfavorably. We are talking here about cold, hard, neutral facts that obtain irrespective of one’s preferences; it is not too much to ask that the former head of the executive branch should understand them."
-- Charles Cooke, National Review
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
Mary Trump, a 55-year-old psychologist, blames Trump's father for giving Donald his bad habits. Fred Trump Sr was a cold and forbidding patriarch who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps – demanding Trump to follow less-than-scrupulous real estate practices and eventually propping him up if his own initiatives failed.
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes.
"His monster had been set free."
In the book she says that after Trump announced his White House run in 2015, Trump's sister, retired appeals court judge Maryanne Trump Barry, mocked him.
“He’s a clown – this will never happen,” Judge Barry said.
She also writes that In order to get into the prestigious University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, the future president paid someone to take his SAT.
"To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him," Mary Trump wrote. "That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records."
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mitch McConnell, "all whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred," recognized after the election that Donald Trump's personal history and personality flaws made him vulnerable to manipulation, Mary Trump writes.
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
"Fear – the equivalent of weakness in our family – is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old," she said.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
These quotes aptly describes Meadows and many others in Trump’s orbit to a T..
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This MLK quote should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
This quote aptly describes Mike Johnson, and McConnell.
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"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
America's democracy and Constitutional republic, has never been in more peril than it is right now. Trump and republicans, are attempting to reverse our victory in our War of Independence, that began 1775 and ended in 1783. They are attempting to throw it all away, like it never happened, and install a new King, a new monarch, a new tyrant, to rule over the American people. We are witnessing history folks. This is America's darkest hour.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.”
― Tiffany Madison
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
If only people could remember the lessons of the past, history wouldn't have to keep repeating itself.
In1933, Adolf H. became the Chancellor of Germany. Afterwards, he and his Nazi party immediately assumed dictatorial powers over the German people. That very same year, the Nazis opened their first concentration camp. In a time span of less than five years, Germany went from a democracy, to a dictatorship. That's how fast it can happen. And if anyone thinks that it can't happen here, then you are sadly mistaken. If you could travel back in time to Germany in 1933, and ask the German people what they thought of Adolf, they would have sounded very similar to Trump cultists today. "Adolf is the chosen one. Only he knows what's best for Germany. He will make Germany great again!!!!" They didn't realize how wrong they were, until after Germany laid in ruins, and 60 million lives had been lost. All because they traded in their democracy for a dictator.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
History: "Don't make me have to repeat myself!!!😠 You should know by now how much I hate repeating myself. Repeating myself is getting old."
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Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85 and terminally ill, was in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Trump sole control over his dying father's estate..
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity, like his idol Pooopin.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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Just imagine if a career criminal and con-man became president, and he systematically dismantled the DoJ, and then turned it into his personal tool to use as a get out of jail free card for himself and his criminal cohorts. It's the kind of thing we thought only happened in 3rd world banana republics, controlled by despots
Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump? I THINK NOT.....
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In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life,” he added.
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Cheating and lying are his only tools for survival. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Trump is a sociopath, with shocking similarities to someone with narcissistic personality disorder. He meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion.
1. Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
2. Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it ( "I'm a stable genius" )
3. Exaggerating your achievements and talents. ( "I have a natural instinct for science.")
4. Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate. ( Feb. 17, 2016: "Putin called me a genius. He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”)
5. Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people. (His muse, Putin)
6. Requiring constant admiration. (Nonstop cult rallies)
7. Having a sense of entitlement. ( " I have the right to pardon myself " )
8. Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations. ( Asking Comey for loyalty. Expecting Cohen and others to go to prison for him)
9. Taking advantage of others to get what you want. ( "I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do whatever you want. " "Grab them by the p. You can do anything.")
10. Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others. ( throwing paper towels at survivors of hurricane Maria)
11. Being envious of others and believing others envy you.
12. Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner. ( "Who cares, we won!!" Trump's statement after Kavanaugh confirmation)
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Trump: "Look, There's nothing wrong with you saying that you recalculated, and you magically found 11,780 votes for me out of thin air. Because I won."🤣
Really? Well if he won, he wouldn't need 11,780 more votes, now would he?
That's like a basketball player losing a game by 20 points, and then going to the refs and saying "look, there's nothing wrong with saying you recalculated, and that you found 21 more points for me, because I won that game." 🤣
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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On May 12, 2020, Trump tweeted this gem.
"Remember this, every Governor who has sky high approval on their handling of the Coronavirus, and I am happy for them all, could in no way have gotten those numbers, or had that success, without me!!!"
This is what the deranged ramblings of a narcissistic sociopath looks like.
So one day man-baby says he has total authority, and the next day, he says he takes no responsibility, and now he wants to take credit for governor's high approval ratings.
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In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction. Placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into any position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act. Nothing good has ever resulted from anything that Trump has ever touched or been involved with. He is void of any and all goodwill or human decency. He is a purely toxic, insidious and malevolent being, who constitutes a malignant affliction on this country.
The safety and national security of America should have never been placed into the hands of a mentally impaired and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored.
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Trump once said, “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do!” yet when he was pressed to name his favorite verse, he made one up that does not even exist. In an interview, Trump said that he's never asked God for forgiveness, because he's never done anything wrong. Trump has absolutely nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus Christ. He breaks every commandment daily, has proven he knows nothing of the Bible, and still gets over 87% of the Evangelical Christian vote. To say that evangelicals hold him to a lesser standard would be incorrect, since that would imply that they hold him to any standard at all.
Trump is simply an irredeemable human being. He seems to possess every human flaw known to mankind, as well as everyone of the $even deadly sins.
1. L.UST: a strong inordinate and inappropriate passion or longing, especially for Ivanka and for assaulting random women.
2. G.LUTT0NY: an excessive and ongoing eating of food or drink. An inordinate desire to consume way more than one requires.
3. G.REED: an excessive and insatiable pursuit of money and material goods by any means necessary.
Charity cures greed by putting the desire to help others above storing up treasure for one’s self. Trump created a fake charity foundation, and used it for his own financial gain.
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
4. S.L0TH: an excessive laziness or the failure to act and utilize one’s talents.
5. W.RATH/ANGER: a strong anger and hatred towards others.
6. ENVY: the intense desire to have an item that someone else possesses. The desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
7. PRIDE: an excessive view of one's own self, and one's own abilities, without regard for others. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
I have a feeling that if the "January 13th McCarthy" ever meets "today's McCarthy" they are going to have a serious falling out.🤣
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
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There's a reason why Trump is having a hard time finding good lawyers to represent him. His past lawyers say he was nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid.
Michael Cohen told the Post. “He’s also a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally.”
Trump famously shortchanged many small businesses on the money he owed them. The list includes companies that worked on Trump’s properties or supplied him with chandeliers, pianos, marble, and other luxury touches. But Trump also tried to underpay the very same lawyers who helped him save money, and some ended up suing their former client Trump.
The Atlantic City law firm of Levine Staller saved one of Trump’s companies tens of millions of dollars in taxes—and then sued the company, Trump Entertainment, after the business tried to pay Levine Staller $1.25 million less than the firm was owed.
In 2012, Levine Staller won a settlement that returned $35 million in overpaid taxes and cut $15 million from Trump Entertainment's future liabilities, leading to a total savings of $50 million for the corporation. Trump agreed to pay $7.25 million to the law firm in legal fees, but then only paid Levine Staller $6 million before trying to claim the rest as unsecured debt in ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. In response, Levine Staller sued its former client, Trump Entertainment, and in 2014, a judge rejected Trump Entertainment’s request to be absolved of this debt and told the company to pay up.
It wasn’t an isolated case. Trump underpaid at least four law firms or lawyers who worked for him. One of them, Morrison Cohen LLP of New York City, had represented Trump in a lawsuit against a construction contractor that Trump claimed had overcharged him for work on a golf course. According to USA Today, Trump sued Morrison Cohen for using the case to help promote its work, and the firm countersued for almost $500,000 in unpaid bills. The case was settled in 2009.
It wasn’t just big amounts Trump tried to get out of paying, either. Bill Scherer, a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had to sue Trump in 1994 to collect $5,000 in unpaid legal bills from a case Scherer won for the billionaire. The lawyer told Reuters last year that he had offered Trump a low rate to “curry favor” with the mogul, but still had to sue. “He’s a deadbeat,” Scherer told South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper. Trump told Reuters that he couldn’t remember Scherer or the case at all. 🤣🤣
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Marine Sgt, Maj. Dan Daly is known for being one of the most decorated service members of all time. He was awarded not one, but TWO medals of honor.
He coined an expression that will forever live on in books, movies, and among troops He almost earned a third for his part in a counter-attack against the enemy in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood. Instead, Daly was given the Distinguished Service Cross and, later, the Navy Cross.
In June 1918 at the battle of Belleau Wood in WW1, the Marines were pinned down under heavy artillery barrage. At one point in the battle, the now 44 year old Daly, led his Marines in a counter-attack against machine gun emplacements with a battle cry that has become Marines lore “Come on, you sons of B——, do you want to live forever?!” In the course of that battle he was wounded three times. 1,800 Marines died in the battle of Belleau Wood.
These are the types of Americans that our current sitting president refers to as "losers."
And Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Since then we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said. Two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes in nothing, honors nothing, and respects nothing. As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
Semper Fi.
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When it comes to Trump, I'll take the word of Trump's own sister, who has known him his entire life? She knows him better, and longer, than anyone alive today. And if she wouldn't support him as president, why on earth should anyone else?
In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His god-d tweets and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s***. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how ”She didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
Only a f00l would ignore what she says about Trump.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. Trump was 4 billion dollars in debt, and American banks had stopped loaning him money after multiple bankruptcies. Trump was financially ruined until the Russians bailed him out. "They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
Trump and his supporters believe in law and order, right up until the moment when law and order comes for them.
In other words, it's law and order for YOU, but not for THEM. Their actions on January 6 proves this.
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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If there is to be any kind of relief package, the only thing Trump wants to know is, what's in it for him. He considers himself to be the world's biggest victim after all.
Most Americans agree that Coronavirus-related corporate bailouts need to come with some strings attached. Trump and Steve Mnuchin want to hide the names of the corporations and businesses that will receive billions of dollars from the relief packages 6 months..
lawmakers were negotiating a $1.8 trillion stimulus package to help boost the economy during the global pandemic. One of the major sticking points of the debate on Capitol Hill: how to administer $500 billion in relief for big business and major corporations. Trump has already stated that he believes that he should be responsible for administering the money. This is the same con-man who ran a fake charity, a fake university, and tried to steal his dying father's entire estate. It's all but guaranteed that Trump and Jared will try to hoard billions for themselves, their own hotels, resorts, and other properties.
The proposal backed by Trump and Senate Republicans would give Steven Mnuchin wide discretion over which companies get money and when. It would also allow Mnuchin to withhold the names of the corporations and businesses receiving the bailout money for 6 months. Dems in Congress are saying, "hold on swamp, NOT SO FAST!!!" Dems want some guardrails around what companies can and cannot do with the money once checks are cut. Otherwise, what’s to stop an airline from using its bailout money to give its CEO a bonus instead of paying its workers? Or to prevent a major hotel chain from laying off workers while engaging in stock buybacks?
By and large, American voters agree companies shouldn’t get money without strings attached.
And the swamp howled.
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Let's be perfectly clear, Trump does not believe in democracy, justice, or the rule of law. Because these American ideals and institutions are his biggest enemies. Trump has spent his life believing that he is above the law, and therefore he should be allowed do whatever he pleases. It's one reason why he's been sued more than 4000 times. Trump University is a perfect example. If it were not for justice, and the rule of law, his fake University would still exist, and he would still be conning Americans out of thousands of dollars. The same goes for his fake charity foundation that's now being sued by the State of NY. He and his kids were using it for their own personal gains. Once again, justice and the rule of law thwarted him again. But the biggest proof of Trump's contempt for democracy, justice, and the rule of law is his unconscionable admiration for dictators like Putin and Kim Jung Un. These two dictators are above the law in their countries, which is why Trump falsely believes he's above the law, and should be able to pardon himself. Last but not least, Trump has a pathological fear, and visceral hatred for the truth. So yes, Trump is, without a doubt, the worst president in American history. No other president even comes close.
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For years I was mystified over how Jim Jones was able to convince his followers to give their kids cyanide laced punch, and then drink the same poisoned punch themselves. The entire thing seemed fantastical and inconceivable. And then I saw a clip of Trump at one of his rallies, and then all of sudden, it all made sense.
I am 100% certain that Trump could convince his cultists to do the exact same thing that Jim Jones did.
Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts, lies, pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, gaslighting, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Our Constitution vs Project 2025. Pick a side..
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived..
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
The creation of the U.S. Constitution depended upon the knowledge, experience, and dedication of its framers, just as its endurance depends upon the knowledge and experience of each succeeding generation of Americans. For this reason, it is important for us to learn and understand the governing principles of our nation, set forth in the Constitution.
I love the fact that the first 3 words of our Constitution are "we the people." This affirms that the government of the United States, exists to serve its citizens.
Honor our Constitution, and protect it at all cost, the same way it exists to protect us.
Semper Fi...🇺🇸.
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How do you know when America's democracy is under siege? It's when our president believes he is above the law, and brags about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
Semper Fi...
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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Mary Trump pretty much nailed it.
Trump is essentially a 74 year old man who never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind. This is the crux of the problem when it comes to Trump's total and complete failure as a leader and president. Trump's problem is not so much that he refuses to do his job as president, Trump's problem is that he's not even capable of doing his job. He is not equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. He is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity, like his idol Pooopin.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves freedom loving"patriots."
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1888 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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As the coronavirus threat intensified in the U.S. in late February and early March, Fox viewers received different information than Americans who got their news from other sources. Trump and Fox consistently downplayed and even denied the existence of the coronavirus. On March 9, when 700-plus American coronavirus cases had been confirmed, Hannity told fox viewers that political enemies of Trump were using the virus to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”
"The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success," Trump wrote in a tweet.
"I'm right on this, the coronavirus is the common cold folks. The hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the Andromeda strain, as OMG if you get it you're dead."
-- Rush Limbaugh, February 24
"The more I learn about coronavirus, the less concerned I am."
-- Pete Hegseth, Fox News, March 8
"The national left wing media, playing up fears of the coronavirus."
-- Lou Dobbs, Fox News, March 9
"The sky is falling because we have a few dozen cases of coronavirus on a cruise ship. I am far more concerned with stepping on a used heroin needle than I am of getting the coronavirus, but maybe that's just me."
-- Tomi Lahren, Fox News, March 10
"It's a virus, like the flu. All the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly, doesn’t reflect reality."
-- Jeanine Pirro, Fox News, March 7
"This virus should be compared to the flu, because at worst, at WORST, worst case scenario, it could be the flu."
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News, March 6
" You wanna know how I really feel about the coronavirus? If I get it, I'll beat it. I'm not afraid of the coronavirus!!! And no one else should be that afraid either."
-- Jesse Watters, Fox News, March 3
"It's milder than we thought, and the fatality rate is going to drop."
-- Dr. Drew Pinsky, Fox News, March 2
"It very very difficult to contract this virus."
-- Matt Schlapp, Fox News, March 11
"One of things that you can do is if you're healthy, you and your family, it's a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easily."
-- Devin Nunes, Fox News, March 15
"I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. I took it very seriously."
-- Trump, March 17
"By the way, this program has always taken the coronavirus seriously."
-- Hannity, Fox News, March 18
The American people should file a class action lawsuit against fox and Trump, for intentionally and deliberately misleading the public on the life threatening seriousness of the coronavirus during a national health crisis, that has now cost the lives of more than 6 thousand Americans.
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"The buck stops with me."
-- President Biden, 08/20/2021
As president, Biden took responsibility for the chaos of the Afghan withdrawal.
'No, I don't take responsibility at all'."
--Trump 03/13/2020
Trump deflects blame for his coronavirus testing debacle, and the soaring number of infections.
Personally, I like presidents who don't dodge drafts or responsibility.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
Why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 105,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham,
Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have
either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself, and it reeks of corruption,
paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done.
Dr. Fauci does not set policy in this country, because like he said, that's not his job, nor his responsibility. Dr. Fauci can't make Trump do anything. He can't make states do anything. His job is to provide the president, and other elected officials, with the best possible advice on how to deal with the pandemic. His advice is based on science, facts, and decades of experience. Trump will either take that expert advice, or he will ignore it, and do whatever his tremendous gut tells him to do.
Why anyone would choose to listen to Trump instead of Dr. Fauci is beyond me. Call me Krazy, but if I want to know how to effectively deal with a pandemic outbreak, I'm calling Dr. Fauci. If I want to know how to bankrupt multiple casinos, or set up a fake university and charity foundation, or lie like it's my job, or launder money with the Russians, then I'm calling Trump, and nobody but Trump...
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Trump's phone call with a survivor of the Parkland mass shooting back in Feb of 2018, actually angered the student, who said her conversation with the president "didn't make me feel better in the slightest."
Samantha Fuentes, a High School student who was shot in both legs during the attack, recounted her call in an interview:
"He said he heard I was a big fan of his, (she wasn't) and then he said, 'I'm a big fan of yours, too,' " Fuentes told the Times.
"I'm pretty sure he made that up," she continued. "Talking to the president, I've never been so unimpressed by a person in all my life.😂 He didn't make me feel better in the slightest."
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing. Because Republicans don't want to govern, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about.
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On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when American banks stopped loaning Trump it money. It was a win-win for both sides. The Russian mafia is totally different than the American mafia. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. In an interviewed, Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Putin’s boss at one point, was asked about the Russain mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.”
Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not.
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Trump once said, “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do!” yet when he was pressed to name his favorite verse, he made one up that does not even exist. In an interview, Trump said that he's never asked God for forgiveness, because he's never done anything wrong. Trump has absolutely nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus Christ. He breaks every commandment daily, has proven he knows nothing of the Bible, and still gets over 87% of the Evangelical Christian vote. To say that evangelicals hold him to a lesser standard would be incorrect, since that would imply that they hold him to any standard at all..
Trump is simply an irredeemable human being. He seems to possess every human flaw known to mankind, as well as everyone of the $even deadly sins.
1. L.UST: a strong inordinate and inappropriate passion or longing, especially for Ivanka and for assaulting random women.
2. G.LUTT0NY: an excessive and ongoing eating of food or drink. An inordinate desire to consume way more than one requires.
3. G.REED: an excessive and insatiable pursuit of money and material goods by any means necessary.
Charity cures greed by putting the desire to help others above storing up treasure for one’s self. Trump created a fake charity foundation, and used it for his own financial gain..
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been gr.eedy, gr.eedy, gr.eedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so gr.eedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a gr.eedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
4. S.L0TH: an excessive laziness or the failure to act and utilize one’s talents.
5. W.RATH/ANGER: a strong anger and hatred towards others.
6. ENVY: the intense desire to have an item that someone else possesses. The desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
7. PRIDE: an excessive view of one's own self, and one's own abilities, without regard for others. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity..
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Marine Sgt, Maj. Dan Daly is known for being one of the most decorated service members of all time. He was awarded not one, but TWO medals of honor.
He coined an expression that will forever live on in books, movies, and among troops He almost earned a third for his part in a counter-attack against the enemy in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood. Instead, Daly was given the Distinguished Service Cross and, later, the Navy Cross.
In June 1918 at the battle of Belleau Wood in WW1, the Marines were pinned down under heavy artillery barrage. At one point in the battle, the now 44 year old Daly, led his Marines in a counter-attack against machine gun emplacements with a battle cry that has become Marines lore “Come on, you sons of B——, do you want to live forever?!” In the course of that battle he was wounded three times. 1,800 Marines died in the battle of Belleau Wood.
These are the types of Americans that our current sitting president refers to as "losers."
And Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Since then we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said. Two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
Semper Fi.
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves..
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified."
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016."
Trump, fox, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Kennedy, Jordan, and Rudy, are knowingly aiding and abetting Russia in it's disinformation campaign on America. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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In a CNN interview, Rudy Giuliani said that Trump Tower Moscow “was a real estate project. There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it.” 😂
There's proof online that Trump signed it. The letter of intent with Trump signature has been available to every media outlet.
Trump himself signed the letter of intent, which is dated October 28, 2015 — five months after Trump launched his presidential campaign, and during a period in which he was lavishing praise on Putin.
Michael Cohen testified under oath to Congress that Trump signed the document.
The letter of intent, which was also signed by Andrey Rozov, owner of the Russian firm that would have partnered with the Trump criminal organization on the project, I.C. Expert Investment Co. — outlined a deal that would have given Trump’s company a $4 million upfront fee, no upfront costs, a percentage of the sales and control over marketing and design. The deal also included an opportunity to name the hotel spa after Trump’s daughter/muse, Ivanka.
The reason why Trump never went through with the Moscow hotel was because President Obama placed economic sanctions on the Russian bank that Trump needed to finance the hotel. Once that happened, the deal was officially dead. Trump never had enough money to finance the building of such a massive hotel. The sanctions Obama placed on the Russian bank prevented any Americans from doing business with it. The Russian VTB bank is partially owned by the Kremlin, and remains under US sanctions.
Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine.
Trump has never solved a problem in his life, because Trump IS the problem. He has always been an agent of chaos and destruction.
In the end, Trump doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game, is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can, and in the midst of all the chaos that he's created, sneak out the back door before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos. And He's doing the same thing now with America and the American people.
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The Senate intel report has revealed that Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian-Russian who headed Manafort’s office in that country, posed a ‘grave security threat."
Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer,” the report said. Manafort’s willingness to share information with Kilimnik and other people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, it added, “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.” The 50-year-old Kilimnik was Manafort’s right-hand man in Ukraine.
Kilimnik rose to run Manafort’s operations in Ukraine after Manafort helped Ukrainian candidate Yanukovych win the election in 2010. When Yanukovych fled the country following a pro-Western revolution in 2014, Manafort and Kilimnik continued to work with pro-Russian Ukrainian parties and politicians.
Kilimnik was also the main contact with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, with whom Manafort had business dealings. Kilimnik served as a liaison between the two men, and their relationship continued during the U.S. presidential elections.
Manafort, Kilimnik and their associates took extensive measures to hide and destroy their communications, the report asserts.
Kilimnik was born in Ukraine but attended a military language institute in Moscow from 1987 to 1992 during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The institute was linked to the Russian military intelligence agency, or GRU.
When the full extent of Trump's treachery, crimes, and betrayal of this country are revealed, it will be far worse than most people ever imagined.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free...
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In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction.
As far as I'm concerned, placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into a position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act.
The economic fate and national security of America should have never been placed in the hands of a mentally impaired, and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored...
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Trump:
"Nope, I don't know this gentleman, I've never met him.
Okay, I may have met him once.
Okay, I met him at least a dozen times, but he was not working with Rudy in Ukraine.
Okay, he was working with Rudy in Ukraine, but it's not what you think.
Okay, so it is what you think, but it's not a big deal "something unintelligible" I'm being treated so unfairly, Hillary's emails." 😃😄
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The January 27 phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto has insisted publicly his country will not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full.
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How is it, that in the 73 years that Trump has been on this earth, he has never matured emotionally, intellectually, mentally, or socially? Trump is not a sentient being in any way shape or form.
He's a complete sociopath, who's only claims to fame, are being a 5 time draft dodger, a crook, money launderer, illiterate, megalomaniac, sexual predator, twitter troll, demagogue, racist, traitor, failed business owner, tax cheat, welfare queen, con-man, malignant narcissist, a deadbeat who doesn't repay his debts, and a loudmouth bloviating pathological liar..
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Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019.
And Trump thinks he knows more about viruses and infectious diseases than this guy, simply because he had an Uncle who attended MIT. Let that sink in for a moment.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Trump and Republicans had a field day criticizing President Obama’s response to Ebola after the emergence of a fourth U.S. case heightened public anxiety about the disease spreading outside of West Africa.
Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there.
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
After the Ebola virus outbreak, President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it in 2018.
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018. "And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump." Rhodes said.
"And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House."
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives.
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Experts have criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle the National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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Trump: "For the record, I was never a big fan of testing, because I like the numbers where they are right now. So when the number of infection cases goes up because of more testing, don't blame me. And I take no responsibility for any of this, and the reason why is because everyone knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House. So again, don't blame me, blame the people who voted for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham who continues to defend me. I'm the same person that I've always been, an unethical con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Fox is responsible for so much of the hysteria, xenophobia, hatred, and racism that we see in America today. For years now, mongerers like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, have poisoned the minds of their viewers with their nonstop propaganda.
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The Trump criminal organization is pushing back against a proposed provision that would require the Secret Service to disclose how much it's spending on Trump's golf trips to his resorts.
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is battling with Dem senators in negotiations over legislation that would move the Secret Service back to the Treasury Department, where it was first housed before moving to the DHS.
The legislation is set to include a stipulation that the Secret Service disclose on a semiannual basis the amount being spent on presidential travel for the president and his adult children. “Mnuchin came to me last year with a proposal to move the Secret Service to the Treasury Department,” Sen Feinstein said in a statement. “As part of that effort, I proposed that the cost of presidential travel be included for greater transparency, accountability and oversight associated with protection during travel of presidents and their families.”
Mnuchin agreed to the financial disclosure provision, but like a true Trump sycophant, Mnuchin is against the 120-day requirement, and instead wants to hold off on revealing the cost of the president’s trips until after the election. 😲
That's like a used car salesman telling you that he will tell you the past mechanical problems of a car, but only after you've purchased it from him.
The Secret Service is required to report semiannually the cost of protecting Trump's Children of the Corn, or non-White House residence, the Trump criminal organization failed to do so in either 2016 or 2017. The White House also dodged questions from the Government Accountability Office about the issue for two years, after the GAO sought information on the cost of Trump's travel to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump spent one out of every five days on one his golf course last year. The GAO found that Trump's first four trips to Mar-a-Lago in 2017 cost the Secret Service $1.3 million per trip (and $3.4 million in total government spending), and the Secret Service requested $60 million in additional funding in 2017. Federal charge card expenditures revealed the Secret Service also spent at least $250,000 at Trump properties in just the first five months of Trump's term alone, and the agency has paid a king's ransom for golf carts on Trump's golf outings, spending $588,000 on golf carts since 2017. The GAO report found that Trump's sons Uday and Qusay's travel to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and the UAE in 2017 cost the Secret Service $396,000 in total—and they've done plenty of traveling since.
Trump has spent nearly a third of his "presidency" at his properties. The GAO report reports that the Secret Service may have spent as much as $28 million JUST on Trump's trips to Mar-a-Lago by now. But that would be still just a fraction of his total travel costs. President Obama—whom Trump criticized for golfing too much—cost the government $96.9 million over 8 years with his travel, for comparison. So far Trump's golfing has cost American taxpayers more than 102 million dollars in just 3 years. Taxpayers have paid at least 81 million for Trump play on his golf course in FL, 17 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in NJ, 1 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in Los Angeles, and 3 million for Trump to play on his golf course in Scotland. And to add insult to injury, Trump is pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars from accommodations, lodging, and rental fees. The more trips to his properties, the more money he makes.
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A raw and jaw-dropping example of what a pathological liar sounds like.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders, the top top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in a 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At a rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “5uckers&Losers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier, and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure man-baby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
The decision prompted harsh criticism on Twitter, with Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill, saying that Trump was dishonoring U.S. servicemen.
"TheyDiedWith their face to the foe, and that pathetic-Inadequate DJT couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen", Soames stated.
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In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Trump's administration buried a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places. The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day." Once again Trump is dismissive of scientific facts because they get in the way of the BS he's trying to sell to the country. Instead of sharing this vital information which can literally save lives, he hides it.
Trump's cult has bought into his commitment to willful ignorance. Trump feeds them lies and misinformation on a daily basis, and they accept it without questioning the validity of anything he says. And at the same time, they will say that they are protesting for their "freedom." What they don't realize is that no man or woman can ever truly be free without factual information....without the truth. Without the facts and the truth, they are nothing more than tools for the person feeding them lies.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when May 1 is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am not religious, but that won't stop me from going to places of worship.
I'm nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. There is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. No one wants Trump to prematurely open up the country, and end social distancing more than me. I don't recognize anyone's authority."
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Trump is a classic demagogue in every sense of the word. His demagoguery is associated with dictators, and it appeals to the worst nature of people. Demagoguery isn't based on reason, issues, and doing the right thing; it's based on stirring up fear and hatred to control people.
Scapegoating:
The most fundamental demagogic technique is scapegoating: blaming all of his troubles, bad behavior, or bad optics on other groups, usually the media, or people of different ethnicity,
religion, or social class. This is done by projection. It relies on condemning others for what you're doing. Projection is absolutely necessary for effective scapegoating.
Fearmongering:
Many demagogues have risen to power by evoking fear in their audiences, to stir them to action and prevent deliberation. Trump and fox have mastered the art of fearmongering.
Lying
While any politician needs to point out dangers to the people and criticize opponents' policies, demagogues choose their words for their effect on their audience's emotions, usually without regard for factual truth or the real severity of the danger. Some demagogues are opportunistic, monitoring the people and saying whatever currently will generate the most "heat". Other demagogues may themselves be so ignorant or prejudiced that they sincerely believe the falsehoods they tell. Trump falls under both categories here. And When one lie doesn't work, the demagogue quickly moves on to more lies.
Promising the impossible:
Another fundamental demagogic technique is making promises only for their emotional effect on audiences, without regard for how they might be accomplished or without intending to honor them once in office. ( I'm going to build a great wall, and Mexico is gonna pay for it) Demagogues express these empty promises simply and theatrically, but remain extremely hazy about how they will achieve them because usually they are impossible.
Personal insults and ridicule:
Many demagogues have found that ridiculing or insulting others is a simple way to shut down reasoned deliberation of competing ideas, especially with an unsophisticated audience.
A common demagogic technique is to pin an insulting epithet on an opponent, by saying it repeatedly, in speech after speech, when saying the opponent's name or in place of it. This is easily one of Trump's favorite demagogues tools.
Attacking the news media:
Since information from the press can undermine a demagogue's spell over his or her followers, modern demagogues have often demonized the media, calling for violence against newspapers who opposed them, claiming that the press can't be trusted, or was secretly in the service of moneyed interests or foreign powers, or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get them.
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath.
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, etc) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet "gets by" by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blames Dems for his government shutdown, after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown.
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Trump is currently going through the the 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety. Currently Trump is stuck between this stage and stage 1 of grief.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, hostility, flight.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
This is the stage that a malignant narcissist like Trump will never reach, because he will NEVER allow himself to truly admit that he lost the election. In fact, Trump may spend the rest of his life waking up every morning at stage 1, and slowly working his way down to stage 4 by the end of the day, and starting the process over again the next morning. 😄
Trump reminds me of Gollum when he lost his precious. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either. 😄
"He stole it from us!!!! Trixie Bidenses!!!!!"😭😭
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party (Trump) is always right.”
-- George Orwell, 1984
In George Orwell's novel 1984, a Thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding beliefs that oppose or question the Party. Thoughtcrime is thinking of anything that the Thought Police and the Party deem is illegal. Doubting the party line, or thinking anything contrary to the Party's message.
Within Trump's cult, he has a name for those who commit "Thoughtcrimes" against him, like questioning his actions, and calling out his lies, Trump refers to these people as "Never Trumpers."
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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Trump is far more corrupt , and more dangerous to the country than Nixon ever was. Trump has displayed all the common traits and behavior of a sociopath. Unlike Nixon, there are no limits or boundaries that Trump won't cross, in order to achieve his self-serving goals.
Traits of a sociopath:
Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
Incapacity for Love
Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Russian intelligence gains influence in foreign countries by operating subtly and patiently. It exerts different gradations of leverage over different kinds of people, and uses a basic tool kit of blackmail that involves the exploitation of greed, stupidity, ego, and 5exual appetite. All of which are traits Trump has in abundance.
Throughout his career, Trump has always felt comfortable operating at or beyond the ethical boundaries that constrain typical businesses. In the 1980s, he worked with La Cosa Nostra, which controlled the NY cement trade, and later employed Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, both of whom have links to the RussianMafia. Trump habitually refused to pay his counterparties, and if the people he burned got in his way, he bullied them with threats.
He maintains a fanatical secrecy about his finances and has paid out numerous settlements to silence women. The combination of a penchant for compromising behavior, a willingness to work closely with criminals, and a desire to protect aspects of his privacy makes him the ideal blackmail target.
It is not difficult to imagine that Russia quickly had something on Trump, from either exploits during his 1987 visit or any subsequent embarrassing behavior KGB assets might have uncovered. But the other leverage Russia enjoyed over Trump for at least 15 years is indisputable — in fact, his family has admitted to it multiple times.
After a series of financial reversals and his brazen abuse of bankruptcy laws, Trump found it impossible to borrow from American banks and grew heavily reliant on unconventional sources of capital. Russian cash proved his salvation. From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million. In 2010, the private-wealth division of Deutsche Bank also loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars during the same period it was laundering billions in Russian money. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” said Donald Jr. in 2008. “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,” boasted Eric Trump in 2014.
Since Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power in 1999, money has become a key source of Russian political leverage.
Shady business transactions offer the perfect cover for covert payments, since just about the entire Russian economy is shady. Trump’s adamant refusal to disclose his tax returns has many possible explanations, but none is more obvious than the prospect that he is hiding what are effectively bribes.
In July 2013, Trump visited Moscow again. If the Russians did not have a back-channel relationship or compromising file on Trump 30 years ago, they very likely obtained one then.
The first intimations that Trump might harbor a dark secret involving Russia originated among America’s European allies, which, being situated closer to Russia, have had more experience fending off its nefarious encroachments.
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after NYTimes reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it, but BEFORE he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump.
In the summer of 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then CIA director, John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the UK Intelligency agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan personally on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
What Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. "Individuals who go along a treasonous path," he warned, do not even realize they're along that path until it gets to be a bit too late."
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Oleg Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
The question now is why would Manafort continue to lie for Trump? Why would Manafort, who has a law degree from Georgetown and years of experience around white-collar crime, behave like this? What incentive does he have to spend most or all of his remaining years in prison rather than betray Trump? One way to make sense of his behavior is the possibility that Manafort is keeping his mouth shut because he’s afraid of being killed.
That speculation might sound hyperbolic, but there is plenty of evidence to support it. In February, a video appeared on YouTube showing Manafort’s Russian employer, Deripaska, on his yacht with a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich. In the video, from August 2016, Deripaska could be seen speaking with a high-ranking Kremlin official. The video was such a source of embarrassment to Moscow that it fought to have it removed from YouTube. Vashukevich, who was then in a Thai jail after having been arrested there for prostitution, announced that she had heard Deripaska describe a plot to interfere in the election and that she has 16 hours’ worth of audio recordings from the yacht to support her charges. In a letter to America authorities, her associate wrote, “We risk our lives very much.”
Vashukevich’s name has disappeared from the news media. In all probability, either the FBI or Russian intelligence has gotten to her. Whatever has happened to her, her testimony suggests both that Russia is still hiding secrets about its role in Trump’s election and that someone who knows Deripaska well believes he would and could kill her for violating his confidence.
Russia murders people routinely, at home and abroad. In the nine months after Trump’s election, nine Russian officials were murdered or died mysteriously. At least one was suspected to have been a likely source of information for the British agent Steele. The attorney for the firm that hired Steele told the Senate last August, “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of the Steele dossier.”.
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be with his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence along the narrow path, leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."
-- David Frum: The Corruption of the American Republic.
Vote 💙 like your right to vote, and our democracy depends on it, because it literally does.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are 10 warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
• There are records, books, news articles, or broadcast reports that document the abuses of the group/leader.
• Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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Jack O’Donnell is author of the memoir Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall. Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino.
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican.”
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke.
Trump: "Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife."
Jeb Bush’s wife is Mexican - American
During the campaign, Trump impugned the character of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a native-born American, hailing from Indiana, who was hearing a class action case against Trump's now-discredited fake Trump University.
"He's a Mexican," Trump said to CNN of Curiel. "We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can't even believe."
Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. It's the type of comment that only a racist would applaud..
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Bannon knows what he did, and so do we, because he bragged about it on his podcast. It's now a part of history
A day before the insurrection, Bannon made comments on his podcast stating that "all he// is going to break loose tomorrow. It's gonna be moving. It's gonna be quick. And all I can say is strap in, the War Room, a posse. You have made this happen and tomorrow it's game day."
“We’re now on the cusp of really reversing this, decertifying this, and that is because of you, this audience that has responded to everything. It’s now put us at the point that it’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point ofAttack. Right? The point of attackTomorrow. It’s going to kick off; it’s going to be very dramatic.”
“It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be extraordinarily different. And all I can say is: Strap in. Let’s get ready. So many people said, ‘Man, if I was in a revolution, I would be in Washington.’ Well, this is your time in history.”
Bannon said this to his listeners on January 5.
Can someone please inform Boxcar Bannon, that if you plan and incite an insurrection on our nation's Capitol, and it fails, you're probably going to be prosecuted. It's called law and order. So please, stop the squeal. 🤣
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The 14 characteristics of fascism:
• Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
• Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
• Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; socialists, terrorists, etc.
• Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
• Rampant 5exism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to ToAbortion is high, as ishomophobiaAnd antiGay legislation and national policy.
• Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
• Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
• Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
• Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
• Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
• Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
• Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
• Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
As you see, when it comes to fascism, Trump and the GOP check all the boxes.
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
He's encouraging and promoting gun violence.
Trump and his supporters believe in law and order, right up until the moment when law and order comes for them.
In other words, it's law and order for YOU, but not for THEM. Their actions on January 6 proves this.
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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If Trump ever sits down for an interview with Mueller, he will surely walk out of that interview in handcuffs, and Trump's lawyers know it.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter Tim O'Brien. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times. The lies Trump told were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump would blame others for the error. or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Fox is responsible for so much of the hysteria, xenophobia, hatred, and racism that we see in America today. For years now, mongerers like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, have poisoned the minds of their viewers with their nonstop propaganda.
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Trumps presidency has been a world wind of lies, obfuscation, unbridled buffoonery, thievery, treason, chaos, nepotism, cronyism, narcissism, criminal negligence, skullduggery, moral turpitude, death, and sanctioned lawlessness. Simply put, it's been a menagerie of endless horrors.
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Trump will be remembered as "The Great Pretender." He is, and has always been, a fraud. Therefore his failure as a leader and as a president was inevitable.
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone else, or something else.
In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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Trump's lies about Mexico paying for a wall, DOES NOT, constitute a national emergency.
There is no crisis on the border. The crisis is in America, and Mexico is not the source. A wall will not stop gun violence, because the problem is here in America. Guns don't come from Mexico, they are manufactured and sold here, and those same guns are flowing into Mexico. And those guns aren't being walked across the border, they are being shipped across at border crossings. The problem is here in America.
Mass shootings in schools, churches, synagogues, clubs, grocery stores, and concerts, aren't being committed by illegal immigrants, they are being committed by Americans, again, the problem is here in America. So no wall will fix that.
Drugs aren't being walked across the border, it's being shipped into America by air, sea, border crossing, and tunnels. So again, no wall will fix that. We could lock up 5 El Chapos today, and tomorrow, there will be at least 10 new Chapos fighting each other to take the old Chapos' place,....WHY? Because the problem with drugs isn't in Mexico, it's here in America. The demand is what drives the drug trade. So PLEASE, republicans, stop blaming immigrants, Mexico, the lack of a wall, drug cartels, El Chapos, Don Quixote, or whomever, for America's problems, because they aren't the problem. The problem is right here in my country.
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A jaw-dropping example of what a pathological liar sounds like.
Trump has a long history of denying that he knows or has ever met certain people.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders, the top top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in a 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At a rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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General Mattis is a man of core beliefs, integrity, loyalty to the country, and commitment to our Troops. Trump on the other hand, is a Traitor, a coward, and a man who believes in nothing. Trump is despised by our military, and rightfully so. He has insulted our PoWs, and Gold Star family members, he refused to honor our WW1 fallen in France, and he refused to visit Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day. Trump has been in office for 2 years, and has yet to visit our troops serving overseas.
As a Marine veteran, I despise everything he represents.
Semper Fidelis, Always Faithful
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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Today the Republican Party is a criminal political cult obssessed with power and greed, and to achieve their two priorities, they will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING.
Since 2016, we have witnessed a test of the depths to which the Republican Party will sink. How much corruption, how much collusion with foreign powers and betrayal of the national interest will that party’s elected representatives stand for? Well the results of that test are abundantly clear, shocking, and horrifying: There is no bottom.
The GOP is now a thoroughly corrupt party. Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and our democracy will remain under threat even if and when he’s gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
The modern GOP as a whole, is overwhelmingly corrupt, and dominated by fanaticals and extremists. Anyone imagining that Trump being defeated in November will lead to a moral awakening, or that republicans will return to democratic political norms once Trump is gone, is living in a fantasy world.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want. The Republican party doesn't even hide it's contempt for the American people.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Jones, Trump and their co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
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"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal"
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
It's time that anyone who's still on the fence, finally accept the fact that Trump is simply a moral abomination, and a failed human being, who possesses every human flaw known to mankind. He is irredeemable and unsalvageable.
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Today the Republican Party is a criminal political cult obssessed with power and greed, and to achieve their two priorities, they will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING.
Since 2016, we have witnessed a test of the depths to which the Republican Party will sink. How much corruption, how much collusion with foreign powers and betrayal of the national interest will that party’s elected representatives stand for? Well the results of that test are abundantly clear, shocking, and horrifying: There is no bottom.
The GOP is now a thoroughly corrupt party. Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and our democracy will remain under threat even if and when he’s gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
The modern GOP as a whole, is overwhelmingly corrupt, and dominated by fanaticals and extremists. Anyone imagining that Trump being defeated in November will lead to a moral awakening, or that republicans will return to democratic political norms once Trump is gone, is living in a fantasy world.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want. The Republican party doesn't even hide it's contempt for the American people.
The big question is whether America as we know it can long endure when one of its two major parties has effectively rejected the principles on which our nation was built.
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This MLK quote should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
This quote aptly describes Meadows and Rudy.
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These protesters are the most unpatriotic people in America. And what's worse, there is nothing grassroots about these protests at all. It may look homegrown, but it's not. They are being funded, guided and created by billion dollar corporations, and the conservative political groups that they own. But let's be clear, these protests are small, and they represent a very small minority of people in this country.
The protesters that show up armed to the teeth and dressed like insurgents should be treated for what they are....terrorists. They are truly the dregs of humanity. Like Trump, most of them have never served in the military, and they never will. Because they're too fat, too lazy, too selfish, too incompetent, and too cowardly. But that won't stop them from dressing up like insurgents and showing off their weapons of mass carnage, and stumbling around in public wrapped in a cloak of phony patriotism.
Like Trump, these counterfeit patriots are indifferent to the harm, stress, and potential devastation they are placing on our medical infrastructure by helping to spread this virus. It's like their minds have been infected with some sort of mental virus that blocks out logic, reasoning and critical thinking. The concept of serving a cause greater than themselves is completely foreign to them. If they can't eat it, grope it, or shoot it, then they don't want it.
Do they really believe that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 60 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? Our greatest generation from WW2 have to be spinning in their graves. I'm actually glad that most of them are not around to see this. The men and women of our greatest generation had true grit. These protesters are filled with true sh!t.
If they really want to protest something, they should be out protesting for more protective gear for nurses, doctors, and first responders. Or how about protesting for more testing nation wide. But once again, they're too selfish, and too unpatriotic. For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should for once give some consideration to growing the F. UP.
Marine veteran
Semper Fi..
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So after Republicans broke their own rules and went back on their word about picking a Supreme Court Justice during an election year, when millions of Americans have already voted, Dems have every right to pack the court, and Republicans have absolutely no room to talk. Republicans made a promise to the American people, and they broke that promise without even blinking an eye or giving it a 2nd thought. So If Dems decide to pack the court, republicans have no one to blame but themselves. Because it didn't have to be this way. All republicans had to do, was honor the promise they made.
Because let's face it, if the situation were reversed, and Dems broke their promise, and went back on their word, what would republicans do? We all know the answer to that question.
So, by breaking their own rules and going back on their word, Republicans are giving Dems a green light to pack the Supreme Court. I love it!!!!😆 👏👏👏
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On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia...
A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. We now know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers had or were at least aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself, Don Jr, Manafort, Flynn, Jared, Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone, just to name a few. But what's worse, is the fact that they all lied about these contacts. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover them up, every single one of them..
The question every American should be asking is why were there so many contacts(272) between Trump’s people and Russian officials and operatives, and why did Trump and his people lie about those contacts?
Helsinki July 16, 2018.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Make no mistake, Putin is America's enemy, and not because we want him to be, he's America's enemy because that's what he has chosen to be. Trump is a Russian asset, and not because that's what we want him to be, he's a Russian asset simply because that's what he has chosen to be. We should treat them both accordingly with the choices that they have made..
Semper Fi..
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"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
I have a feeling that if the "January 13th McCarthy" ever meets "today's McCarthy" they are going to have a serious falling out.🤣
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
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When it comes to Trump and the GOP, all roads lead to Russia.
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy, and Devin Nunes, received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, even though they have attended events at his properties, and they have posed in multiple photos with Trump.
Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot disclose to the government.
Parnas is the founder of "Fraud Guarantee" 😂 a consulting firm with no “identifiable customers” that paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy. Along with their work with Rudy, Parnas and Fruman are accused of meeting at Trump’s Washington hotel to discuss a Ukraine gas deal linked to Yovanovitch’s removal.
In October, Republican Kevin McCarthy said he plans to donate the $111,000 that was given to the House Republicans' main fundraising committee by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas. 😲
McCarthy, a sycophantic defender of Trump, said the money from Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, would be given to charity. A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman.
Prosecutors say that they “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
Fruman and Parnas also created Global Energy Producers, an LLC to hide their funding sources and conceal their names on large contributions, the indictment says.
FL. Gov. Ron DeSantis said he plans to return nearly $50,000 he received, according to a report by The Miami Herald. Parnas attended fundraisers for DeSantis in 2018. 😲
Parnas was throwing Russian money at Republicans like beads at Mardi Gras to any republican that was willing to expose themselves to him.
I think it's safe say that not only do the Russians own Trump, they also own the GOP as well. It's going to be interesting to find out just how much Russia paid Trump and republicans to sellout and betray America. And make no mistake, we will find out.
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The Senate intel report has revealed that Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian-Russian who headed Manafort’s office in that country, posed a ‘grave security threat."
Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer,” the report said. Manafort’s willingness to share information with Kilimnik and other people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, it added, “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.” The 50-year-old Kilimnik was Manafort’s right-hand man in Ukraine.
Kilimnik rose to run Manafort’s operations in Ukraine after Manafort helped Ukrainian candidate Yanukovych win the election in 2010. When Yanukovych fled the country following a pro-Western revolution in 2014, Manafort and Kilimnik continued to work with pro-Russian Ukrainian parties and politicians.
Kilimnik was also the main contact with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, with whom Manafort had business dealings. Kilimnik served as a liaison between the two men, and their relationship continued during the U.S. presidential elections.
Manafort, Kilimnik and their associates took extensive measures to hide and destroy their communications, the report asserts.
Kilimnik was born in Ukraine but attended a military language institute in Moscow from 1987 to 1992 during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The institute was linked to the Russian military intelligence agency, or GRU.
When the full extent of Trump's treachery, crimes, and betrayal of this country are revealed, it will be far worse than most people ever imagined.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free...
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Several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017 — and Mueller is seeking to find out why. The tycoons were given “unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle”—and investigators in special council Robert Mueller’s probe are interested in their attendance at the parties.
Rick Gates was heavily involved in planning the inauguration, with a Yahoo News report in 2016calling him the “shadow chair” of the event. There have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it all went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised an astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear. The chair of GW Bush’s 2nd inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “Trump had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events that we had, and yet they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. Counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Back in June ABC News reported that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.
It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. Mueller is exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration. Sometime around March of this year, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
Blavatnik is a Soviet-born, UK-based billionaire who is a US citizen. He is also partnered with Vekselberg, in Russia’s aluminum industry. Together, they built the largest aluminum company in Russia by merging with Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Deripaska is also a player in Mueller's investigation — he employed Manafort, and Manafort tried to get in touch with him during 2016.
Alexander Mashkevitch, a Kazakh mining billionaire, was on the guest list for the “candlelight dinner,” and happens to have been in the Seychelles around the same time as Erik Prince.
And Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended Don Jr’s infamous Trump Tower meeting, were in town too — they attended an inauguration night party thrown by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who’s widely viewed as the biggest supporter of Putin’s regime in Congress.
Several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent over $100 million for what they got. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, it is Rick Gates, who is now working with Mueller's investigation. So whatever Rick Gates knows, Robert Mueller now knows too.
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card he had left, and he played it..
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Everything Trump touches dies. He's like a walking talking ebola virus. You could say he's patient zero. He infects everything, and everyone around him. Just look at Trump's failed casinos and businesses, just ask his former and current wives. Just ask Manafort, Flynn, Cohen, Rick Gates, Papadopoulos, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Hope Hicks, Rob Porter . Last but not least, just look at what this diseased man is doing to our country, and our democracy.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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@jimmyjames6487
That was a textbook example of whataboutism.
Deflecting or changing the subject is called "what-aboutism" — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. It's an attractive tactic for Putin, Trump, and Russian trolls. Whataboutism allows them to be vague, but appear straight-talking at the same time. What-aboutism is essentially a schoolyard taunt, brought to a national and global level.
The idea behind what-aboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A's faults — "Yeah? Well WHAT ABOUT that bad thing you did?"
It's not a complicated tactic — any grade-schooler can master it. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia.
One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it's a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings..
Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a black-and-white worldview. But in this worldview, it's very difficult to be the good guy; idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be "unmasked" as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency. If nobody is perfect, then it means that Trump and Putin should get a pass for any wrongdoings.
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Meanwhile, as Americans have been struggling, Trump has been grifting taxpayer dollars like no one's watching.
So last year we learned that on Trump's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to Trump's failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland. All so that Trump could line his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that Trunp wanted to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
Now we've recently learned that Trump asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland.
This is a level of corruption that we have never seen before, or even imagined. Its naked, gratuitous, egregious and overt corruption on steroids. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, for Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history. Trump's face belongs on the Mt Rushmore of corruption....all by itself. At this point, they should just wrap the entire White House with yellow police tape, and declare the whole thing a crime scene.
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Trump has been violating the Constitution since was sworn in at noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “PROFIT, GAIN, or ADVANTAGE. This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials PROFITEERING from federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decision making to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or PROFITING from the federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent at least $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
FUN FACT: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Because of Trump and DeJoy, at least 300k Amercan citizens had their constitutional rights violated, and for that, there must be consequences, justice demands it!!!
As an American citizen, and a Marine veteran, I didn't shed blood sweat and tears, just so that my fellow Americans, whom I served, could have their most basic constitutional right violated. Someone must be held accountable for this egregious insult to them, and to our Constitution.
Semper Fidelis -- Always Faithful
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
Jesse Lee Peterson is a right-wing "pastor," certified nutter, and talk show host, who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” When Rep. Elijah Cummings died last October, Peterson declared on his radio show, “He dead”—like Trump enemies John McCain and Charles Krauthammer, Peterson noted. “That’s what happens when you mess with the Great White Hope. Don’t mess with God’s children.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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Enriched uranium is used to make reactor fuel, but also nuclear weapons.
Iran had two facilities - Natanz and Fordo - where uranium hexafluoride gas was fed into centrifuges to separate out the most fissile isotope, U-235.
Low-enriched uranium, which has a 3%-4% concentration of U-235, can be used to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. "Weapons-grade" uranium is 90% enriched.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026 - 15 years after the deal's "implementation day" in January 2016.
Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo, and shipped tonnes of low-enriched uranium to Russia.
In addition, research and development must take place only at Natanz and be limited until 2024.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitor Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verify that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb.
Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allows inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
Sanctions previously imposed by the UN, US and EU in an attempt to force Iran to halt uranium enrichment crippled its economy, costing the country more than $160bn (£118bn) in oil revenue from 2012 to 2016 alone.
Under the deal, Iran gained access to more than $100bn in Iranian assets that were frozen overseas, and was able to resume selling oil on international markets and using the global financial system for trade.
The agency will have cameras that provide 24-hour monitoring at the Natanz facility, which has 5,000 centrifuges, and inspectors will have daily access to the facility for 15 years. Within a year, there will be 130 to 150 inspectors in Iran.
The Iran deal was not perfect; no deal ever is. Nonetheless, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is formally known, offered the best possible assurance that Iran would never obtain a nuclear weapon.
Trump has foolishly jeopardized the Iran deal by withdrawing from it and reinstating sanctions on Iran, which the US had set aside in exchange for the Iranians’ pledge to vastly reduce their uranium enrichment, produce no weapons-grade plutonium, and allow international inspectors to rigorously verify their compliance. The JCPOA’s restrictions close every possible path for Iran to obtain fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Although some of the restrictions that the deal places on Iran end after 10, 15, 20, or 25 years, its prohibition on Iran’s obtaining a nuclear weapon never ends. Up until Trump pulled out of the agreement, and placed new sanctions on Iran, Iranians had stuck to the terms of the deal.
In summary, Trump is a fool
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, magic real, and my uncle attended MIT."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am absolutely real, magic is not. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when Easter is, I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense."
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Parnas has literally been indicted for funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a secret account into Trump's campaign, and into the campaigns of multiple Republicans. But Trump and his republican sycophants are acting as if Parnas was hanging out with Dems, and funneling money into Dem campaigns. You can't make this stuff up.
Parnas received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
Parnas' consulting firm, Fraud Guarantee, paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy.
In October, McCarthy said he plans to donate the $111,000 that was given to the House Republicans' main fundraising committee by Fruman and Parnas. 😲
A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman.
Prosecutors say that Parnas and Fruman “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
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Trump actually believes he can set a deadline for a pandemic to end. And if that doesn't work, he'll probably take a map and a sharpie, and draw a diagram of the coronavirus heading out to sea. There is no end to this man's pathological ignorance. I swear, ignorance is like a religion to him. I've never seen a human being so confident and devoted in his own stupidity.
Trump should just stop talking all together, because he has never solved a single problem in his entire life. He doesn't solve problems, he only creates problems, or he exacerbates them. Trump himself is a systemic problem for the country, on multiple levels. He portrayed the pandemic as a hoax, and believes he knows more than medical experts in their own fields. To put it mildly, he is a walking talking, living breathing fk up.
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TRUE STORY: Trump once cashed a check for 13 cents that a magazine sent him as an experiment to see if he'd cash it?
In1990 the writers of Spy Magazine had a great idea for a prank: What would happen if you sent checks for small amounts to celebrities, and saw who cashed them, putting the theory that "every man (and woman) has a price" to the test.
They drafted a letter explaining that the check was a refund for a small overcharge that had occurred in 1988. They sent the checks out (initially for $1.11) to 58 well-known people like Cher, Henry Kissinger, and to Trump, the world's most famous so called billionaire and con-man. Of the 58, 26 cashed the checks—Trump included.
The magazine drafted a followup letter and checks for $0.64 to those 26 people to see who would take more free pennies. Thirteen—including Trump—deposited the checks worth two quarters, a dime, and four pennies into their banks..
Then they went for one last score: in honor of those 13 people, sending 13 more checks for $0.13. Two people cashed them: a Saudi arms dealer named Adnan Khashoggi, and Donald Trump.😄
But who can really blame Trump, especially around that time when he was filing for bankruptcy like once a month.😅
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We all know what Trump was doing in February. He was golfing more than Tiger Woods, he was trolling tweeter, he was helping to spread the virus by holding a marathon of cult rallies, he was lying about the seriousness of the virus on a daily basis, and he was busy praising China for it's response to the coronavirus.
Trump praised China in a Feb 7 tweet:
"Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!"
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In December 2015, the convicted Russian spy, Maria Butina’s Russian gun-rights organization sponsored an NRA delegation to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials ( aka, Russian spies) including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.
Alexander Torshin — a Russian politician and longtime associate of Butina who has since come under U.S. sanctions — played a key role in the trip, and Russia’s decade-long operation of infiltrating American conservative groups. A conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV who has done business in Russia claims that he first introduced David Keene to Torshin in 2011 while Keene was NRA president. Keene and Torshin quickly forged an alliance based on mutual interests..
In 2013, Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the Right to Bear Arms conference in Moscow. Paul Erickson, who became Butina’s asset, accompanied Keene to the 2013 conference, where he reportedly first crossed paths with Butina.
Senate intelligence and finance committees have requested documents on the NRA’s connections to Russia, including documents related to whether the NRA took Russian money and the 2015 delegation. After spending a record $54.4 million to put Trump in the White House and support Republicans in Congress, the NRA’s membership dues dropped precipitously the following year.
The NRA’s lawyers initially lied about the Russian money, they eventually admitted to receiving “a total of approximately $2,512.85 from people associated Russian addresses” and “about $525” from two Russian nationals living in the United States in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The NRA also acknowledged “membership dues” from Alexander Torshin, who has been a non-voting life member of the NRA since 2012 — the year after he first connected with Keene. Butina's partner, GOP operative Paul Erickson, has lawyered up in light of reports that he too may be targeted by federal prosecutors as a covert Russian agent. Signs that Butina has reached a plea deal follows a September filing by federal prosecutors indicating that Butina offered to provide information to the the feds about Erickson’s illegal activities.
While Parnas helped Nunes arrange meetings, he also assisted Rudy in smearing Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch, who was fired by Trump because he believed she was interfering with his criminal scheme. Last month, the SDNY charged Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman with illegally moving money from foreign donors to American political campaigns, all of which were republican campaigns. Hmmmm😞
What's done in the dark will eventually come to the light.
The names of all the Republicans who have been bought and paid for with Russian money will eventually be revealed to the American people. Moscow Mitch's name will surely be at the top of that list.
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Trump & Bob Woodward'svirus Conversation Transcript: Trump ‘Playing it down’
February 7, 2020
Trump:
"Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation."
Woodward:
"Indeed, it is."
Trump:
"It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?"
Woodward:
"I know. It’s much forgotten.:
Trump:
"It’s pretty amazing. And then I said, “Well, is that the same thing?”
Woodward:
"What are you able to do for-"
Trump:
"This is moreDeadly. This is 5% versus 1%, and less than 1%. So this isDeadly stuff.:
March 19, 2020
Trump:
"Now it’s starting out it’s not just all people, Bob. But just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older-:
Woodward:
"Yeah. Exactly."
Trump:
"Young people too. Plenty of young people. We’re looking at what’s going on in-"
Woodward:
"So, give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci, or somebody who kind of… It caused a pivot in your mind, because it’s clear just from what’s on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, “Oh my God. The gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.”
Trump:
"Well, I think Bob, really, to be honest with you-"
Woodward:
"Sure. I want you to be."
Trump:
"I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down."
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Trump has been downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
Trump also told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Yes, because I don't want to create a panic," Trump said.
March 24: On Twitter, Trump Lied again when he claimed that only seniors need to be protected from the coronavirus.
Trump: "Our people want to return to work. They will practice Social Distancing and all else, and Seniors will be watched over protectively & lovingly. We can do two things together," he wrote.
May 6: Following a concerted push to reopen schools beginning in late April, Trump lied again when he suggested that children aren't susceptible to the coronavirus.
Trump: "We realize how strong children are, right? Their immune system is maybe a little bit different. Maybe it's just a little bit stronger, or maybe it's a lot stronger," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American was NOT true. And tens of thousands of American citizens have died because of his lies.
Allan Lichtman, the historian known for accurately predicting presidential elections, said that Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history.
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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It's almost as if the Founding Fathers were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants. The articles of impeachment were tailor made for a wannabe dictator like Trump..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
With great power, comes great responsibility.
"If you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-- Abraham Lincoln
The abuse of power is the basis for the impeachment of any president. Any crime or violation of the Constitution, committed by a president, is by definition, an abuse of power.
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The 14 characteristics of fascism:
• Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
• Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
• Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; socialists, terrorists, etc.
• Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
• Rampant 5exism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to ToAbortion is high, as ishomophobiaAnd antiGay legislation and national policy.
• Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
• Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
• Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
• Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
• Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
• Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
• Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
• Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
As you see, when it comes to fascism, Trump and the GOP check all the boxes.
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Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not at all what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing.
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The witnesses against Paxton were some of his closest friends, associates, employees and appointees. They were all Republicans. The vote in the Texas House to impeach was overwhelming. But Paxton has shown that he is willing to abuse his power and do favors for his friends and political allies, and that is something 16 Texas Senators value highly in their AG.
Paxton faced a laundry list of charges largely centered around using his office to do political and legal favors for donors, obstructing federal investigations, hiring unqualified outside counsel to carry out his wishes, and seeking to involve some of the top officials in his office in his schemes. Not only did some of his most loyal appointees and friends refuse to go along with his various corrupt schemes, they also reported Paxton to the FBI and testified against him in the impeachment trial.
The most salacious part of the charges was Paxton's long-term affair with a woman while portraying himself as a conservative, christian "family values" politician. What made that part of the case even more compelling was that Paxton's wife was a State Senator sitting on his impeachment jury. A House impeachment manager previously detailed how Paxton used his office to get his mistress a job so she could be closer to him, and had a contractor install a $20,000 granite countertop in his kitchen while being paid by Nate Paul, who was bribing Paxton for a variety of political and legal favors.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
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Back in December of 2012, Senate negotiations took a strange turn when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to filibuster a vote that HE had called for himself.
It started when McConnell demanded an up or down vote on a measure that would allow the president to have more authority in raising the debt ceiling.
McConnell was betting that some Democrats would vote against the move, "which would have allowed McConnell to portray President Obama's desire for such authority as something even Democrats opposed.
He also hoped it would show disunity among Democrats.
But Dems soon realized a way to turn the tables and decided to call McConnell's bluff. Harry Reid objected at first, but told McConnell he thought it might be a good idea. After Senate staff reviewed the proposal, Reid came back to the floor and proposed a straight up-or-down vote on the idea, which is what McConnell had demanded.
McConnell was forced to say no.🤣
McConnell was forced to turn around and say "I object," filibustering his own suggestion. True story.
"I don't know how the Republicans can say they're not abusing the filibuster after what we saw on the floor today," Sen Durbin told the Huffington Post at the time.
"It's somewhat comic, but sad as well, that we've reached the point where Sen. McConnell will not even accept a majority vote on his own measure."
McConnell introduced the bill to show that President Obama didn't have the votes for such a measure even in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Well on that day Majority Leader Harry Reid called his bluff, and McConnell folded
like a paper origami swan. 🤣
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Trump: "I have black guys counting my money. … I hate it. The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day. Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that."
So now Trump wants us to believe that he cares about racism and justice? So where was Trump's sense of justice for the Central P 5?
In June 2019, Trump said that he would not apologize for his harsh comments in 1989 about the 5 teenagers, who were wrongly convicted in NY.
The teenagers were exonerated by DNA evidence and a confession from the true perp in 2002, 13 years after they were vilified by prosecutors and in the press after being charged and convicted.
On May 1, 1989, as the case was headed to trial, Trump spent $85,000 placing a full-page ad in four newspapers, calling for the young men accused of the crime to receive capital punishment.
“BRING BACK THE D€@.TH PEN.ALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” the ad proclaimed in enormous capital letters. Below, in smaller text, Trump ranted, “I want to hate these murd.erers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
The 5 were later found innocent, only after serving 7 to 13 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. But just last year, Trump stated that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their ex€xecutions.
And how about justice for all the children he separated from their parents and had locked in cages....many of which or still missing and unaccounted for?
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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One lie does not undermine democracy, but 25,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully execute the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
Trump has done considerable damage to America's democratic institutions, and brought the nation to the brink of civil catastrophe, and the Republican Party has protected him the entire way. Trump has left America grievously wounded, and now he's asking for another chance to finish her off.
No one should ever get a second chance to destroy our Constitution, and our 244 year old democratic republic..
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Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem and upheaval. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, backwards,
grotesque, insecure, selfish, indecent, malevolent, paranoid, indifferent, sociopathic, inept, and deceitful."
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon..
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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CPAC was an annual pilgrimage for Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, mongerers of fear and hatred, xenophobes, wealthy welfare queens, tax cheats, hypocrites, fake Christians, fake patriots, and real traitors. It was truly, a diabolical and unholy mix of deplorables. So much so, I'm sure that CPAC smells like sulfur and rotting flesh.
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Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is.
There will be no guilt, no apologies, no shame, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath like Trump.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a narcissistic sociopath.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises..
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Bannon, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way...
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities..
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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The one thing I've always noticed about cowards and frauds like Trump, is that across the board, they are always loud, boastful, and full of fake bravado. This is usually nothing more than a self-defense mechanism to mask their cowardice, weaknesses, and lack of confidence in their own abilities. I've always known that most people can see through someone else's BS. And once they've figured out that you are not what you pretend to be, you've lost them forever.
As a Marine veteran, I never believed in leading in this manner. It was simply not in my nature to do so. I always led by example. I always set the standard for my men to follow. I never told them to do anything that I couldn't do myself. And I made sure that anything I ordered them to do, I could actually do better, and they knew it, because they had seen me do it. I gave them something to aspire to, and it worked. It worked because talk is cheap, and it always has been.
Semper Fi...
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
General John Kelly voted for Trump, and eventually became his White House Chief of Staff. And THEN, he got to know him.
“The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathet0ic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,”
--- Marine General Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff.
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In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction.
As far as I'm concerned, placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into a position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act.
The economic fate and national security of America should have never been placed in the hands of a mentally impaired, and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored...
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COVID-19: "Just so we're clear, I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance, and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, flag waving, or denial. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, maturity, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. Currently there is no vaccine for me, and that's the problem. I recognize no one's authority. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I may have lost some strength in other countries, but America is making me great again." 💪😆
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Several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017 — and Mueller is seeking to find out why. The tycoons were given “unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle”—and investigators in special council Robert Mueller’s probe are interested in their attendance at the parties.
Rick Gates was heavily involved in planning the inauguration, with a Yahoo News report in 2016calling him the “shadow chair” of the event. There have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it all went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised an astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear. The chair of GW Bush’s 2nd inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “Trump had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events that we had, and yet they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. Counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Back in June ABC News reported that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.
It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. Mueller is exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration. Sometime around March of this year, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
Blavatnik is a Soviet-born, UK-based billionaire who is a US citizen. He is also partnered with Vekselberg, in Russia’s aluminum industry. Together, they built the largest aluminum company in Russia by merging with Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Deripaska is also a player in Mueller's investigation — he employed Manafort, and Manafort tried to get in touch with him during 2016.
Alexander Mashkevitch, a Kazakh mining billionaire, was on the guest list for the “candlelight dinner,” and happens to have been in the Seychelles around the same time as Erik Prince.
And Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended Don Jr’s infamous Trump Tower meeting, were in town too — they attended an inauguration night party thrown by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who’s widely viewed as the biggest supporter of Putin’s regime in Congress.
Several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent over $100 million for what they got. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, it is Rick Gates, who is now working with Mueller's investigation. So whatever Rick Gates knows, Robert Mueller now knows too.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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By staying home on Dec 25 of 2018, Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn't visit military personnel on or before Christmas.
President Obama visited troops at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, in Kaneohe Bay, every Christmas he was in office, from 2009 to 2016.
President Obama traveled to Iraq in April 2009, just a few months after taking office.
Trump was in office for more than 2 years before he visited our troops in a war zone.
Trump also referred to our troop as losersAndSuckers.
In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “SuckersAndLosers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier, and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure man-baby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
The decision prompted harsh criticism on Twitter, with Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill, saying that Trump was dishonoring U.S. servicemen.
"TheyDiedWith their face to the foe, and that pathetic-Inadequate DJT couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen", Soames stated.
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COVID-19: "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear the first time, so let me try again. I am an equal opportunity virus. To me, all of your lives are equally worthless. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, flag waving, or denial. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, maturity, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. Trying to ignore me won't save you. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. You may not be interested in me, but I am obsessed with you. Currently there is no vaccine for me, and that's the problem. I recognize no one's authority. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I may have lost some strength in other countries, but thanks to Trump, America is making me great again." 💪😆
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Trump is essentially a 74 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He is basically a botched human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind. This is the crux of the problem when it comes to Trump's abject failure as a leader and president. Trump's problem is not so much that he refuses to his job as president. Trump's problem is that he's not even capable of doing his job. He is not equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is simply incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to.
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Like Trump, Whitaker is an abominable swamp creature, who has no business being the acting AG, the same way Trump has no business being president. Trump, Whitaker, and their ilk, do not believe in liberty, freedom, law and order, the Constitution, or our democratic institutions. Because those things pose an obstacle to their reprehensible greed and obsessions.
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In 1994, a Democrat led Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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Trump: "Today, I am officially terminating my relationship with reality. I don't like the way reality has treated me. It's been very unfair....so tremendously unfair."
Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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Instead of fighting the virus during this pandemic, Trump has been busy fighting Governors, Mayors, first responders, scientists, doctors, nurses, facts, science, common sense, and the constitution.
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Make no mistake, Trump is a sociopath. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blamed Dems for his government shutdown, even after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown.
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I think America needs to have a long conversation about Trump and his crime family's close business relationships with Jyna.
Trump and his crime family have many lucrative business deals with China. Trump's products are manufactured in China. And Ivanka has conveniently received more than 30 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. This is what happens when you have a president who from day one was compromised by greed and his own self-serving interests.
The Trumps are the landlord to one of China’s top state-owned banks, which has occupied the 20th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan since 2008. The bank’s lease is worth close to $2 million annually, according to industry estimates and a bank filing.
And despite Trump's rhetoric about American manufacturing, assembly-line workers in China still produce blouses, shoes and handbags for the clothing line created by Ivanka. Trump’s business interest in China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Trump business relationships with China are among the main examples plaintiffs in multiple court cases have cited in allegations that Trump is violating the Constitution’s “emoluments clause” by accepting payments from foreign governments.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf.
Days later, Trump announced his support for Chinese-backed telecommunications firm ZTE, a departure from his previously aggressive stance toward Chinese industry that prompted ethical experts to question whether the two actions were related. But of course they were related. This is Don the con we're talking about.
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The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!!
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President Obama visited our Troops overseas 7 times. That's not even counting the multiple times he visited our troops at military bases here in America during the holidays. Obama visited our troops in Iraq just 3 months after taking office. Traitor Trump waited TWO WHOLE YEARS before he visited our troops for the first time in Iraq. And that was only because he was pushed to do so. And even then, he turned that visit into a campaign rally for himself, and used our troops as political props.
I knew back in 2016 before the election that Trump had no respect for our military the moment he said he knew more about fighting wars than our Generals do. He basically claimed to know more about fighting wars than Generals like Grant, Patton, Washington, MacArthur, Eisenhower, as well as our current living Generals like Mattis. This preposterous claim came from a draft dodger who has NEVER served one day in the military.
It goes without saying, that ONLY a vindictive draft dodging traitor, who has nothing but contempt for the men and women in our military, would utter something as outrageous and insulting as that. That was all I needed to hear.
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“Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong,” Bowden wrote last year in Vanity Fair, recalling his time profiling Trump. “He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression.”
-- Mark Bowden, author of Blackhawk Down
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
What's so amazing to me is that he behaves like this at the age of 73. He's so detached from reality that he believes whatever he's saying is true, or at least ought to be true. I don't know if he's detached from reality, or if he simply rejects reality all together. Either way, it seems as if something went tragically wrong with him in his youth, and whatever that something was, it was never fixed or corrected. He seems to have every character flaw known to mankind.
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal" admits that the book was “full of falsehoods.” Schwartz said.
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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While the coronavirus highlighted Trump’s indifference, criminal negligence and incompetence, we may look back at his response to the current protests as the moment when his longtime flirtation with authoritarianism hardened into something more sinister. There’s no limit to what Trump will inflict to get reelected. His own sister called him a cruel human being.
He called protesters “ter.rorists,” and suggested they should be locked up for at least a decade to silence them, encouraged the use of force against American citizens and the free press, and promised to unleash the military on American citizens. These are the actions of authoritarian regimes in countries the world over.
In many countries around the world, it would be distressing, but not surprising to see the government use the fear of ter.rorism to demonize and encourage the use of force to squash these protest movements. Playing up violent acts committed by a small minority is right out of the authoritarian playbook.
It shifts focus away from Trump's many failures, and assigns blame to a bo.ogeyman. This step alone is critical for Trump. Trump is not to blame for the systemic racism and injustice, but addressing it is the LAST thing he would ever want to do. Why? Well for starters, he himself is a ra.cist.
Trump's actions have already caused immense pain to everyday Americans and the American way of life. They set a dangerous precedent. We are on a perilous path. We are now seeing how Trump and those around him who share is authoritarian impulses respond protests that resulted from genuine grievances. Consider how they will handle the protests that almost certainly will erupt if Trump tries to postpone the election, steal the election, suppress the vote in Democratic areas, or refuses to accept its result if he loses.
In a 2016 replay, Trump recently refused to say whether he would accept the election results if he loses. That was a clear threat, and a warning. Trump has identified his true enemies. and it is America's constitution, and us.
Trump doesn't even need Pence as a running mate. Trump's running mate is tyranny.
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"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true..Schwartz said that Trump had no ideology, because he doesn't believe in anything, except for the belief that he should prevail in the end, at any cost.
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
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The RICO statute was created specifically for criminals like Trump and his criminal organisation.
In order to be found guilty of violating the RICO statute, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) that an enterprise existed; (2) that the enterprise affected interstate commerce; (3) that the defendant was associated with or employed by the enterprise; (4) that the defendant engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity; and (5) that the defendant conducted or participated in the conduct of the enterprise through that pattern of racketeering activity through the commission of at least two acts of racketeering activity as set forth in the indictment.
A pattern of racketeering activity requires at least two acts of racketeering activity committed within ten years of each other.
The government must show that the racketeering predicates are related, and that they amount to or pose a threat of continued criminal activity. Racketeering predicates are related if they have the same or similar purposes, results, participants, victims, or methods of commission, or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated events.
Continuity refers either to a closed period of repeated conduct, or to past conduct that by its nature projects into the future with a threat of repetition.
As to the continuity requirement, the government may show that the racketeering acts found to have been committed pose a threat of continued racketeering activity by proving: (1) that the acts are part of a long-term association that exists for criminal purposes, or (2) that they are a regular way of conducting the defendant's ongoing legitimate business, or (3) that they are a regular way of conducting or participating in an ongoing and legitimate enterprise.
The government need not prove that the defendant agreed with every other conspirator, knew all of the other conspirators, or had full knowledge of all the details of the conspiracy. All that must be shown is: (1) that the defendant agreed to commit the substantive racketeering offense through agreeing to participate in two racketeering acts; (2) that he knew the general status of the conspiracy; and (3) that he knew the conspiracy extended beyond his individual role.
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Trump isn't draining the swamp, he's pardoning the swamp, for his own benefit.
After Blagojevich was pardoned by Trump and released from prison, he brought up Trump's so called passionate sense of justice for people of color. 😆 Really?
In June 2019, Trump said that he would not apologize for his harsh comments in 1989 about the Central Park Five, the five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted in NY.
More than a decade after the exoneration of the five teens, Trump indicated in an interview just last year, that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their executions.
The teenagers were exonerated by DNA evidence and a confession from the true perpetrator in 2002, 13 years after they were vilified by prosecutors and in the press after being charged and convicted.
On May 1, 1989, as the case was headed to trial, Trump spent $85,000 placing a full-page ad in four newspapers, calling for the young men accused of the crime to be executed.
“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” the ad proclaimed in enormous capital letters. Below, in smaller text, Trump ranted, “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
The Central Park Five have now been found innocent, after serving 7 to 13 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. But just last year, Trump stated that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their executions. So Trump doesn't feel that they were treated unfairly at all, even though they were innocent. Blagojevich however, is very much guilty as charged. But in Trump's diseased mind, Blagojevich is the victim, and was somehow treated unfairly, but the Central Park Five weren't. 😲
As Governor, Blagojevich tried to sell a seat in the Senate to the highest bidder, like hawking a stolen television off the back of a truck. Blagojevich was also convicted of extorting a children's hospital. Blagojevich tried to take back an $8 million contribution the state made to Children's Memorial Hospital, because the hospital's CEO would not make a campaign donation to the governor. Now let that sink in for a moment.
That sounds exactly like something that Trump would do. After all, Trump was caught operating a fake charity foundation for his own financial gain.
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Trump: "For the last four year, it has been a great honor, to serve myself, and only myself, from the greatest House in the world. I've had an amazing four years. I've grifted a lot, and I've lied a lot, I instigated an insurrection on our nation's Capitol, and I've left a trail of carnage and devastation that this country hasn't seen since the Civil War. Oh, and did I mention the tremendous grifting? So as you can see, I've accomplished alot. So now I'm headed down to Florida, and then, it's off to Moscow."
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Trump: "Look, There's nothing wrong with you saying that you recalculated, and you magically found 11,780 votes for me out of thin air. Because I won."🤣
Really? Well if he won, he wouldn't need 11,780 more votes, now would he?
That's like a basketball player losing a game by 20 points, and then going to the refs and saying "look, there's nothing wrong with saying you recalculated, and that you found 21 more points for me, because I won that game." 🤣
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The major difference between the flu and COVID-19 is that we have a vaccine for the flu, and the flu has been around for generations. The world is very familiar with the flu. COVID-19 is a stranger to the world, and we don't have a vaccine for it. Plus, the flu has been around for so long, that over the years, the human immune system has developed some defenses against it, so that it's not as fatal as it would be. But just imagine how many more people would die from the flu if we didn't have a vaccine for it, and if we were totally unfamiliar with it.
Trump is basically the best friend that any virus could ever hope to have. Trump has been aiding and abetting the virus by issuing lies and blatantly false information, like calling the coronavirus epidemic a hoax, and claiming that the coronavirus is no different than the flu, and claiming that the virus will just magical dissappear someday.
A virus is no different than human beings, or any other living organism, in that the main objective of any living organism is to live and survive. And since day one, Trump has been running cover for the coronavirus by essentially denying that it's real. It's like he's been trying to pardon the coronavirus. Now that's the type of friend a virus needs.
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Marine Sgt, Maj. Dan Daly is known for being one of the most decorated service members of all time. He was awarded not one, but TWO medals of honor.
He coined an expression that will forever live on in books, movies, and among troops He almost earned a third for his part in a counter-attack against the enemy in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood. Instead, Daly was given the Distinguished Service Cross and, later, the Navy Cross.
In June 1918 at the battle of Belleau Wood in WW1, the Marines were pinned down under heavy artillery barrage. At one point in the battle, the now 44 year old Daly, led his Marines in a counter-attack against machine gun emplacements with a battle cry that has become Marines lore “Come on, you sons of B——, do you want to live forever?!” In the course of that battle he was wounded three times. 1,800 Marines died in the battle of Belleau Wood.
These are the types of Americans that our current sitting president refers to as "losers."
And Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Since then we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said. Two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes in nothing, honors nothing, and respects nothing. As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
Semper Fi.
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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No need to worry, Trump began taking a blowtorch to the Republican party back in 2016.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party of today, isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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This is basically how the cult Scientology was started. 😄
Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession.
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when May 1 is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am not religious, but that won't stop me from going to places of worship. I'm nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. There is no cure for me, and that's the problem. No one wants Trump to prematurely open up the country, and end social distancing more than me. I don't recognize anyone's authority."
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Lauren, who ran on a "law-and-order" platform, has had several dust-ups with police. This jailbird has a rap sheet unusually long for a member of Congress.
And her track record of thumbing her nose at the law continued after she tussled with Capitol Police officers over her refusal to walk through newly installed House metal detectors.
Back in June 2015, Boebert was cuffed for disorderly conduct at a country music festival near Grand Junction, Colo., after police said she attempted to interfere in the arrest of minors busted for underage drinking and encouraged the accused to run off.
While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies’ reports. She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
“Lauren continued yelling and causing the underage drinkers to become unruly,” an arresting officer said in a statement at the time.
Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015.
A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs.
In September 2010, Boebert was arrested after a neighbor accused Boebert’s two pit bulls of attackingHer dog. Boebert pleaded guilty to a single count of “dog at large."
Boebert’s future husband, Jayson, also had brushes with law enforcement. In January 2004, he was arrested after exposing his himself to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 ) was also there. Jayson Boebert pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure, earning himself four days in jail and two years probation.
In February 2004, he was booked on a domestic violenceCharge, against Lauren. He “did unlawfully strike, shove or kick … and subjected her to physical contact,” a spokesman for the Garfield associate county court clerk stated.They had been dating at the time. Jayson Boebert ultimately served seven days in jail.
In May 2004. during an altercation with Jayson at his home, she scratched his face and chest and trashed his residence, according to a police report. She was slapped with third-degree assault, criminal mischief and underage drinking charges. A rep for the Garfield County Combined Court said they could not reveal any information about the case’s final disposition.
This is what "law & order" and conservative Christian values looks like. 🤣🤣
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also killed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
“SharedPsychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“MadnessForMillions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology.
When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusionsParanoia and a propensity forViolence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbookonViolence, I emphasize the symbolic nature ofViolence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat.
ViolenceHelps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
--Bandy Lee
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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On his show on May 19, Howard Stern asked the same question I've been asking myself since the 2016 campaign. Howard Stern, who has personally known Trunp for decades, questioned why people would vote for Trump, when in reality, Trump is disgusted by his biggest supporters. According to Stern, like himself, Trump isn’t cut out for running a government, and the Trump supporters are to blame for the country’s troubles. Stern went on to say that Trump would be “disgusted” by the MAGA crew..
Howard Stern: “The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most,” Stern said. “The people who are voting for Trump for the most part... he wouldn’t even let them in a f---ing hotel. He’d be disgusted by them. Go to Mar-a-Lago, see if there’s any people who look like you. I’m talking to you in the audience - the Trump voter who, you know, idolizes the guy. He despises you."
“I don’t hate Donald,” he continued. “I hate you for voting for him, for not having intelligence. For not being able to see what’s going on with the coronavirus, for not being able to see what the Justice Department is doing. I hate you, I don’t want you here.”
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Forget Iran, let's take a look at the vicious situation that's going here in America. We have a sitting President who has nothing but contempt for the Constitution, and who's openly betraying America.
Always follow the money!!!!
America vs Trump, who's side are you on? Make a decision. As a Marine veteran, I have never sworn allegiance to any man or individual, but I have sworn an oath to America, it's ideals, it's Constitution, and to the American people. And if any man runs afoul of America's Constitution and ideals, that man will instantly become my enemy, for now, and forevermore.
Semper Fi...
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Trump is just a compromised con-man who is still dreaming of building his beautiful Trump Tower in Moscow, and he is more than willing to sellout America and our troops in order to get it..
In a CNN interview, Rudy Giuliani said that Trump Tower Moscow “was a real estate project. There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it.” 😂
There's proof online that Trump signed it. The letter of intent with Trump signature has been available to every media outlet.
Trump himself signed the letter of intent, which is dated October 28, 2015 — five months after Trump launched his presidential campaign, and during a period in which he was lavishing praise on Putin.
Michael Cohen testified under oath to Congress that Trump signed the document.
The letter of intent, which was also signed by Andrey Rozov, owner of the Russian firm that would have partnered with the Trump criminal organization on the project, I.C. Expert Investment Co. — outlined a deal that would have given Trump’s company a $4 million upfront fee, no upfront costs, a percentage of the sales and control over marketing and design. The deal also included an opportunity to name the hotel spa after Trump’s muse, Ivanka.
During a news conference in Jan 2017, days before his inauguration, Trump told another blatant lie about his dealings in Russia.
Trump: “I have no dealings with Russia, I have no deals in Russia, I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we stayed away,” Trump said. “We could make deals in Russia very easily if we wanted to. I just don’t want to because I think that would be a conflict. So I have no loans, no dealings, and no current pending deals.” 😲
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Trump dreams of being a dictator like Putin and Kim Jung Un. And if were not for that stubborn constitution, the rule of law, and the free press, he would be living the dictator's dream right now.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with Russian crime bosses for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. Russian Oligarchs as well as the Russian mafya are both connected to Russian intelligence. It's virtually impossible to tell who is who. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that had to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafya and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Trump started laundering money for the Russian mob in 1984. In ‘92, the Russian mob had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mob.
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mob. Trump became close with Russian oligarchs and the Russian mob, who were in turn close to Putin. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin.
The Russians used Trump's apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s..
With Trump's constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. Public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all, Semion Mogilevich.
In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. Mogilevich’s greatest talent, the one that places him at the top of the Russian mob, is finding creative ways to cleanse dirty cash. According to the FBI, he has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world. In 1991, he made a move that led directly to Trump Tower. That year, the FBI says, Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring a fellow mob boss, Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. If Mogilevich was the brains, Ivankov was the enforcer..
The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. “He was like a ghost to the FBI,” one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years..
The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. “We were looking around, looking around, looking around,” said James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section. “We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.”
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If we take a step back, and remember a few of our past American Presidents, like Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower, JFK, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, FDR, Reagan, Carter, and Obama, it's easy to see that Trump has nothing in common with any of them. Traitor Trump does not possess any of the traits that made them decent men, and great leaders.
A few of our past presidents, whether you agree with them politically or not, came from poor or modest backgrounds: Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton, Truman, Carter, Obama, all came from nothing. Trump comes from a family of wealthy, self-serving, entitled cowards, who have never served or sacrificed anything for anyone. Cowardice, greed, hubris, and contempt for the law runs through Trump's veins. He despises everything that made some of our past presidents great leaders.
Trump despises John McCain, because McCain was everything that he's not. Trump will attack veterans, PoWs, our intelligence agencies, or anyone that swears and oath to serve a cause greater than themselves. He will attack them because the concept or idea, of serving someone, or something, other than himself is inconceivable.
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress is rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that the Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of the mess that I've caused. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president and a real leader. They're acting as if I actually care. But that's not who I am. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who ignored all the signs of my sociopathy. Blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They were both fully aware of exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. Now Lindsey is practically my golf caddie. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man, grifter and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Back in December of 2012, Senate negotiations took a strange turn when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to filibuster a vote that HE had called for himself.
It started when McConnell demanded an up or down vote on a measure that would allow the president to have more authority in raising the debt ceiling.
McConnell was betting that some Democrats would vote against the move, "which would have allowed McConnell to portray President Obama's desire for such authority as something even Democrats opposed.
He also hoped it would show disunity among Democrats.
But Dems soon realized a way to turn the tables and decided to call McConnell's bluff. Harry Reid objected at first, but told McConnell he thought it might be a good idea. After Senate staff reviewed the proposal, Reid came back to the floor and proposed a straight up-or-down vote on the idea, which is what McConnell had demanded.
McConnell was forced to say no.🤣
McConnell was forced to turn around and say "I object," filibustering his own suggestion. True story.
"I don't know how the Republicans can say they're not abusing the filibuster after what we saw on the floor today," Sen Durbin told the Huffington Post at the time.
"It's somewhat comic, but sad as well, that we've reached the point where Sen. McConnell will not even accept a majority vote on his own measure."
McConnell introduced the bill to show that President Obama didn't have the votes for such a measure even in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Well on that day Majority Leader Harry Reid called his bluff, and McConnell folded
like a paper origami swan. 🤣
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Trump: "Look, There's nothing wrong with you saying that you recalculated, and you magically found 11,780 votes for me out of thin air. Because I won."🤣
Really? Well if he won, he wouldn't need 11,780 more votes, now would he?
That's like a basketball player losing a game by 20 points, and then going to the refs and saying "look, there's nothing wrong with saying you recalculated, and that you found 21 more points for me, because I won that game." 🤣
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults like Trumpism.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
"TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“SharedPsychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“MadnessForMillions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology.
When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusionsParanoia and a propensity forViolence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbookonViolence, I emphasize the symbolic nature ofViolence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat.
ViolenceHelps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
--Bandy Lee
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Trumps presidency has been a vortex of lies, obfuscation, unbridled buffoonery, thievery, treason, chaos, nepotism, cronyism, narcissism, criminal negligence, skullduggery, moral turpitude, death, and sanctioned lawlessness. Simply put, it's been a menagerie of endless horrors.
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"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like he//, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
--Thomas Paine, The Crisis. December, 1776.
Honor our Constitution, and protect it at all cost.
Semper Fi.. 🇺🇸💙
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing, because Republicans aren't interested in governing, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about...
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The January 27 transcript of Trump's phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto had insisted publicly his country would not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full..
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“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are simple. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump. Democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia...
A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. We now know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers had or were at least aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself, Don Jr, Manafort, Flynn, Jared, Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone, just to name a few. But what's worse, is the fact that they all lied about these contacts. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover them up, every single one of them..
The question every American should be asking is why were there so many contacts(272) between Trump’s people and Russian officials and operatives, and why did Trump and his people lie about those contacts?
Helsinki July 16, 2018.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Make no mistake, Putin is America's enemy, and not because we want him to be, he's America's enemy because that's what he has chosen to be. Trump is a Russian asset, and not because that's what we want him to be, he's a Russian asset simply because that's what he has chosen to be. We should treat them both accordingly with the choices that they have made..
Semper Fi..
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History: "You people don't listen, and you sure as he// don't learn. How many more times must I repeat myself? How many more times must I show the world what happens when people allow despotic and authoritarian dictators like Adolf, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Putin, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, and now Trump to come to power. It NEVER ends well. It never has, and it never will. For the umpteenth time, If you want to destroy a democracy, and create a despotic dictatorship, this is how you do it."
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For someone who has no clue what he's talking about, Rand Paul speaks with a tremendous amount of confidence.😄
Rand Paul isn't even qualified to speak to Dr. Fauci without permission. Especially when you discover that Rand Paul isn't even a real doctor himself.
Rand Paul earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. After that, he completed his general surgery internship at Atlanta-based Georgia Baptist Medical Center, followed by a residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center. Despite his medical training, Paul does not hold a bachelor's degree. He attended Waco, Texas-based Baylor University to study biology and English, but left a few courses short of a diploma after he was accepted into medical school.
Rand Paul is not even a board-certified ophthalmologist, as he reportedly claimed. Paul's certification comes from a board that he created HIMSELF. 😂 But he hasn't been certified by an organization recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties for years.
The now-defunct board he created was not recognized by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, so Randy was not certified by a board recognized by the state since 2005, and since Paul's board dissolved in 2011, he has had no certification from an active body.
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So we shouldn't listen to the medical experts, instead we should listen to a man who thinks that knowing the difference between a person, woman, man, camera, and TV, makes him a genius? Is this some sort of sick joke?
Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done..
Why anyone would choose to listen to Trump instead of Dr. Fauci is beyond me. Call me Krazy, but if I want to know how to effectively deal with a pandemic outbreak, I'm calling Dr. Fauci. If I want to know how to bankrupt multiple casinos, or set up a fake university and charity foundation, or lie like it's my job, or launder money with the Russians, then I'm calling Trump, and nobody but Trump...
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Marine Sgt, Maj. Dan Daly is known for being one of the most decorated service members of all time. He was awarded not one, but TWO medals of honor.
He coined an expression that will forever live on in books, movies, and among troops He almost earned a third for his part in a counter-attack against the enemy in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood. Instead, Daly was given the Distinguished Service Cross and, later, the Navy Cross.
In June 1918 at the battle of Belleau Wood in WW1, the Marines were pinned down under heavy artillery barrage. At one point in the battle, the now 44 year old Daly, led his Marines in a counter-attack against machine gun emplacements with a battle cry that has become Marines lore “Come on, you sons of B——, do you want to live forever?!” In the course of that battle he was wounded three times. 1,800 Marines died in the battle of Belleau Wood.
These are the types of Americans that our current sitting president refers to as "losers."
And Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Since then we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said. Two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes in nothing, honors nothing, and respects nothing. As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
Semper Fi.
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NEVER FORGET...that it didn't have to be this way.
Trump's presidency has been far worse than the tragedy of 9/11. 200 thousand American lives lost equates to about 66 9/11s.
And the worst part of It all, is that it was preventable, not just in hindsight, but in foresight as well.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Trump clearly has the criminal mind of a dictator. And his supporters are flirting with authoritarianism.
"Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one."
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Lindsey Graham is lying through his teeth.
Dems NEVER wanted a ridiculous wall. Dems have voted to increase funding for border security. Obama increased the funding for border security, and he increased the size of the Border Patrol. Now Dems are offering more money for improvements in border security, like surveillance, cameras, drones, sensors, barriers, and certain sections of walls. These are all practical and sensible improvements, that have proven to work. But Dems will NEVER provide funding for Trump's ridiculous wall.
Sorry Traitor Trump, but the American people will not pay for a lie you told during the campaign. Trump actually wants the American people to bail him out by paying for his ridiculous wall. I still remember reading the transcript of the phone conversation Trump had with the President of Mexico. Trump was literally begging him to do him a big favor, and announce to the media that Mexico would pay for the wall.😂😂. The president of Mexico laughed, and basically said "no way José." 😂😂😂
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So last year we learned that on Don the Con's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to his failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland, for the sole purpose of lining his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that DJT wanted to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
Now we've recently learned that DJT asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland..
This is a level of corruption that we have never seen before, or even imagined. Its naked, gratuitous, egregious and overt corruption on steroids. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, for Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history. T.rump's face belongs on the Mt Rushmore of corruption....all by itself. At this point, they should just wrap the entire White House with yellow police tape, and declare the whole thing a crime scene.
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"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like he//, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
--Thomas Paine, The Crisis. December, 1776.
Honor our Constitution, and protect it at all cost.
Semper Fi.. 🇺🇸💙
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In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal"
In 1989, Trump raised $365 million to purchase the Eastern Shuttle, which provided business travelers with quick flights between NY, Boston, and DC. Within 18 months, the airline lost over $125 million.
In August 1989, just two months after Trump launched his Trump Shuttle Airline, one of his Boeing 727s made a crash landing at Boston’s Airport. The passenger jet had malfunctioning nose gear that failed to deploy. The nose and underbelly of the plane scraped and dragged along the entire length of the runaway upon landing with sparks flying. The pilots had to perform an emergency dumping of fuel to avoid a greater catastrophe. It's all on video.
One of the passengers on that flight — who recalls sliding out the aircraft and into a pile of foam — was Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist who worked for Jeb Bush and his super PAC to try to defeat Trump.
“Afterward,” Murphy said, “all I got was a form letter and a drink coupon.”
And when Trump was asked by reporters about the crash landing in Boston, he said, and I quote: “It was the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen." 😲
This is the type of dangerously irresponsible sociopath America dealt with for 4 years.
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.
Economic inequality, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, is best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them...
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
But isn't conservatism about freedom? Of course everyone wants freedom, and so conservatism has no choice but to promise freedom to its subjects. In reality conservatism has meant complicated things by "freedom", and the reality of conservatism in practice, has scarcely corresponded even to the contorted definitions in conservative texts.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is..
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of state terror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
For thousands of years, conservatism was universally understood as being in opposition to democracy. Having lost much of its ability to attack democracy openly, conservatism has tried in recent years to redefine the word "democracy" while engaging in deception to make the substance of democracy unthinkable.
Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.
Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.
Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.
The main idea of public relations is the distinction between "messages" and "facts". Messages are the things you want people to believe. A message should be vague enough that it is difficult to refute by rational means.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact trying to take it from you. January 6 ring a bell? Trump tried to steal an election, by falsely claiming it was being stolen from him.
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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In January, Trump said that the virus wouldn’t spread in the US (because of his faith in magic) even while experts were warning otherwise.
In February, Trump said — without zero evidence — that the virus would just go away in April without any measures taken. Apparently this was a hunch from his tremendous bowels.
And in March, he downplayed how bad the virus itself was for people who contracted it, comparing it to the flu and suggesting that strict social distancing measures were unnecessary.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine,” Trump said in an interview.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April,” Trump said at a White House event.
Feb. 19: “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said in an interview.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” Trump tweeted.
Feb. 26: “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” Trump White House news conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” Trump White House news conference.
Feb. 28: “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. This is their new hoax,” Trump said at a campaign rally.
March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Trump tweeted.
March 24: “We’ve never closed down the country for the flu. So you say to yourself, ‘What is this all about?’ ” Trump said at the Fox News town hall, again wrongly comparing COVID-19 to the flu.
Now Trump wants you to believe that he knew it was a pandemic before anyone else.
Recently on March 31, Trump said that he knew all along that the coronavirus was very serious, and that thousands of Americans could die from it.
Trump: “I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, I knew it could be maybe good." 😲
I'm sorry, but what does that even mean?!?!
Is he suggesting that there are good and bad pandemics on "both sides"?
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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When it comes to Trump, I'll take the word of Trump's own sister, who has known him his entire life? She knows him better, and longer, than anyone alive today. And if she wouldn't support him as president, why on earth should anyone else?
In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His god-d tweets and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s***. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how ”She didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
Only a f○○l would ignore what she says about Trump.
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Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived.
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
The creation of the U.S. Constitution depended upon the knowledge, experience, and dedication of its framers, just as its endurance depends upon the knowledge and experience of each succeeding generation of Americans. For this reason, it is important for us to learn and understand the governing principles of our nation, set forth in the Constitution.
Our Constitution vs Project 2025. Pick a side. 🇺🇸
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Trump sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of Trump's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day.
The truth of the matter is, if Trump had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with Trump's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. Trump had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card Trump had left, and he played it.
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Trump lies like his very life depends on it. What's worse, you can tell that he literally enjoys lying to the country, or to whomever he's talking to at the time. I think he actually gets off on it. Just last week, he claimed that the Saudi weapons deal would create 400,000 jobs. That number gradually increased to 500, 600, and all the way up to 1 million jobs. His original number of 400,000 jobs was always a lie. He then lied his way up to 1 million jobs. Go big, or go home I guess. The actual true numbers are around 80,000 jobs. Here are a few more lies Trump has told.
Trump said he’d clean the Washington swamp. His cultists bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. His cultists bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. His cultists bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
Trump said he would be working so much that he wouldn't have time to play golf. His cultists bought it. Trump has now played golf more than any other president before him. Trump has played golf 68 times to date, at a cost of at least 79 million dollars to the taxpayers. compared to Obama's 37 times during the same period. Trump actually golfs more now, than he did before he became president.
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learnedDespicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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As a Marine veteran, it warms my heart to know that there are still some true American patriots out there who are still willing to resist, still willing to stand-up and speak truth to power. Patriots who still believe in putting country first. Patriots who still believe in serving a cause greater than themselves. Patriots like Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Lt.Col. Vindman, David Holmes, Jennifer Williams, and others. To all of these patriots, and others out there like them, I salute you.
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In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.”
The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement.
Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
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I think it's safe to say that Donald is guilty of election fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, voter fraud, charity fraud, campaign finance fraud, hair fraud, tan fraud, fraud-fraud.....basically all of the frauds. 😄
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Trump lives by the rules of the coward's playbook.
Rule 1. Take credit for everything, but responsibility for nothing. Always blame others for acts that you have clearly committed, and take credit for positive things that you had absolutely nothing to do with.
Rule 2. Never tell the truth, when a lie will do just fine. Lie about all things, great and small.
Rule 3. Take advantage of any crisis, and use them as an excuse to unleash your true authoritarian nature.
Rule 4. Become the victim, and the " strongman." You must master the art of playing the poor victim, juxtaposed with playing the "strongman" that always wins.
Rule 5. Never put anyone or anything before yourself, unless you're physically using that person or thing as a shield.
Rule 6. Betrayal is a good thing.
Rule 7. Loyalty is a one way street that runs from everyone else straight to you.
Rule 8. When in doubt, blame Obama.
Rule 9. In any situation, always ask yourself "what would a man of integrity do? What would a man with intestinal fortitude do? What would a man of physical and moral courage do?" And then do the exact opposite.
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Our Constitution vs Project 2025. Pick a side.
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived.
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
The creation of the U.S. Constitution depended upon the knowledge, experience, and dedication of its framers, just as its endurance depends upon the knowledge and experience of each succeeding generation of Americans. For this reason, it is important for us to learn and understand the governing principles of our nation, set forth in the Constitution.
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Trump has been encouraging violence since he was on the campaign trail in 2016. There is proof of him giving a full throated green light for his cult followers to engage in violent acts.
MARCH 2016:
" Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said " You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
FEBRUARY 2016:
" Knock the krap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees." Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
This is the same man that used brute force against peaceful protesting American citizens, just so he could stage a 5 minute photo-op. He treats Putin like he's a fellow comrade, and citizen, and he treats our troops, and the American people, like we're the enemy. Let that sink in for a moment...
Has anyone ever heard of a president behaving in such a manner? Has anyone ever heard of a president inciting Americans to engage in violence against other Americans?
Let's face it, America today, is leaderless. In fact, America has been leaderless since Trump was sworn into office. President Obama was America's last president. What we have now, is a mentally impaired Russian asset, masquerading as president. And he's obsessed with only two things: lining his pockets with millions of taxpayer dollars, and staying out of prison.
In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction. Placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into any position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act. Nothing good has ever resulted from anything that Trump has ever touched or been involved with. He is void of any and all goodwill or human decency. He is a purely toxic, insidious and malevolent being, who constitutes a malignant affliction on this country.
The economic fate and national security of America should have never been placed in the hands of a mentally impaired, and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored
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"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like he//, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
--Thomas Paine, The Crisis. December, 1776.
Honor our Constitution, and protect it at all cost.
Semper Fi.. 🇺🇸💙
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Trump is playing a dangerous game with our oceans and coastal communities. By massively expanding offshore oil drilling while simultaneously rolling back drilling-safety standards put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Trump is making more major oil spills inevitable.
If a spill happens in the Arctic Ocean — where Trump is trying to invite oil companies into federal waters that were protected by President Obama — treacherous conditions would make cleanup impossible. And wherever the next big oil spill happens, wildlife will die and coastal communities will suffer.
The Gulf of Mexico and its coastline still haven’t recovered from 2010’s Deepwater Horizon blowout, which killed 11 workers, and thousands of marine animals as it gushed more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf for almost three months. The country’s worst environmental disaster clearly called for new regulations to prevent it from happening again. Trump is currently rolling back those safety regulations in his reckless pursuit of so-called “energy dominance.” Just as he pretends climate change isn’t real.
After well-blowout prevention devices suffered catastrophic failures on Deepwater Horizon, Obama called for 3rd party inspections of safety equipment. It was a measured, reasonable response to such an epic industry failure. In April Trump signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to “reconsider” several oil rig safety regulations. Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, and the same Zinke that is currently under multiple investigations of ethics violations, is in charge of the rolling back the safety regulations.
Calls for reversing the Obama-era regulations is part of Trump’s efforts to ease restrictions on fossil fuel companies and generate more domestic energy production. (GREED)
Doing so, the agency asserted, will reduce “unnecessary burdens” on the energy industry and save the industry $228 million over 10 years.(GREED)
The Obama-era rules, written in 2016, tightened controls on blowout preventers, devices that are intended to stop explosions in undersea oil and gas wells, and called for rig operators to have third parties certify that the safety devices worked under extreme conditions. In the Deepwater Horizon spill, a supposedly fail-safe blowout preventer failed after a section of drill pipe buckled.
Environmental groups warned that reversing the safety measures would make the United States vulnerable to another such disaster.
“Rolling back drilling safety standards while expanding offshore leasing is a recipe for disaster,” Miyoko Sakashita, director of the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “By tossing aside the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Trump is putting our coasts and wildlife at risk of more deadly oil spills. Reversing offshore safety rules isn’t just deregulation, it’s willful ignorance.”
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In the newly released audio, Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry is critical about Donald, saying she did his homework for him and that he is, among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His gawd@mned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s*t. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." 😂 “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
So Putin says that Russia's security is non-negotiable. But what about Ukraine's security? What about the freedom of the Ukrainian people. Do they not have the right to live in peace, security and freedom?
This is an evil that Europe has not witnessed since WW2.
Both Russia and Belarus should be economically disconnected from the rest of the world, indefinitely.
To the Ukrainian people, I sayFIGHT!!
And make Russia pay dearly for it's barbarism.
Long live Ukraine!!! 🇺🇦 🇺🇲
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Everyone has that person in their life who "always plays the victim." When something goes wrong it's "never their fault."
They're the type of person who does something wrong then tries to paint you as being the real problem for calling them out. Because their bad deed was just them making things even.
These people can be impossible to deal with because they're never wrong. This mentality also stunts their developmental growth, because when you're never wrong, you don't have to change a thing.
According to research, the victim mentality or, as they call it, "Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood," or TIV, is a stable construct that people can carry with them throughout their lives.
It's defined as "an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships." That's why your friend with the victim mentality always plays the victim and everything that happens in the world is an affront to them.
Researchers say there are four main components to TIV:
Need for recognition – whereby individuals have a high level of need for their victimization to be seen and recognized by others
Moral elitism – seeing oneself as morally pure or "immaculate," and seeing those who oppose, criticize or "victimize" oneself as completely and totally immoral and unjust
Lack of empathy – having little empathy or concern for the suffering of others, because your own victimhood is so much greater than the suffering of others. Also includes an entitlement to act selfishly or harmfully towards others, without recognizing their pain or experience
Rumination – a strong tendency to brood and remain extremely fixated on times, ways, and relationships where they experienced victimization and being taken advantage of.
A person who has TIV may be very vocal about their victim status whether it's caused by societal issues, a personal problem, or something they've fabricated. They believe their status affords them moral superiority to others and allows them to behave in ways that are unassailable.
People with TIV are also more likely to try to seek revenge on those who've aggrieved them.
This type of person is defined by, and clings to, their perceived trauma and weaponizes it against others. Scott Kauffman of Scientific American says that people can develop TIV without even "experiencing severe trauma or victimization."
Kauffman believes that people who have experienced trauma are capable of using it for unhealthy self-aggrandizement.
"HI, my name is Donald Trump, but you can call me victim. Many people are saying this." 🤣😅
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Where do I even start with this one:
Mocking a physically disabled reporter? Bragging about groping women by their private parts? Calling an entire nationality of people “£apists”? Rating women on a scale from 1–10 of how 5exy they are? Saying that women who get 5exually assaulted or harassed in the workplace are the ones who need to find a new job? Calling for the imprisonment of his political opponents?
Trump has cheated thousands of people whom he hired in the past for jobs, then simply told them, “I’m not paying you. Sue me." He ran a fake charity foundation, and a fake University, to which he had to pay a $25,000,000 settlement to the people he scammed (G.reed). He has cheated on all his wives, (L.ust); spends the vast majority of his time locked in his room watching TV and trolling twitter, instead of actually working (S.loth); binges on nothing but fast-food and soda (G.luttony); publicly belittles his own staff and former associates, and tries to destroy anyone who criticizes him (Wrath); hates how great patriots like John McCain and Obama are beloved by America and tries to tear them down out of jealousy (Envy); He is a raging narcissist who speaks of himself in the third person, boasts about his minor achievements with lavish parties and press opportunities, holds rallies only for the purpose of feeding his own ego, and repeatedly claims, “Nobody can do it but me! Nobody knows more than me! No one can solve our problems but me!” Trump said he's never asked God for forgiveness, because he's never done anything wrong (Pride).
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity, like his idol Pooopin.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "patriots."
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Trump's own sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't)
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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If Trump is a stable genius, then I'm Frodo Baggins of the Shire, and I've got a ring to sell.
Trump Dec 7, 2019:
“People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water. We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where it rushes out to sea because you could never handle it. And you don’t get any water. You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. You can’t wash your hands practically, there’s so little water comes out of the faucet” and then you “end up using the same amount of water.”
😂😄😂😅
On Dec 23, at turning point USA, Trump gave what could be considered his most stupefying soliloquy to date.
“I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. (Don Quixote disagrees) I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?"
--Trump
Just let all of that sink in for a moment. Trump really enjoys giving the world little peeks inside of his diseased riddled mind. I dare any Trump cultist to try and explain to me exactly what it was that Trump was trying to say, or what salient point he was trying to make. I dare you....
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In Trump's diseased mind, he actually believes that thousands of Americans are willing, EVEN HAPPY, to go without pay for months, or even years, JUST FOR HIM. Trump's Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was right when he said that Trump is a terrible human being.
Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like a true sociopath. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath.
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.
The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.
Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from fox, the current president, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy. It should be reported that these traitors are all willing partners in Russia's disinformation campaign on America. And they should be treated as a threat to America, because that's exactly they are. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America.
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A descendant of Robert E. Lee stepped down as pastor of a small NC church after his comments supporting racial justice sparked a backlash.
The general's distant nephew, the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, issued a statement saying he resigned from Bethany United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem after the congregation decided to put his tenure to a vote.
Some church members were not comfortable with Lee’s remarks during the MTV awards when he introduced the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville while protesting against white supremacy.
“We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism, and hate,” he said on the music network. “As a pastor, it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America's original sin.”
Although Lee issued an apology to church members for causing them pain with his remarks, he said he continues to “strongly support” removal of monuments to his ancestor and other Confederates...
To me, this is proof that some Christians only talk the talk. But there are some who actually walk the walk like this pastor. Kudos to you Reverend Lee.
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Trump has a PhD in unbridled buffoonery.
In 2005, Timothy O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, had published a book called “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.” In the book, O’Brien cited people who questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people who estimated that the figure was between $150 million and $250 million.
Trump sued. He later told The Post that he intended to hurt O’Brien, whom he called a “lowlifeSleazebag.”
By filing suit, Trump hadn’t just opened himself up to questioning — he had opened a door into the opaque and secretive company he ran.
The lawsuit had given O’Brien's attorneys the power to request that Trump turn over internal company documents, and they used it. They arrived at the deposition having already identified where Trump’s public statements hadn’t matched the private truth.
Trump may not have realized it yet, but he had walked into a trap.
Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.
For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.
The lawyers confronted Trump with his own past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been patently false or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump was vulnerable — cornered, sweating, unprepared, and under oath.
Thirty times, they caught him.
Trump had lied about sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.
That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s lies were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind.
“A very clear and visible side effect of my lawyers’ questioning of Trump is that he was revealed as a routine and habitual fabulist,” said Timothy O’Brien.
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President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it, because he doesn't believe in science or facts, so he didn't understand it..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018..
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump..
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing.
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people or ter rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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Trump said he didn't have an affair with Stormy Daniels. We now know that was a lie. He said he didn't pay her off with hush money. We now know that was a lie. He said he didn't know what Rudy was doing in Ukraine. We now know that was a lie.
O'Reilly: " but what was Rudy Giuliani doing in Ukraine on your behalf?"
Trump: "Well, you have to ask that to Rudy. But Rudy, I don't, I don't even know. I know he was going to go to Ukraine, and I think, he canceled a trip. But, you know, Rudy has other clients other than me. I'm one person --"
O'Reilly: So, you didn't direct him to go there on your behalf?"
Trump: No, but -- but you have to understand, Rudy is a great corruption fighter. He's one of the greatest in the last 50 years."
O'Reilly: So, you didn't direct him to go to Ukraine to do anything or put any heat on them?"
Trump: "No, I didn't direct him but he's a warrior, Rudy's a warrior. Rudy went, he possibly saw something. But you have to understand, Rudy has other people that he represents."
Trump said he didn't know Lev Parnas. We now know that was a massive lie. He said he didn't bribe Ukraine with 400 million in taxpayer dollars. We now know that was a flat out lie.
In 2020, let's make FACTS great again!!! Lets Make the TRUTH great again!!!
Vote 💙
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Trump tricks his kool-aid guzzling cult into believing that he's going to be tough on China, he then turns around and drops to his knees at President Xi's feet, sobbing, blubbering, groveling, and pleading with him to do whatever he can to help him get reelected. 😂
This is the same so called tuff guy that used brute force on peaceful protesting American citizens just so he could have a 5 minute photo op. Utterly disgusting
Make no mistake, most republicans on Capitol Hill are fully aware of exactly who and what Trump is. They know that Trump is an existential threat to America, to our Constitution, and to our democratic institutions. Trump is a criminal minded, narcissistic sociopath who never puts anyone or anything before himself, unless he's physically using that person or thing as a shield. What most of us would call treason or betrayal, Trump calls it " looking out for the only thing that matters" himself.
Trump has always been a self-absorbed extreme narcissist. Every decision Trump has ever made in his entire life, before and and since he became president, has been based solely on his own best interests. Ego rules supremely in a narcissist’s life. And What motivates Trump is whatever fuels his ego, things like power, control, adulations, praises, cruelty to others, and personal monetary gain.
Another way that an extreme narcissist like Trump energizes his ego is through playing the role of the victim. The goal of Trump's deception is to make you believe that he suffers more than you, or anyone for that matter.
Trump is incredibly adept at the game of manipulation, especially when it comes to his gullible and cultish base. So instead of taking responsibility for his actions, and the consequences that results from them, he tries to make others feel responsible for his plight. Because In the eyes of an extreme narcissist like Trump, their actions and behavior are always right and totally justified.
Trump and republicans continue to rage against the Constitution in their ongoing war with our democratic republic. They have made it abundantly clear that we must vote them out of office in order for our democracy to survive.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels..
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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The men and women who serve within the FBI take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. They serve our country the same as our men and women in the military do. And many within the FBI put their lives on the line in service to this country. To watch Trump, Barr, and other republicans, trying to tear down the premier agency tasked with defending America from foreign and domestic threats is reprehensible, jaw-dropping and appalling. What's worse, is that they are doing it for the sole purpose of trying to save Trump, a morally bankrupt, unpatriotic, undeserving con-man and criminal. This....is simply unforgivable.
Semper Fi...
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Hannity: "What are your top priority items if you were to get a 2nd term?"
Trump: "That's a tremendously great and powerfully strong question Sean. Well, as you know, I still have high hopes of getting a deal for that tower in Moscow that I've always dreamed of. I'm also going to work on getting rid of that stupid emoluments clause in the Constitution. You have no idea how hard it is for me and my family to grift with that emoluments clause aways getting in the way. And of course I plan on golfing a lot more. I barely got a chance to do any golfing during my 1st term. Can you believe it? And last but not least, I am determined to lockup any and everyone who has ever mocked me, or made me feel inadequate, impotent, and insecure, like Hillary, Obama, Melania, Stormy Daniels, and umbrellas."
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Trump and republicans in the Senate wouldn't have a problem with Bolton, Rudy, Mulvaney, or John Eisenberg testifying if Trump was actually innocent. The problem is he's not innocent. He's guilty as charged, and they know it.
The American people demand to hear from Rudy, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Bolton, and the White House lawyer John Eisenberg, who hid the full transcript of Trump's phone call on the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Eisenberg hid the full transcript after Lt.Col. Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid.
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House.
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing. While in the real world, America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 15k deaths. Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world. I sh¡t thee nay.
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"From the start, authoritarians stand out from other kinds of politicians by appealing to negative experiences and emotions. They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation’s saviors. Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears, they present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety
fromRacial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies."
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present
"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people orTer rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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It's very important that we all remember the unwarranted outrage and criticism Republicans leveled on President Obama and his response to the Ebola virus outbreak. And Trump of all people, even tweeted that Obama should apologize to the American people, and resign. And this was after only 11 reported Ebola cases and 2 deaths in America.
Republican Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the ebola outbreak resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there..
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
Trump tweet, 10/23/14
"If this doctor, who is reckless flew into New York from West Africa has Ebola, then Obama should apologize to the American people & resign."
Today there have been more than 6.42 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US, and 195K deaths.
So after 195k coronavirus deaths, what should Trump do?
Well lets see, not only should he resign, he should first drop to his knees and apologize to America for the needless loss of so many American lives. He should then get on his knees, and apologize to Obama, and beg him for forgiveness. He should then turn himself into authorities and admit to his criminal negligence, dereliction duty, and to violating his oath of office.
"What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by Trump in 2018.
Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
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Chris Christie volunteered himself for the job as head of Trump's presidential transition team. But when he went to see Trump about it, Trump said he didn’t want a presidential transition team. Why did anyone need to plan anything before he actually became president? It’s legally required, said Christie. Trump asked where the money was going to come from to pay for the transition team. Christie explained that Trump could either pay for it himself or take it out of campaign funds. Trump didn’t want to pay for it himself. He didn’t want to take it out of campaign funds, either, but he agreed, grudgingly, that Christie should go ahead and raise a separate fund to pay for his transition team. “But not too much!” he said.
And so Christie set out to prepare for the unlikely event that Trump would one day be elected president of the United States. At the end of each week, Christie handed over binders, with lists of names of people who might do the jobs well, The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trump’s very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon, the chief executive of his campaign, from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my effing money! What the eff is this?
Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my effing money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain to Trump federal law. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: Phuck the law. I don’t give a phuck about the law. I want my phucking money. Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn’t have both his money and a transition. Shut it down, said Trump. Shut down the transition. Bannon however finally convinced Trump that he needed to have a transition team.
With that, Christie went back to preparing for a Trump administration. He tried to stay out of the news, but that proved difficult. From time to time, Trump would see something in the paper about Christie’s fundraising and become upset all over again. The money that people donated to his campaign Trump considered, effectively, his own. He thought the planning and forethought pointless. At one point he turned to Christie and said: “Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves.”
From The Guardian: The Long Read, ‘This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team
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"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people or ter rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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Trivia question: "Who goes to Moscow on the 4th of July to celebrate America's Day of Independence?
Republicans, that's who.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Claiming it was innocent is absurd, especially when the entire world watched the chaos and violence unfold on live TV.
"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Trump insults our Generals, veterans, PoWs, and Gold Star family members, he refuses to visit Arlington National Cemetery on veterans day, he still hasn't visited our troops since taking office, he flies to Saudi Arabia to do the sword dance with the Saudi Royals, but doesn't take the time to visit our troops right next door in Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, and Jordan. But he did take the time to visit Kim Jung Un in Singapore and salute a North Korean general. Let all of that sink in for a moment.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. I don't even believe in science for crying out loud. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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Trump loves to brag about how he only pickes the very best people. Trump also said the same thing about the people he handpicked for Trump University. He bragged that he hand-picked only the best to teach at Trump University.
Dozen of those he picked to work for Trump University had checkered pasts, including serious financial problems and even convictions for cocaine trafficking and indecent acts with a child. The lawsuit against Trump found that he and his fake real-estate seminars were a massive fraud, designed to "upsell" students into buying course packages costing as much as $35,000. Many of those hired to teach did not have college degrees and were not licensed to broker real estate. At least four had felony convictions.
Ron P. Broussard Jr. was hired to the Trump University staff in 2007, even though he was never licensed as a real estate agent or broker, Broussard was listed as "staff" or "coordinator" for at least five Trump seminars titled "Fast Track to Foreclosure." Records show the former Army sergeant was convicted at court-martial in 1994 for indecent acts with a minor. The victim was an 8 year old daughter of a fellow soldier. He served five years in the military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. He's currently a registered sexoffender.
Timothy C. Gorsline taught at least eight Trump University seminars in 2008 He pleaded no contest a decade earlier to felony cocaine possession, according to an electronic database of Florida court records. Copies of Gorsline's resume at Trump University showed that when asked if he had been convicted of a felony, Gorsline marked an X indicating "Yes."
Damian D. Pell, who helped teach at least 23 Trump University seminars from 2008 to 2010, pleaded guilty in Florida to a felony charge of trafficking cocaine. Court and arrest records show that Pell's car was pulled over by Sheriff's deputies in June 1999. Authorities recovered 62 grams of powder cocaine from his car, and 1,200 grams in a subsequent search of his home — a haul with a street value in excess of $154,000.
Spencer J. Raffel, who staffed a Trump University event in 2008, had a felony conviction in FL for grand theft, according to court records. He was sentenced to serve three years of probation in 1989. Court records also showed that Raffel, 52, had a multi-decade history of failing to pay debts, including defaulting on real estate loans, during the same period he was helping teach students how to profit from properties in foreclosure.😲
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued in 2013, alleging that the university was a "fraud from beginning to end," geared toward pressuring students into buying ever more expensive seminars, course materials and mentoring services of little educational value. Regulators say Trump University staff often targeted senior citizens or those already in dire financial straits, encouraging them to max out their credit cards to pay for classes they couldn't afford.
In his 2005 video, Trump said his hand-picked instructors would give his students a better education than top-level university business schools.
"Honestly, if you don't learn from them, you don't learn from me. If you don't learn from the people we're going to be putting forward — these are all people that are hand-picked by me — then you're not going to make it in terms of the world of success," Trump said.
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Just imagine if Hillary had thrown a hissy fit in 2016, and tried to declare herself the winner of the election. She could have asked for a recount in Michigan, which she lost by 13,080 votes, and Wisconsin, which she lost by 27,257 votes, but she didn't. Like an adult, who believes in our democracy and our Constitution, she called Trump and congratulated him, and conceded the victory to him. But no one ever expected a full grown baby like Trump to do the adult thing, the right thing, the democratic thing.
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For the last four straight years, Trump, along with his surrogates, have adopted and used the most fiendish propaganda tactics on his followers. They have told so many lies, that Trump’s followers can no longer distinguish truth from fiction.
Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition, and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
-- Joseph Goebbels
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth..
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set you free...
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There's a reason why most Americans are perplexed and aghast over Trump's behavior.
The mistake that many people are making, is in viewing Trump as if he's a "President". Trump is not a President in any sense of the word. Trump is only a president on paper. Trump IS, what he's always been. He is a sociopath, and a narcissist, who is the head of a criminal organization, that specializes in fraud, ponzi schemes, tax evasion, money laundering, and real estate scams. And it's about time that everyone realizes that. Once you accept the realization of who and what Trump really is, his actions and behavior starts making perfect sense.
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Keep in mind, the Saudis have put a ton of money into Trump and Jared's pockets. Trump is a man of no beliefs, ideals, or convictions, and he has the moral compass of a weather vane, and Saudis bought Trump a long time ago. Can't really blame the Saudis though, especially when Trump put himself on sale, with a 2 for 1 special ( Trump &Jared) Who could pass up a deal like that?
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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The January 27 phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto has insisted publicly his country will not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full.
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Most Americans rightfully predicted that Trump's presidency was going to be one of the worst in modern history, but I don't think anyone ever imagined it would be an unmitigated catastrophe of this magnitude. And to add insult to injury, Trump announced that he's not responsible for anything that has happened. I'm assuming it's because deep down, he only considers himself to be a "pretend president." Trump has taken many things in life, but responsibility has never been one of them. But what he will do, is blame others for his clear and obvious failures.
Because of Trump, America has had the worst response to the pandemic than any country in the world. So far, more than 140 thousand Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. And many of those lives were needlessly lost due to Trump's indifference, gross incompetence, lack of leadership, criminal negligence, and dereliction of duty. When America needed sound leadership the most, we had a draft dodging president who was, and still is, AWOL.
I can still remember Trump telling us that everything was under control, and all we had to do was inject ourselves with disinfectants, and the virus would just magically disappear. Well today, we can all acknowledge that the virus did not disappear, but tens of thousands of Americans did.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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History: "Why oh why must I continually repeat myself? Sometimes I feel as if people believe I actually enjoy repeating myself. How many more times must I show the world what happens when people allow despotic and authoritarian dictators like Adolf, Mussolini, Lenin Stalin, Putin, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, and now Trump to come to power. It NEVER ends well. It never has, and it never will. But YOU people don't learn, and you clearly don't pay attention. It's like you're suffering from chronic amnesia. I have even gone so far as to keep a trash-heap of old tattered authoritarian regimes of the past as a reminder, and a warning, for the world to see. But alas, I am forced to repeat myself yet again, because you people don't learn.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels..
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The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
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“The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,”
--- Marine General Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Trump has a long history of denying that he knows or has ever met certain people.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders, the top top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in a 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At a rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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"Since Donald was elected, I’ve been surprised by nothing he’s done or said. But I have been shocked by the wholesale abdication of responsibility by the Republican party during this election campaign and throughout the past four years. I didn’t understand the extent to which they would be willing to enable him in Congress and in his cabinet. If they had done their job and acted as a separate branch of government, he would have been contained. By siding with him 100% of the time, they have ensured we are now faced with several concurrent disasters that are getting exponentially worse.
No other president in history has been able to push the envelope the way Donald does. He’s always trying to see what he can get away with and, as I have seen through the course of his life, he’s always got away with everything. No one holds him accountable. He constantly gets rewarded for failing. The Republicans understood what he was capable of and have allowed him to push through an agenda that is completely at odds with what the majority wants.
My theory about the way Donald has run his campaign is that he knows he’s in desperate shape, so he’s going to burn it all down, sow more chaos and division, because that’s where he succeeds. He knows that he’s losing, he’ll deny it mightily, and at some level he understands what’s at stake. If he loses, he’s probably going to prison. So, if he’s going down, he’s going to take us all down with him.
I’ve always believed that deep down Don is a terrified littleboy. The amount of fear he’s feeling now has got to be unhinging him. Not only did he get sick with the virus, there’s the tax story and his prospects in the election looking really bad right now. He’s got to be absolutely panicked.
He’s ignored the severity of the pandemic all year because the idea of illness as weakness is so deeply ingrained in his family, that even an association with it is unacceptable. But now his statement – you can beat it, don’t be afraid of it – is going to result in more people becoming sick, and many of those will die. Even before he said that, I believed he was engaging in m@55murder, but that sealed it for me. Anybody who’s capable of putting hundreds of millions of people at risk to avoid looking bad doesn’t care about you."
--Bob Woodward
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October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump today: " No, I don't know anything about Wikileaks, that's not my deal in life."😲
"I've known Jeff Epstein for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It's even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
-Trump, NY Magazine 2002.
Trump today: "I'm not a fan of Jeff Epstein. No I've never been a fan of his."😲
Trump a few years from now : " I barely knew Eric and Don Jr. But I can tell you this, I never liked them. You can ask anyone, you can even ask Eric and Don Jr, and they'll tell you, I never liked them." 😂😄
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"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
Trump's cult has bought into his commitment to willful ignorance. Trump feeds them lies and misinformation on a daily basis, and they accept it without questioning the validity of anything he says. And at the same time, they will say that they are protesting for their "freedom." What they don't realize is that no man or woman can ever truly be free without factual information....without the truth. Without the facts and the truth, they are nothing more than slavish little tools for the person feeding them lies.
McConnell acknowledged Thursday that he was "WRONG" when he falsely claimed that President Obama didn't leave behind a plan for tackling a pandemic. The Obama administration had in FACT prepared a 69-page playbook for pandemic response — which Trump clearly did not read or follow. I understand that Trump is semi-literate, but that's no excuse for him not tasking someone to read the playbook to him. I'm sure Baron would have been happy to read the playbook to his absent and wayward father.
Moscow Mitch blamed the Obama administration for not taking steps to be ready for a potential pandemic.
"We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell told Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law. "
"I was wrong," Moscow Mitch said in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier. "They did leave behind a plan. So, I clearly made a mistake in that regard." 😂😁
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set you free.
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"A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."
“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and Republicans have learned valuable lessons from Goebbels.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Trump is, and has always been, a fraud. Therefore his failure as a leader and as a president was inevitable.
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone else, or something else.
In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing..
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine..
● JULY 10: At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt..
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms.Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● Sept 9: Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● Sept 9: The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
● Sept.11: Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am absolutely real, magic is not. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when Easter is, I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense, the flu is a fan of mine, and wants to be like me when it grows up. And there is no cure for me, and that's the problem."
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Trump and his grifter family are running their criminal enterprise out of the white. That's what the entire Trump administration has been about since the very beginning. It's why Jared and Ivanka were brought into the white house. They aren't working for the country, or the American people, they are working for themselves. They are working to enrich themselves even more. Every move they make is a calculated business move for their own financial gains.
It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, Australia, The UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab. All anyone has to do is take a step back and open your eyes, and you'll see that what Trump and his family are doing is happening right in front of our faces.
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Pastor: "Do you Melania, take Donald, to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together in matrimony, to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, to have and to hold, from this day forward, as long as you both shall live?
Melania:"5th." 🤣
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Kushner has let it be known that based on his understanding of American history, the Republican party platform should be drastically reduced from 58 convoluted pages in 2016 to “a mission statement” that can fit on a wallet-sized card, along the lines of the platform of 1856."
Jared, who is the de facto campaign manager, has shifted from one assignment to the next: chief overseer of the opioid epidemic; chief diplomat to achieve Middle East peace; chief overseer of domestic policy and patron of Stephen Miller; to chief of medical supplies in the coronavirus crisis.
Now a self-designated expert in American history, his attempt to echo the party’s first platform is an abrupt effort to smooth over Trump's offensive and lethal incompetence, and to justify it all by reference to the origins of the Republican party. He is abusing the past to distort the present.
If there is any resemblance of the Trump mutation of the Republican party to any actual party in the election of 1856 it is not to the Republicans. Nor is it to the Democrats. Rather, it is to the third party in that campaign, the American party, also known as the Know Nothings, who also had a concise platform.
The original American party sought to protect the purity of white native-born Protestants from the first great wave of immigration to the US, which consisted mostly of the Irish and Germans, and to stigmatize the Catholic religion.
Americans must rule America,” its platform proclaimed. Only native-born citizens should be allowed to hold any public office, federal, state or municipal. The Know Nothings emerged from the breakup of the Whig party over the issue of the extension of slavery in the territories.
Abraham Lincoln, a lifelong Whig, forged the Illinois Repub party in 1856 out of a mixture of contending factions, including radical abolitionists, Whigs, dissident antislavery Democrats and liberal German immigrants. Lincoln despised Know Nothingism, which is identical to Trumpism today.
In 1855, Lincoln wrote that if the movement ever won power it would rewrite the Declaration of Independence: “When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
The 1856 Republican platform may provide another piece of symmetry to the modern day. Its longest plank listed the trampling of constitutional rights of the antislavery forces in the Kansas territory, including voter suppression, attacks on freedom of the press, instigation of violence, and violence by armed militias.
The Republicans promised to restore the rule of law after the election by bringing members of the current administration before the bar of justice for their crimes: “That all these things have been done with the knowledge, sanction, and procurement of the present National Administration; and that for this high crime against the Constitution, the Union, and humanity, we arraign that Administration, the President, his advisers, agents, supporters, apologists, and accessories, either before or after the fact, before the country and before the world; and that it is our fixed purpose to bring the actual perpetrators of these atrocious outrages and their accomplices to a sure and condign punishment thereafter.”
But the Republicans lost the election of 1856. There were no prosecutions. The early platform stood as a warning of greater danger to come. After Lincoln’s election in 1860, many of those identified in the first Republican platform as the enemies of democracy, presidential advisers among them, would not accept the result and helped precipitate the civil war.
If Trump loses the election of 2020, will “his advisers, agents, supporters, apologists, and accomplices, including, first and foremost, Kushner, Barr, Chad Wolf and others – accept the result and its consequences?
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The worst part about it is that Trump doesn't even tell complex or sophisticated lies. His lies are as basic as his mind, and in his mind, 2+2 = 22, not 4.
Trump said he’d clean the Washington swamp. His cultists bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
Trump said he would drain the swamp. His cultists bought it. Then he proceeded to drain the swamp directly into his white house..
Trump said he'd be the most transparent president ever. His cultists bought it. Trump has now told more than 10k documented lies since taking office, making him the most prolific liar in history. His white house doesn't hold press conferences anymore, and he still refuses to release his taxes.
He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. His cultists bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge, and no one knows what's going on.
Trump said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and lobbyists, and she would do whatever they said. His cultists bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives and lobbyists in positions of power in his administration. Trump then proceeded to give himself and his wealthy friends, the biggest tax cut in history, which has ballooned America's debt to 22 trillion. which the American people are going to have to pay for.
Trump said he would be working so much that he wouldn't have time to play golf. His cultists bought it. Trump has now played golf more than any other president before him. Trump actually plays more golf now, than he did before he became president. His golfing has cost American taxpayers at least 102 million dollars so far
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Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019.
Countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and work he has done.
And Trump thinks he knows more about viruses and infectious diseases than this guy, simply because he had an Uncle who attended MIT. Let that sink in for a moment.
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The GOP is ready to throw away our 244 year old democratic republic for a corrupt, mentally impaired con-man. A republic that for 244 years, hundreds of thousands of American men and women have served, fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice to see that it is preserved. Just let that sink in for a moment.
Trump said that our men and women in uniform, and America’s fallen in Arlington, are suckers and losers. Well if we allow Trump to steal this election, which he has already admitted to trying to do, and turn America into the dictatorship he dreams of, then his reprehensible comments about our fallen, our veterans, and our active duty service members, will become true. Because it would mean that they all served, sacrificed, and died for nothing.
Trump: "The men and women who serve in our military are nothing more than suckers & losers. And to prove it, I'm going to destroy the America that they fought and died for. And republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Lindsey Graham, are going to help me do it."
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Whitaker was waiting off-set at CNN in June 2017 when he and another guest struck up a conversation. The two men, both former Justice Department officials, talked about work and family. The fellow guest, St. John’s University law professor John Q. Barrett, recalls asking Whitaker what had prompted him to go on television to discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election meddling.
“I hope this will help me get noticed,” Barrett recalled Whitaker telling him. In comments around that time, Whitaker said Mueller’s probe had gone too far, and on one CNN appearance he suggested that cutting funding to the investigation could hobble Mueller. Barrett, in an interview and in remarks on Twitter, recalled Whitaker saying that he hoped his appearances would generate attention so that the President Trump would appoint him a federal judge in his home state of Iowa.
Whitaker is definitely a compromised Trump stooge, who has absolutely zero intentions of upholding the law with integrity. He does however have every intention of helping Trump obstruct justice.
This is what a swamp looks like folks.
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Let's face it, America today, is leaderless. In fact, America has been leaderless since Trump was sworn into office. President Obama was America's last president. What we have now, is a mentally impaired Russian asset, masquerading as president. And he's obsessed with only two things: lining his pockets with millions of taxpayer dollars, and holding self-aggrandizing rallies in order to feed his insatiable ego.
Meanwhile, Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. And he never will.
Since the 80s, the Russians have been financially supporting Trump and bailing him out from bankruptcy after American banks stopped loaning him money. He is still indebted to them today. And just like any loyal dog, Trump knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him.
However, Trump won't hesitate to use brute force against peaceful protesting American citizens, just so he can stage a 5 minute photo-op. He treats Putin like he's a follow comrade, and citizen, and he treats our troops, and the American people, like we're the enemy. Let that sink in for a moment.
Trump has abandoned and betrayed our troops, the same way he has betrayed and abandoned our States ,and the American people to deal with the a viral pandemic.
America won't survive another year with Trump in office, let alone another 4 years.
Semper Fi..
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
Today, Trump may have told his biggest lie to date since the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump at today's briefing: “We tested far more than anybody else,” he said. “We have now tested — with the best test— far more than anybody else,” he added. “And when I say anybody else, I’m talking about other countries. No country is even close.” 😲
Trump's remarks, interviews, tweets, blatant LIES, and incoherent ramblings, from Jan. 22 to March 9th.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview.
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us, that I can assure you.” —Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases, 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” —Trump at the White House.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 26: “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” — Trump when asked if “schools should be preparing for a coronavirus spreading.”
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting.
March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” — Trump
tweet.
Two days later, on March 11, the WHO declared the global outbreak a pandemic.
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In an internal FBI situation report, the FBI’s Washington Field Office found no intel or evidence indicating Antifa involvement or presence in the violence that occurred on May 31 during the D.C.-area protests. That same day, Trump announced on Twitter that he would designate “Antifa” a terrorist organization, even though antifa is not an organized group.
But not surprisingly, the report did warn that individuals from far-right social media groups had called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, and use automatic weapons against protesters. A Department of Homeland Security intelligence note warned law-enforcement officials that a white supremacist channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram encouraged its followers to incite violence to start a race war during the protests.
Don the Con's beef with @ntifa is very simple, and predictable.
@ntifa stands for anti-f@s.cist. It's name is pretty self-explanatory. Well DJT happens to be an unapologetic self-avowed f@s.cist, as well as a traitor and a con-man.
So It's only natural that a fas.cist would view any anti-facist group as his natural enemy. Adolf did the same thing to opponents of his fas.cist regime. A f@s.cist is someone whose insatiable greed for money and obsession for power, is combined with such an intense intolerance towards people of other rac.es, classes, parties, re.ligions, regions or nations, that it makes him ruth.less in his use of deceit and vio.lence to attain his ends. Most f@s.cists can easily be identified by their deliberate per.version of truth and facts. Yup, that definitely sounds like Trump.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Trump's own people informed him of an outbreak in Wuhan China as far back as November of last year, but he refused to listen to his own intelligence agencies. The same way he refused to listen to them when they warned him about Russian cryber espionage and interference in our elections. He completely ignored them.
Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and they went unheeded..
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable..
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable...
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Trump lies a little bit more than waaaay too much.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
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Trump has created the most corrupt, inept, and dysfunctional administration in American history. Instead of surrounding himself with highly qualified principled experts, he has instead surrounded himself with a woefully unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, roguish grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. And they are all swimming together in a swamp of moral turpitude..
Gary Cohn's email describes what it was like to work in Trump's dumpster fire of a white house before he finally had enough, and resigned as Trump's chief economic advisor in 2018.
"It’s worse than you can imagine.
An idi0t surrounded by clowns.
Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing.
He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.
And his staff is no better.
Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing.
Bannon is an arrogant pr'ck who thinks he’s smarter than he is.
Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits.
No one will survive the first year but his family.
I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I’m the only person there with a clue what he’s doing.
The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day.
I am in a constant state of shock and horror."
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Hannity: "What are your top priority items if you were to get a 2nd term?"
Trump: " That's a tremendously great and powerful question Sean. Well, as you know, I still have high hopes of getting a deal for that tower in Moscow that I've always dreamed of. I'm also going to work on getting rid of that stupid emoluments clause in the Constitution. You have no idea how hard it is for me and my family to grift with that emoluments clause aways getting in the way. And of course I plan on golfing a lot more. I barely got a chance to do any golfing during my 1st term. Can you believe it? And last but not least, I want to lockup any and everyone who has ever mocked me, or made me to feel inadequate, and insecure, like Hillary, Obama, Melania, Stormy Daniels, and umbrellas."
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Trump said he’d clean the Washington swamp. His cultists bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
Trump said he would drain the swamp. His cultists bought it. Then he proceeded to drain the swamp directly into his white house.
Trump said he'd be the most transparent president ever. His cultists bought it. Trump has now told more than 10k documented lies since taking office, making him the most prolific liar in history, and for any foreseeable future imaginable.
Trump said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. His cultists bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
Trump said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. His cultists bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
Trump said he would be working so much that he wouldn't have time to play golf. His cultists bought it. Trump has now played golf more than any other president before him. Trump actually plays more golf now, than he did before he became president.
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Some quack named Dr. Oz, appeared on fox to promote the dangerous, and unconscionable idea of reopening schools now.
Dr. Oz: "Well first, we need our mojo back," Oz said. "Let's start with things that are really critical to the nation, where we think we might be able to open without getting into a lot of trouble. I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3% in terms of total mortality."
COVID-19: "I agree with Dr Oz, schools are indeed a very appetizing opportunity." 😈
Trump and Fox are openly promoting the idea of needlessly sacrificing even more lives, for the sake of the "Chosen One."
For years I was mystified over how Jim Jones was able to convince his followers to give their kids cyanide laced punch, and then drink the same poisoned punch themselves. The entire thing seemed fantastical and inconceivable. And then I saw a clip of Trump at one of his rallies, and then all of sudden, it all made sense.
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Assault rifles were specifically designed to gun down larger amounts of people in a very efficient, and effective manner. And once again, that weapon performed perfectly, the same way it performed in the school shootings, church shootings, concert shootings, nightclub shootings, movie theatre shootings, and domestic home shootings. That's why the assault rifle is the preferred weapon of choice for mass shooters. And that's why it has no business being sold to the public. America has proven that allowing these types of weapons to be sold to the public is the height of irresponsibility. What's worse, these weapons of mass destruction have been allowed to be sold simply out of greed. Gun nutters and the NRA should be forced to walk through the crime scenes of schools after every mass shooting before the bodies of our kids are removed. They should be forced to place those bodies in body bags themselves, and then forced to clean the crime scene.
Semper Fi...
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"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like he//, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
--Thomas Paine, The Crisis. December, 1776.
Honor our Constitution, and protect it at all cost.
Semper Fi.. 🇺🇸💙
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Deutsche Bank has launched an internal investigation into the longtime personal banker for Trump and Jared Kushner. The bank is looking into Rosemary Vrablic to determine if she had acted improperly when she and two colleagues bought an apartment for about $1.5 million in 2013 from Bergel 715 Associates.
In a financial disclosure report, Kushner and Ivanka said they had received $1 million to $5 million from Bergel 715 in 2019. The couple had not previously reported having an ownership stake in the company.
Kushner and Trump were clients of Vrablic at the time of the 2013 sale and had received about $190 million in loans from Deutsche Bank. Both were also granted hundreds of millions of dollars after that point, according to the Times. Banks usually prohibit employees from conducting personal business with clients out of concerns of conflicts of interest.
Even before Trump became president, his relationship with Deutsche Bank fell under scrutiny because of his TREMENDOUS debts to the bank, which at the time was being fined by US regulators over its provision of toxic mortgages that played a role in the 2008 housing crash. There were concerns that if elected, Trump could intervene in the Deutsche Bank case with a view to protecting his own companies.
One of the bank’s more troubling activities was laundering billions of Russian rubles (via sham transactions known as “mirror trades”) into U.S. dollars. Then there was client Trump. The smooth persuasions, the obsequious flatteries, the lying about his net worth to garner loans for office buildings, resorts, casinos. Just how disconnected and delusional the bank became can be seen in its ongoing relationship with Trump, whose multiple bankruptcies had made him a pariah in the banking world.
When Deutsche’s real estate team cut off Trump, private banking opened the spigot. When a loan came due, Trump had NO INTENTIONS of repaying, as if the rules for him were different. Deutsche’s brass was so in-thrall to Trump’s fake celebrity, and so eager to expand in America, one division lent $48 million to cancel the debt on a Chicago skyscraper — a debt Trump had defaulted on with another wing of the same bank. But the private banking division, which catered to the rich and famous, arranged the loan anyway — and then, when Trump stopped making payments, arranged another loan for Trump. 😲
Deutsche Bank bought Trump's con the same way American voters would. In what could serve as a requiem for the country’s lost innocence, the general counsel at Deutsche said, “What the he// are we doing lending money to a guy like this?” 😂
In the summer of 2016, Kushner’s real estate company (which received lavish financing from Deutsche) was moving money to various Russians. A bank compliance officer filed a “suspicious activity report,” but the report was quashed and she was fired. The suggestion is that maybe the money was payback for Russian campaign meddling. Management at Deutsche tended to look the other way when employees broke the rules, even when they did business with dictators like Putin and their friends.
Trump and Jared's relationship with the bank became a subject to the Mueller investigation. The special counsel specifically focused on a $285m loan that Deutsche Bank granted Kushner’s company only a month before Trump was elected – and just as the bank was settling with state prosecutors over charges it had aided in a Russian money-laundering scheme.
Today, the bank is fighting off subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, in particular his tax returns. Trump sued to prevent his records from being turned over, but the Supreme Court ultimately ruled 7-2 that presidents are not immune from criminal investigation.
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If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Trump is far worse than Nixon was ever capable of being. Nixon was corrupt for sure, but even still, there were limits to how far he would go. Trump on the other hand, is a complete sociopath, without limits or boundaries. Trump has proven that he will cross any line, and violate any and all ethical standards..
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Just days before Trump was sworn in, Dean stated that he believed Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
John Dean's words could not have been more prophetic.
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Russian intelligence gains influence in foreign countries by operating subtly and patiently. It exerts different gradations of leverage over different kinds of people, and uses a basic tool kit of blackmail that involves the exploitation of greed, stupidity, ego, and 5exual appetite. All of which are traits Trump has in abundance.
Throughout his career, Trump has always felt comfortable operating at or beyond the ethical boundaries that constrain typical businesses. In the 1980s, he worked with La Cosa Nostra, which controlled the NY cement trade, and later employed Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, both of whom have links to the RussianMafia. Trump habitually refused to pay his counterparties, and if the people he burned got in his way, he bullied them with threats.
He maintains a fanatical secrecy about his finances and has paid out numerous settlements to silence women. The combination of a penchant for compromising behavior, a willingness to work closely with criminals, and a desire to protect aspects of his privacy makes him the ideal blackmail target.
It is not difficult to imagine that Russia quickly had something on Trump, from either exploits during his 1987 visit or any subsequent embarrassing behavior KGB assets might have uncovered. But the other leverage Russia enjoyed over Trump for at least 15 years is indisputable — in fact, his family has admitted to it multiple times.
After a series of financial reversals and his brazen abuse of bankruptcy laws, Trump found it impossible to borrow from American banks and grew heavily reliant on unconventional sources of capital. Russian cash proved his salvation. From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million. In 2010, the private-wealth division of Deutsche Bank also loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars during the same period it was laundering billions in Russian money. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” said Donald Jr. in 2008. “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,” boasted Eric Trump in 2014.
Since Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power in 1999, money has become a key source of Russian political leverage.
Shady business transactions offer the perfect cover for covert payments, since just about the entire Russian economy is shady. Trump’s adamant refusal to disclose his tax returns has many possible explanations, but none is more obvious than the prospect that he is hiding what are effectively bribes.
In July 2013, Trump visited Moscow again. If the Russians did not have a back-channel relationship or compromising file on Trump 30 years ago, they very likely obtained one then.
The first intimations that Trump might harbor a dark secret involving Russia originated among America’s European allies, which, being situated closer to Russia, have had more experience fending off its nefarious encroachments.
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after NYTimes reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it, but BEFORE he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump.
In the summer of 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then CIA director, John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the UK Intelligency agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan personally on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
What Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. "Individuals who go along a treasonous path," he warned, do not even realize they're along that path until it gets to be a bit too late."
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Removing a duly elected president from office through impeachment is not a coup, and it's certainly not a crime. It is the only legal and Constitution way to remove a president from office.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction. Placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into any position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act. Nothing good has ever resulted from anything that Trump has ever touched or been involved with. He is void of any and all goodwill or human decency. He is a purely toxic, insidious and malevolent being, who constitutes a malignant affliction on this country.
The economic fate and national security of America should have never been placed in the hands of a mentally impaired, and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored.
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Trivia question: Who goes to Moscow on the 4th of July to celebrate America's Independence day?
Republican, that's who.
In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
Conservatives like referring to liberals as communists, when in reality it's nothing more than pure projection. Conservatism is practically in lock step with communism.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
Conservatives have even taken a page right out the communist playbook. Controlling the reproductive rights of women is an old and well document communist tradition.
Because if a government can prevent you from having anAbortion, it can also force you to have one. That's what happens when the choice has been taken away from you. It doesn't get more communist than that.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Only a trueCommunist would be against passing a voting rights bill.
The origins of the term Liberal can be traced back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of liberty ("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
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It's very important that we all remember the unwarranted outrage and criticism Republicans leveled on President Obama and his response to the Ebola virus outbreak. And Trump of all people, even tweeted that Obama should apologize to the American people, and resign. And this was after only 11 reported Ebola cases and 2 deaths in America.
Republican Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the ebola outbreak resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there..
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
Trump tweet, 10/23/14
"If this doctor, who is reckless flew into New York from West Africa has Ebola, then Obama should apologize to the American people & resign."
Today there have been more than 6.42 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US, and 195K deaths.
So after 195k coronavirus deaths, what should Trump do?
Well lets see, not only should he resign, he should first drop to his knees and apologize to America for the needless loss of so many American lives. He should then get on his knees, and apologize to Obama, and beg him for forgiveness. He should then turn himself into authorities and admit to his criminal negligence, dereliction duty, and to violating his oath of office.
"What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by Trump in 2018.
Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
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Trump is now telling approximately 7 lies a day. He literally has to keep lying just survive at this point.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times. The lies Trump told were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
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In the 73 years of Trump's unnatural life, he has never once served anyone or anything, other than himself. Even as president, he has only served himself and Putin. Yet this traitor has gone out of his way to impugn the character and integrity of our men and women in the diplomatic service and in military service. Men and women like Bill Taylor, Lt.Col Vindman, and Ambassador Yovanovitch, who have all sworn and oath to this country, and have been serving this country honorably for their entire adult lives.
Karma is coming for Trump for what he did to Ambassador Yovanovitch and others. And Karma is an unforgiving, unrelenting, vengeful b"tch, that never forgets...😄
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't)
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, scams, fraud and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Yes. Since Trump announced his candidacy for president, right-wing extremists and Neo-Nazis started crawling out of caves, and slithering from underneath rocks. It's as if they were waiting for someone to finally lead them. And since Trump became president, they've been goose stepping down main streets, waving the swastika, plowing cars into crowds of people, and shooting up churches, synagogues, grocery stores, restaurants, and bars.
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Marine Sgt, Maj. Dan Daly is known for being one of the most decorated service members of all time. He was awarded not one, but TWO medals of honor.
He coined an expression that will forever live on in books, movies, and among troops He almost earned a third for his part in a counter-attack against the enemy in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood. Instead, Daly was given the Distinguished Service Cross and, later, the Navy Cross.
In June 1918 at the battle of Belleau Wood in WW1, the Marines were pinned down under heavy artillery barrage. At one point in the battle, the now 44 year old Daly, led his Marines in a counter-attack against machine gun emplacements with a battle cry that has become Marines lore “Come on, you sons of B——, do you want to live forever?!” In the course of that battle he was wounded three times. 1,800 Marines died in the battle of Belleau Wood.
These are the types of Americans that our current sitting president refers to as "losers."
And Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Since then we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said. Two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes in nothing, honors nothing, and respects nothing. As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
Semper Fi.
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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Russian intelligence gains influence in foreign countries by operating subtly and patiently. It exerts different gradations of leverage over different kinds of people, and uses a basic tool kit of blackmail that involves the exploitation of greed, stupidity, ego, and 5exual appetite. All of which are traits Trump has in abundance.
Throughout his career, Trump has always felt comfortable operating at or beyond the ethical boundaries that constrain typical businesses. In the 1980s, he worked with La Cosa Nostra, which controlled the NY cement trade, and later employed Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, both of whom have links to the RussianMafia. Trump habitually refused to pay his counterparties, and if the people he burned got in his way, he bullied them with threats.
He maintains a fanatical secrecy about his finances and has paid out numerous settlements to silence women. The combination of a penchant for compromising behavior, a willingness to work closely with criminals, and a desire to protect aspects of his privacy makes him the ideal blackmail target.
It is not difficult to imagine that Russia quickly had something on Trump, from either exploits during his 1987 visit or any subsequent embarrassing behavior KGB assets might have uncovered. But the other leverage Russia enjoyed over Trump for at least 15 years is indisputable — in fact, his family has admitted to it multiple times.
After a series of financial reversals and his brazen abuse of bankruptcy laws, Trump found it impossible to borrow from American banks and grew heavily reliant on unconventional sources of capital. Russian cash proved his salvation. From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million. In 2010, the private-wealth division of Deutsche Bank also loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars during the same period it was laundering billions in Russian money. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” said Donald Jr. in 2008. “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,” boasted Eric Trump in 2014.
Since Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power in 1999, money has become a key source of Russian political leverage.
Shady business transactions offer the perfect cover for covert payments, since just about the entire Russian economy is shady. Trump’s adamant refusal to disclose his tax returns has many possible explanations, but none is more obvious than the prospect that he is hiding what are effectively bribes.
In July 2013, Trump visited Moscow again. If the Russians did not have a back-channel relationship or compromising file on Trump 30 years ago, they very likely obtained one then.
The first intimations that Trump might harbor a dark secret involving Russia originated among America’s European allies, which, being situated closer to Russia, have had more experience fending off its nefarious encroachments.
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after NYTimes reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it, but BEFORE he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump.
In the summer of 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then CIA director, John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the UK Intelligency agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan personally on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
What Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. "Individuals who go along a treasonous path," he warned, do not even realize they're along that path until it gets to be a bit too late."
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As a Marine veteran, it warms my heart to know that there are still some true American patriots out there who are still willing to resist, still willing to stand-up and speak truth to power. Patriots who still believe in putting country first. Patriots who still believe in serving a cause greater than themselves. Patriots like Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Lt.Col. Vindman, David Holmes, Jennifer Williams, and others. To all of these patriots, and others out there like them, I salute you.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity, like his idol Pooopin.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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Never trust a guy who's claim to fame is being a pathological liar, and a con-artist..
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political. interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also killed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki// anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked.
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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“There are few things better than receiving a sensational gift from someone you admire — and that’s what I’ve received from you,” Trump wrote to Aras Agalarov on June 17, 2016. He continued, “I’m rarely at a loss for words, but right now I can only say how much I appreciate your friendship and to thank you for this fantastic gift. This is one birthday that I will always remember.” One week earlier, Agalarov had sent an expensive painting to then-candidate Trump on the eve of his birthday. And just one day before the painting arrived, Agalarov had helped deliver a very different kind of gift to Trump Tower: a delegation from the Russian government with promised opposition research on Trump’s political foe, Clinton. There are hints that Trump may have been aware of the delegation’s arrival and welcomed whatever boon it might bring.
The Trump Tower meeting on June 9 forms the core of collusion to date. It demonstrates the Trump campaign’s willingness to accept assistance from a foreign government in its bid to win the presidency. Campaign finance experts have noted that, simply by virtue of taking the meeting with an envoy from the “Crown prosecutor of Russia,” the prosecutor general of the Russian Federation, the campaign may have broken federal election laws. These laws strictly prohibit soliciting or accepting anything of value, which would include opposition research, from a foreign national or government to advance a domestic campaign.
Against the background of the Trump Tower meeting, several multimillion-dollar transactions executed through Agalarov’s accounts emerge in stark relief and raise questions as to their purpose. On June 3—the same day Don Jr. received the email from Rob Goldstone offering assistance from the Russian government—to which he eventually replied, “I love it”—Aras Agalarov initiated a transfer of $3.3 million to the U.S. Irakly Kaveladze, Agalarov’s representative at the Trump Tower meeting, facilitated the transfer. Specifically, Kaveladze also used his own accounts, thereby making the money trail harder to follow. Three separate banking institutions reportedly flagged the relevant transactions as highly suspicious.
On June 20, 11 days after the June 9 meeting, Agalarov transferred almost $20 million from Russia to his bank account in the U.S. Bank officials, perplexed as to the money’s ultimate destination, flagged the transaction. Even for a bonafide oligarch—Agalarov, known as the “Donald Trump of Russia,” is reportedly worth $1.6 billion—this sum is not trivial. Twenty million dollars is what Agalarov paid Trump to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in Novembe 2013. Twenty million is also more than a third of the $50 million Trump forgave his campaign that same month.
Agalarov used a Swiss bank account and a British Virgin Islands shell corporation to ostensibly layer the transaction, wiring $19.5 million to his Morgan Stanley account in the U.S. Ilya Bykov, Agalarov’s New York-based accountant, said that in May, he had incorporated a Delaware-based corporation specifically to receive this transfer. Yet, the money was ultimately sent directly to Agalarov’s bank account. It is not clear why the created shell company was not used as intended. The Delaware company, bearing the generic name Silver Valley Consulting, was meant to provide anonymity, meaning it was set up so to conceal any links to Agalarov. Bykov was listed as the company’s president and director in the incorporation documents filed with the Delaware secretary of state. Had Agalarov used this Delaware shell as intended, bank and FinCEN investigators would likely not have spotted the large money transfer.
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived.
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
Protect our Constitution at all costs. 🇺🇸
Semper Fi..
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If I was all alone, and three strangers pulled up to me brandishing guns, I would immediately assume that my life is in imminent danger--anyone would. They literally tried to detain him at gunpoint. Arbery was undoubtedly terrified.
Let this be a lesson, that guns are NOT the answer to every problem. Just think if those three men didn't grab their guns, before hopping in their vehicles to chase Arbery. Arbery would still be alive, they wouldn't be looking at spending the rest of their lives in prison, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. They could have tried to have a conversation with Arbery without those guns.
This incident can partially be blamed on the pathological obsession that some people have with guns. Some people believe that a gun is the only answer to every problem. And having those guns with them gave them a false sense of authority.
We've all heard the saying that "might makes right." Well choosing to take those guns with them gave them the "might" in their minds, which meant they were automatically right, no matter what they did.
I've observed that someone with a gun, will usually behave in a manner totally different from how they would behave if they didn't have one. And this is coming from a Marine combat veteran, and a gun owner.
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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Make no mistake, Trump is a sociopath.
Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
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COVID-19: "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear the first time, so let me try again. I am an equal opportunity virus. To me, all of your lives are equally worthless. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, flag waving, or denial. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, maturity, unselfishness, and common sense. Medical experts like Dr Fauci make me nervous. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. Trying to ignore me won't save you. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. You may not be interested in me, but I am obsessed with you. Currently there is no vaccine for me, and that's the problem. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I may have lost some strength in other countries, but thanks to Trump, America is making me great again." 💪😆
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when May 1 is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. There is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. Ignorant people like Trump are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I don't recognize anyone's authority."
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Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union's Air Defense Forces, and his job was to monitor his country's satellite system, which was looking for any possible nuclear weapons launches by the United States.
He was on the overnight shift in the early morning hours of Sept. 26, 1983, when the computers sounded an alarm, indicating that the U.S. had launched five nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Petrov was in charge of a Soviet nuclear early warning center. Rather than retaliate, and instead of following orders, Stanislav followed his gut feeling and went against protocol, convincing the Soviet military that it was a false alarm. And it turned out to be exactly that, a false alarm. His decision saved the world from a potential devastating nuclear holocaust.
Arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis recalled Petrov's actions in an interview on NPR:
"Petrov just had this feeling in his gut that it wasn't right. It was five missiles. It didn't seem like enough. So even though by all of the protocols he had been trained to follow, he should absolutely have reported that up the chain of command and, you know, we should be talking about the great nuclear war of 1983 if any of us survived."
After several nervous minutes, Petrov didn't send the computer warning to his superiors. He checked to see if there had been a computer malfunction.
He had guessed correctly.
"Twenty-three minutes later I realized that nothing had happened," he said in 2013. "If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief."
Petrov received an official reprimand for breaking protocol and making mistakes in his logbook on Sept. 26, 1983.
He received a number of international awards during the final years of his life. In 2015, a docudrama about him featuring Kevin Costner was called "The Man Who Saved The World."
But he never considered himself a hero.
"That was my job," he said. "But they were lucky it was me on shift that night."
America and the rest of the world are lucky we had Gen. Mark Milley as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after Trump lost the election.
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Trump's plan to deal with the coronavirus was simple.
First, pretend that the virus doesn't exist, and call the whole thing a hoax. And if that doesn't work, blame it on some guy coming in from Jyna. And if that doesn't work, use magic to make the virus disappear. And if magic doesn't work, try to trick the American people into injecting Lysol into their bodies. And if that doesn't work, tell your people to slow the testing down. And if that doesn't work, simply give up, and go back to playing golf and pretending that the virus doesn't exist. And when that fails to work again, just blame Dr. Fauci for your criminal negligence, abject failures, and your dereliction of duties.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done.
Dr. Fauci does not set policy in this country, because like he said, that's not his job, nor his responsibility. Dr. Fauci can't make Trump do anything. He can't make states do anything. His job is to provide the president, and other elected officials, with the best possible advice on how to deal with the pandemic. His advice is based on science, facts, and decades of experience. Trump will either take that expert advice, or he will ignore it, and do whatever his tremendous gut tells him to do.
Why anyone would choose to listen to Trump instead of Dr. Fauci is beyond me. Call me Krazy, but if I want to know how to effectively deal with a pandemic outbreak, I'm calling Dr. Fauci. If I want to know how to bankrupt multiple casinos, or set up a fake university and charity foundation, or lie like it's my job, or launder money with the Russians, then I'm calling Trump, and nobody but Trump...
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The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!!
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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These two quotes should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
These quotes aptly describes Haley.
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I'm so glad that Blagojevich brought up Trump's passionate sense of justice for people of color. 😆
In June 2019, Trump said that he would not apologize for his harsh comments in 1989 about the Central Park Five, the five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted in NY.
More than a decade after the exoneration of the five black and Latino teens, Trump indicated in an interview last year, that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their executions.
The teenagers were exonerated by DNA evidence and a confession from the true perpetrator in 2002, 13 years after they were vilified by prosecutors and in the press after being charged and convicted.
On May 1, 1989, as the case was headed to trial, Trump spent $85,000 placing a full-page ad in four newspapers, calling for the young men accused of the crime to be executed.
“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” the ad proclaimed in enormous capital letters. Below, in smaller text, Trump ranted, “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
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A judge on Tuesday sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in his deceased wife’s ballot.
Donald Kirk Hartle forged hisDeceased
wife’s signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
“That is pretty sickening to me to be honest with you,” Kirk Hartle stated in an interview last year. “It was disbelief. It made no sense to me, but it lent some credence to what you’ve been hearing in the media about these possibilities and now it makes me wonder how pervasive is this?”
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a QAnon conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
Hartle was facing two charges relating to last year’s election. In court Tuesday, Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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When Trump leaves the White House in January, he will lose the constitutional protection from prosecution afforded to a sitting president. It's safe to say that Trump will be in legal jeopardy for the rest of his unnatural life.
After Jan. 20, Trump will be more vulnerable than ever to a pending grand jury investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into his crooked family business and its practices, as well as his taxes.
Trump claims that the investigation by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr, is a politically motivated fishing expedition. But if the Supreme Court rules that Vance is entitled to the records, and he uncovers possible crimes, Trump could face a reckoning with law enforcement — raising the possibility of a criminal conviction, or even prison, for a former president.
Vance’s subpoena, which sought eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns and other records from his accounting firm, suggested in court papers that they were investigating a range of potential financial crimes. They include insurance fraud and criminal tax evasion, as well as grand larceny and scheming to defraud — which together are NY State’s equivalent of federal bank fraud charges.
Michael Cohen testified under oath before Congress that Trump often inflated the value of his assets when dealing with lenders or potential business partners, but deflated them when it benefited him for tax purposes.
Part of Vance's criminal investigation pertains to payments made during Trump's 2016 campaign to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to prevent them from publicly acknowledging they had affairs with him.
Cohen pleaded guilty to orchestrating the payments, which Manhattan federal prosecutors said amounted to illegal gifts to Trump's campaign. They identified Trump in court filings as having directed Cohen's efforts, but he was not charged.
Trump has said that he has the “absolute right” to pardon himself for any federal offenses, but that preposterous concept remains untested, because until now, no president has ever been so corrupt and morally depraved to attempt to do so. A 1974 Justice Department opinion said presidents could not pardon themselves because that would violate the “fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels..
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Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Trump will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal negligence, and his abject failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 80 thousand American lives.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when American banks stopped loaning Trump it money. It was a win-win for both sides. The Russian mafia is totally different than the American mafia. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. In an interviewed, Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Putin’s boss at one point, was asked about the Russain mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.”
Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not.
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The only real case of voter fraud was committed by who? That's right, you guessed, republicans.
A basic manipulation tactic of Trump's and the GOP, is to accuse your opponent of the exact thing that you are doing, so when you get caught doing that thing yourself, it doesn’t seem that drastic. Republicans know that when everyone votes they lose. The Repub party may not have the numbers, but they most certainly have the money. A large majority of money from Big Business and billion dollar corporations is funneled to Repub candidates. This money is used to buy republican politicians for the purpose of giving corporations control over our government.
In 2019, the NC Republican operative at the center of an absentee ballot fraud scheme that led the state to order a rerun of a congressional election was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. The operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, was charged with three felony counts of obstruction of justice, two counts of conspiring to commit obstruction of justice and two counts of possession of absentee ballots.
Allegations that operatives working for Dowless illegally collected, and sometimes filled in, absentee ballots on behalf of Republican Mark Harris’ campaign emerged shortly after the Nov. 6 election. They caused the state to hold off certifying Harris’ apparent narrow victory over Democrat Dan McCready.
During 4 days hearings, the state Board of Elections heard evidence of a well-funded and well-organized campaign to tip the election for the state’s 9th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which stretches southeast from Charlotte.
Ballot fraud is extremely rare. But when this case was uncovered in a congressional race in 2018, orchestrated by Republicans, Trump and other republicans looked the other way.
The election fraud committed in NC was the largest case in modern American history. Republican Mark Harris, hired a felon, Leslie McCrae Dowless, who promised to deliver unbelievable absentee ballot margins, as he had done in past elections. Dowless hired workers who went to voters’ doorsteps in poor, rural Bladen County, N.C., and “helped” them request, fill out and turn in their ballots. That help included forging signatures and filling in vote choices, and possibly even discarding ballots. The operation mostly targeted black voters. It also appeared the county elections board may have also leaked early vote totals to Republicans.
Altogether, it was an egregious attack on our democracy, in an election where the margin was only 905 votes. Voters on both sides of the aisle were horrified. But not the Republican Party. When evidence of fraud emerged in the party’s primary, it's state director, Dallas Woodhouse, turned a blind eye; later, when evidence emerged in the general-election race, he backed Mark Harris, in a lawsuit to be seated in Congress without an investigation 😲 while attacking the bipartisan state elections board and blaming Dems for the fraud. 😲
It turned out that even the local U.S. attorney, who was appointed by Trump, had failed to act on warnings by the state elections board that Dowless had stolen votes in a different race two years before. Instead, the attorney’s office went on a fishing expedition for fraud committed by immigrants, under the guidance of Jeff Sessions.
Trump and the GOP love to claim that voters commit fraud, even though it almost never happens, BUT, when one of their own was caught committing the worst case of voter fraud in modern history, they weren’t concerned at all. Just one more page from the Republican Party’s dirty elections playbook.
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Marsha Blackburn (R-TN),/"Moscow Marsha" has a more than decade-long history of meeting with Russian nationals/spies in Tennessee. In 2012, she met with Maria Butina’s spy master Alexander Torshin when he visited Williamson County, her home county. Torshin was there as a so called "election observer."
Torshin, now sanctioned by the U.S. and accused by Spanish authorities of mafia ties and massive money laundering, first came into contact with the NRA via a Nashville-based lawyer, Kline Preston. Torshin additionally served as an "election observer" in the state in 2012, and swung by again in 2015 for the NRA’s annual convention. Maria Butina was convicted of being a Russian spy, and sent to prison.
Since Butina’s conviction as a Russian spy, the details of her operations, as well as the expanding roster of NRA and Republican Party officials she accessed, have begun to paint a clearer picture of the broader Russian effort to infiltrate conservative groups..
Butina's plea deal contained a nugget illuminating Butina’s strategy: Following the Moscow trip she arranged for the NRA delegation in 2015, Butina wrote to her handler Alexander Torshin: “We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later.”
Moscow Marsha is also one of 8 republican lawmakers who flew to Moscow to celebrate the 4th of July there in 2018. The group met with a number of Russian agents, and key Russians officials.
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Mohamad bin Salman, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. What else do they have in common? They are all men that Trump admires and looks up to.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that Trump chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force on everyone else what he believes, and punish those who don’t.
Trump claims to support veterans after they return from service, but in the last two years he slashed funding for military housing assistance programs which help keep veterans off the street and gutted mental illness programs which help those dealing with PTSD and suicidal tendencies.
Trump cultists always brag about their love and support for our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
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Sorry Don, but I regret to inform you, that not only are you NOT loved by American troops, but your wife doesn't even love you.😆
Obama visited our Troops overseas 7 times. That's not even counting the multiple times he visited our troops at military bases here in America during the holidays. Obama visited our troops in Iraq just 3 months after taking office. Traitor Trump waited TWO WHOLE YEARS before he visited our troops for the first time in Iraq. And that was only after he was pushed to do so by advisers.
I have no doubt that Trump complained about having to make that trip to visit our troops the same way he complained about attending the memorial ceremony for our fallen in France.
Trump: "Why do I have to fly all the way to Iraq just to visit troops. They're a bunch of losers anyway."
And then when he finally made the trip, he turned that visit into a campaign rally for himself and used our troops as political props. Trump continues to show his contempt for our men and women in uniform with his silence concerning the Russian bounties placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. To this day, he has not uttered one word about it. NOT.....ONE.
I knew back in 2016 before the election that Trump had no respect for our military the moment he said he knew more about fighting wars than our Generals do. He basically claimed to know more about fighting wars than Generals like Grant, Patton, Washington, MacArthur, Eisenhower, as well as our current living Generals like Mattis. This preposterous claim came from a draft dodger who has NEVER served one day in the military.
It goes without saying, that ONLY a vindictive draft dodging traitor, who has nothing but contempt for the men and women in our military, would utter something as outrageous and insulting as that. That was all I needed to hear.
Semper Fi
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Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done.
So who is this Scott Atlas guy? And why is he even talking?
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"From the start, authoritarians stand out from other kinds of politicians by appealing to negative experiences and emotions. They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation’s saviors. Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears, they present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety
fromRacial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies."
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present
"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people orTer rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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For the last four straight years, Trump, along with his surrogates, have adopted and used the most fiendish propaganda tactics on his followers. They have told so many lies, that Trump’s followers can no longer distinguish truth from fiction.
Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition, and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
-- Joseph Goebbels
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth..
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set you free...
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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At the turn of the 18th century, John Adams, the newly elected president of the United States—only the 2nd in the nation’s then-brief history—cautioned the American people about “the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.” In particular, John Adams pointed to threats from abroad, warning that if a changed election outcome “can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the Government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign nations. It may be foreign nations who govern us, and not we, the people, who govern ourselves.” Speaking before a joint session of Congress, he pleaded with the Senate and the House to preserve our Constitution from its natural enemies,” including “the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments.”
The threat of foreign influence over our elections did not go away in the 220 years since John Adams spoke those words. Today we have a president whose election was aided by the fraud and Malice of a foreign nation. Americans who watched how Trump, in the words of John McCain, “abased himself … abjectly before a tyrant” in Helsinki, cannot be faulted for wondering whether John Adams’s long-ago warning has become a reality.
US law bans foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns, but they can circumvent the restrictions by routing financial support through anonymous bank accounts, shell corporations, and front companies. it is easy to set up a company without disclosing its purpose or the identity of its true owners.
Foreign adversaries can then use these companies to execute anonymous financial transactions that facilitate attacks on free and fair democratic elections.
A network of shell corporations could be used to hide the origin of foreign funds pumped into a political action committee, or a social media political ad campaign. The Kremlin has long had expertise in this area. During the Soviet Union’s heyday, the KGB perfected the craft of anonymously moving funds to seed foreign political campaigns. The FSB and the GRU, the KGB successors, are well-versed in these techniques as well.
Law enforcement and congressional investigations have revealed that Kremlin-linked actors paid considerable sums of money to support Trump and curry his favor. A Russian organization controlled by an oligarch close to Putin spent more than $1 million a month just on social media campaigns favoring Trump, according to the special counsel. A Russian American energy tycoon—who boasted to a Kremlin official in July 2016 of being “actively involved in Trump’s election campaign”—donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Victory fund. And a company affiliated with a sanctioned Russian oligarch paid $1 million to Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, for unspecified services after the election. These and other transactions examined throughout the report establish that, during the campaign and presidential transition, Trump had several compromising financial entanglements with actors representing a hostile foreign power.
Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov’s transferred $20 million to an American bank account just days after a meeting that he organized between Trump senior campaign officials, including Manafort, Kushner, and a Russian government attorney. Hackers, troll farms, and spies cannot operate without money. Following the money trail helps investigators discover who is funding these entities.
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Removing a duly elected president from office through impeachment is not a coup, and it's certainly not a crime. It is the only legal and Constitution way to remove a president from office.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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In Sept, one month before Lev Parnas was indicted on campaign finance charges, his wife received a $1 million wire transfers from a bank account in Russia. The the source was a lawyer for Dmytro Firtash, according to a court filing by U.S. prosecutors.
Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who made a fortune in the natural gas trade, and is perhaps the most enigmatic figure in the scandal related to Trump's impeachment.
A billionaire with close ties to the Russian mob, Firtash is facing bribery-related charges here in the U.S. and fighting extradition from Vienna. He once attempted to buy the famous Drake Hotel in NY with the now imprisoned Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager. He's seen by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and Western governments as a corrupt instrument of Russia.
Firtash provided documents to Giuliani that he used to further his discredited claim that Joe Biden engaged in wrongdoing in Ukraine. The question over Firtash's role in the effort to smear Biden deepened when Parnas said the oligarch's involvement came from an explicit quid pro quo. In exchange for Firtash's help in their effort to damage Biden, Parnas assured the oligarch they (Rudy, Trump, and Parnas) would make his U.S. legal troubles disappear.
In other words, according to Parnas: Guiliani, was so eager to help Trump and hurt Biden, that he turned to a man Ukrainian activists call their country's most dangerous oligarch — and offered the equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card.
"Some folks might wonder what Mr. Giuliani was thinking. The better question is whether he WAS thinking," said Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor and senior FBI official. "This is so foolhardy and so reckless, that it is difficult to fathom what he was doing or how he thought it could succeed."
Firtash lived up to his end of the alleged bargain: His lawyers provided a now-discredited affidavit from a Ukrainian prosecutor accusing Biden of wrongdoing. But Giuliani's team did not deliver.
According to Parnas and a senior U.S. official, Firtash's lawyers, Giuliani associates Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, were unable to convince Attorney General William Barr to intervene in the Firtash case. The alleged scheme, one former U.S. official said, was stunning in its audacity.
"Think of it this way," said the official, who has deep knowledge of Ukraine's politics and Firtash's history. "You have the president's personal lawyer trying to get the president's official lawyer, the attorney general, to get the Justice Department to drop charges against an oligarch supported by Russia. That's what was happening."
"Firtash is at dead center of the greatest corruption operation in Ukraine's history," said a former senior U.S. diplomat who served in the region. "He managed the flow of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine and beyond and it kept Ukraine dependent on Russia's gas supplies."
Anders Aslund, a former Swedish diplomat who has studied Ukraine's economy for years, said Firtash is more of a purveyor of bribes than a proper businessman. "He has essentially been used by the Russians to buy political power in Ukraine," said Aslund. "He's the person who has spent the most money on behalf of the Kremlin on Ukraine's politicians."
In 2013, as the Obama administration was pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine, federal prosecutors in Chicago indicted Firtash, charging him with a scheme to bribe Indian officials to obtain a lucrative mining deal to sell titanium to Boeing for the 787 Dreamliner. He was arrested in Vienna in March 2014, and released on $174 million bail and has been contesting his extradition to the U.S. ever since.
The $174 million bail, said to be the largest in Austrian history, was paid by the Russian billionaire Vasily Anisimov, who is also under U.S. sanctions.
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much they love and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. Trump showed his bravery again when he insulted the memory of recently deceased Congressman John Dingell, a WW2 veteran, by suggesting that Dingell was now looking up from he//.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment. No one will ever truly know how much courage and bravery it took for Trump to insult these veterans. 😔
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that medal from a veteran.
Semper Fi..
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Fox is responsible for so much of the hysteria, xenophobia, hatred, and racism that we see in America today. For years now, fox has inspired conspiracy theorists, and mongerers of hatred, lies, and fear, like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro.
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Sen Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and other republicans on Capitol Hill,
have been unmasked as Russian operatives for disseminating Russian conspiracy theories, and for aiding and abetting Putin's efforts to interfere in the 2020 election..
Last month, four lawmakers who make up the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight, the group of congressional and intelligence committee leaders who are privy to top-secret intelligence, demanded a briefing for all members of Congress focused on foreign interference in the 2020 election, based on their assertions that lawmakers are being targeted by those meddling efforts. They also have urged Trump to publicly reveal additional information about the nature of the foreign-influence campaign. Intelligence officials told House lawmakers last week that the Russians are seeking to boost Trump in the 2020 campaign.
The public version of the letter was vague about those threats, but the classified addendum to the letter specifically names Sen Ron Johnson’s investigation as a vehicle for “laundering” Russian propaganda for the foreign influence campaign aimed at denigrating Biden.
The addendum states that the Ukrainian lawmaker linked to the Kremlin, Andrii Derkach, sent information packets about Biden to Johnson, Grassley and other Trump stooges who have pushed similar Russian conspiracy theories, as part of Putin's disinformation campaign on America.
NCSC Director William Evanina, along with other senior national security officials, briefed lawmakers in multiple classified sessions in late July and August. His statement explicitly accused the Ukrainian politician, Derkach, of undermining Biden through weaponized leaks. Derkach is known to have met late last year with Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
The packets were sent by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who met with Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani in Ukraine last December. Andrii Derkach, who was formerly aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, is also an alumnus of Moscow’s FSB academy, formerly known as the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. Andrii Derkach’s father Leonid was a KGB operative who later became the head of Ukrainian intelligence, and who was fired in 2004 shortly before Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
The packets were sent late last year to Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declined to answer a colleague's question about whether he had received derogatory information about Joe Biden from Andrii Derkach.
During that closed-door meeting in late July — a transcript of which was made publicly available — Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of Russian propaganda were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham. Nunes refused to answer the question.
Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received" by Nunes. 😲
That evidence, according to committee officials, is in the form of a DHL shipping receipt that was sent to the Intelligence Committee’s majority office shortly after the package was sent to Nunes..
"If any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation-state, or anybody acting on behalf of a nation-state, about influencing or interfering with an election then that's something the FBI would want to know about,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on June 12, 2019 — a day before Trump rebuked him and said he would probably accept such help.
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In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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1st of all, there is no "crisis" when it comes to illegal immigration. The only crisis going on right is located in the white house.
As it stands now, practically anyone, and anything connected to Trump is now under investigation. His inauguration, his transition team, his Trump crime organization, his fake charity foundation, his fraudulent taxes, his tainted campaign, and his illegitimate presidency, are all under investigation. Most Americans already knew that Trump was totally unfit, and unqualified to be president, but I don't think anything prepared us for an unmitigated disaster of this magnitude. Trump's presidency has been such an unprecedented, and unimaginable debacle, that it can only be defined as a miracle. Because it cannot be explained with logic, reasoning or science.
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"COVID-19 is certainly revealing some uncomfortable truths about America. For example, everyday brings a new reminder that we are a country of extreme-haves, and extreme have-nots. And I'm not talking about money - we all knew that. I'm talking about people having accurate information. In this pandemic, "accurate" information has made toilet paper seem plentiful.
America, the country that has the most Nobel Prizes in science, also has the most willfully ignorant people per capita when it comes to understanding science.
How else can we explain electing a low-information bu.ffoon, who wheezes medical tips on our TVs about poisoning ourselves with disinfectants.
And maybe the most clueless aspect of that supposedly "sarcastic" advice is that Trump thinks we can still find disinfectants at stores. I guess we're finding that a pandemic isn't the ideal thing to happen to a country that believes science is just an opinion. Just something you roll the dice and decide whether you believe, instead of something you actually try to understand. And whether it's evolution, vaccines, or viruses, Americans are far busier dismissing inconvenient science as politically motivated, than they are learning about how it will effect their lives. Because NOT believing in Darwinism, IS Darwinism.
Because America is a country that cares more about the financial health of its corporations, than the actual health of its citizens. After all, who got most of the bailout cash? Corporations!!
And who is behind the "grassroots" push to prematurely reopen America? Corporations, and the (republican) politicians corporations pay. But science doesn't watch foxnews, so it doesn't know that it's just a DNC "hoax" or some other childish QAnon conspiracy.
Republican Governors believe that sacrifices have to be made for corporate profits. And that your grandmother, may just be one of them. And because Donald " I don't take responsibility at all" Trump, is passing the buck to Governors to make decisions, so Donald won't be blamed.
America's approach to this pandemic is ad-hoc, conflicting, and piecemeal. Exactly the type of uncoordinated response that helps spread a pandemic. South Korea's response was like a well conducted symphony. America's is like an open mic night at improv.
We have states with policies founded on epidemiological research, surrounded by states with policies founded on Twitter hashtags. Oddly enough, viruses don't respect state lines. Or your beliefs in how deadly they are. The worst states spread the virus, and prolong the pandemic for the rest of us.
This pandemic has proven two things: You're only as healthy as the most stupid person in America; and his name, is Donald J Trump.
Trump: "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
Trump: “Putin has done a really great job of outsmarting our country. He could not have been nicer. He was so nice. He is really very much of a leader. He said nice things about me,” Trump said in 2014, adding, “I like him because he called me a genius. Putin did call me a genius.”
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COVID-19: "Trump's response to me has been a series of dreadful calamities. First he tried gaslighting me by accusing me of being nothing more than a hoax, and when that didn't work, he tried to threaten me with magic, of all things, and when magic didn't work, he resorted to calling me names like "Kung Flu." So when name calling didn't work, he decided he would just ignore me, like he does with his debts, and maybe I would just go away. So now that I have proven to be immune and impervious to Trump's lies, gaslighting, and magic spells, he has decided to create a distraction by unleashing his Gestapo on peaceful protesting American citizens, which I find highly offensive, because if anyone is going to harm the American people, it's going to be ME." 😆💪
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Saying that what happened on January 6th was legitimate political discourse, is
like saying the Civil War was just legitimate political discourse. The Republican party is patently absurd.
Today the Republican party is a seditious institution. The lawlessness we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms and laws, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Here is shocking example of what the Republican party has become.
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "patriots."
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
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"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Wouldn't it be great if you could become extremely wealthy by simply telling people the truth, like this scientist, and other scientists have been doing. But unfortunately, spreading lies seems to be the best and easiest way to accumulating enormous fortunes. Just take a look at Trump, and Trump University, or Sean Hannity, or Alex Jones. And it's our own fault for being so gullible and susceptible to BS. Right now, you have people who will believe politicians, who get paid to lie to the American people, instead of scientists, who's livelihoods depend on being honest, and telling the truth about their research. What we need in this country is to start a nation wide War on Lies.
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Foreign influence was never supposed to be part of America’s electoral equation. What is a democracy if not rule by a country’s own citizens?
Sitting in offices in St. Petersburg, Russia, employees of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) had plenty of ideas this year about how to waltz past American legal and political safeguards to sow discord and try to manipulate the U.S. election outcome this fall.
Internal messages by the group’s officers to its staff advised that LGBT groups and “their liberal allies” were active online late into the night and responded well to manipulative infographics and colorful pictures, unlike their conservative counterparts.John McCain — a critic of Russia and an advocate for higher military spending — was to be branded “an old geezer” in on-line messaging. Paul Ryan — who notably said last July that “Russia is not our ally” — was to be branded in social media as a “two-faced loudmouth.”
These were just a few of efforts by the Russian organization’s online army of trolls to promote divisive messages on hot political topics ranging from sanctuary cities to illegal voting to whether athletes stood or knelt during the national anthem at NFL games.
The result was to taint democratic discourse in the United States in an effort to influence voting, an outcome made possible by the shortcomings of the U.S. laws and rules that are supposed to ensure fair election outcomes.
The snarky guidance provided to the Russian trolls, according to a detailed U.S. federal court filing last week, was part of Operation Lakhta, which itself was just one aspect of Russia’s attack on American democracy.
It was laid bare when prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia revealed on Oct. 19 they had taken the Washington mantra “follow the money” to heart in tracking the activities of Russian citizen Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, chief accountant of Operation Lakhta.
According to the filing, she “managed the financing of substantially all aspects of the Project [Lakhta] operations” and — luckily for prosecutors but perhaps unluckily for Russia — Khusyaynova kept “meticulous” records, covering her payments for rent, travel, furniture, and even garbage disposal. It’s unclear how the emails arrived in Washington, but creative Western hacking seems a distinct possibility.
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These two quotes should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
These quotes aptly describes Haley.
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In 1984, with a briefcase in hand, Kerry Noble walked into a Kansas City, Mo church with intentions of blowing it up. He waited for his opportunity as he sat among a crowd of about 60 people.
"All I had to do was hit the timer and walk out," Noble said. "About 10 or 15 minutes later, there'd be an explosion, and everyone would dye."
Noble said he thought he was going to start a revolution. (Sound familiar?)
But as Noble sat among the crowd, he put a face to his "enemy." And his "enemy" appeared no different than anyone else. He thought of the consequences--of what would have amounted to the largest terrorist attack in America at the time. Then, he picked up the briefcase and left.
Noble joined other former cult members and experts back in 2002 at APA's Annual Convention in Chicago during the session "Cults of ha.tred" to speak out on the effects of mind control and destructive cults. To fully understand the psychological factors that lead to terrorism, the answers might lie in understanding cults.
Deborah Layton has encouraged more help for mind-control victims. "It can happen to the best of us," Layton said. At age 18, in the early 1970s, Layton's need for belonging attracted her to the Peoples Temple, a group that offered her a sense of comfort and answers to life. The leader, JimJones, made her feel like she was joining the Peace Corps. A few years later, Layton went to Jonestown.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
She escaped from Jonestown in 1978 and reported to police about activities there. She later said she felt ashamed at being warped into a cult. Steve Hassan, a former cult member and licensed mental health counselor who specializes in helping those in destructive cults, says recovery from a cult's mind control can be facilitated if victims attain the proper information, support and interventions from former cult members.
A destructive cult is an authoritarian regime that often uses behavior modification on followers, such as thought- stopping techniques and instilling an "us-versus-them" mindset, Hassan said. With thought-stopping techniques, members are taught to stop doubts from entering their consciousness about the cult, often with a key phrase they repeat. Phobia indoctrination is also used, where cults play on a person's irrational fears.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a destructive cult, Trumpism"/Q" checks most of the boxes.
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If you haven't figured it out by now, republicans are the source of the majority of problems within our government, and within our country. McConnell is a shinning example of everything that's wrong with our government and America'. After Trump and republicans signed a massive tax cut for themselves, corporations, and the most wealthy, without any concern on how it was going to be paid for, McConnell came out and announced that republicans were looking at making cuts to medicare, medicaid and social security, in order to pay for the massive tax cuts they had just given to themselves. I say again, Republican are the source of the majority of problems within our government, within our country.
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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The Trump followers who've been out protesting are truly the dregs of humanity. Like Trump, they are indifferent to the harm and potential devastation they placing our medical infrastructure in by spreading this virus.
Do they really believe that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 30 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders, who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should consider growing the fk up.
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The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.
Economic inequality, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, is best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them...
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
But isn't conservatism about freedom? Of course everyone wants freedom, and so conservatism has no choice but to promise freedom to its subjects. In reality conservatism has meant complicated things by "freedom", and the reality of conservatism in practice, has scarcely corresponded even to the contorted definitions in conservative texts.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is..
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of state terror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
For thousands of years, conservatism was universally understood as being in opposition to democracy. Having lost much of its ability to attack democracy openly, conservatism has tried in recent years to redefine the word "democracy" while engaging in deception to make the substance of democracy unthinkable.
Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.
Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.
Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.
The main idea of public relations is the distinction between "messages" and "facts". Messages are the things you want people to believe. A message should be vague enough that it is difficult to refute by rational means.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact trying to take it from you. January 6 ring a bell? Trump tried to steal an election, by falsely claiming it was being stolen from him.
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is.
There will be no guilt, no apologies, no shame, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath like Trump.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a narcissistic sociopath.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises..
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Bannon, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way...
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities..
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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Jonathan Karl, the ABC News chief Washington correspondent broke down some details he learned while writing his new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
That includes what he has heard about Paul Gosar. Anderson Cooper asked Karl if Republicans have privately expressed embarrassment, shame and concern to him about the future of the party, Karl said, “Oh, yes.”
He expanded on that in reference to Gosar, after multiple Republicans stood up for him on Wednesday. But Karl said it’s a different story behind closed doors.
“The way Republicans would talk about Gosar privately, is entirely different than the spectacle today of effectively defending him,” Karl said. “I mean, they say he's lost it.
Gosar, whose own siblings have spoken out against him on multiple occasions, responded to the censure by retweeting the same video that got him in trouble in the first place, and Karl was not surprised.
“I've had top Republicans tell me about Gosar specifically, before this episode. ‘He's not all there,’” Karl said.
Gosar has a face that should always be covered under a whiteHood. Yikes!!
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"Ignorance is Strength." This is the official moto of the cult known as Trumpism. We know this because of Trump sycophants like Kellyanne, who promotes the idea of "alternative facts." And Rudy Giuliani, who famously declared that " truth isn't truth."
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party (Trump) is always right."
-- George Orwell, 1984
In George Orwell's novel 1984, a Thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding beliefs that oppose or question the Party. Thoughtcrime is thinking of anything that the Thought Police and the Party deem is illegal. Doubting the party line, or thinking anything contrary to the Party's message.
Within Trump's cult, he has a name for those who commit "Thoughtcrimes" against him, like questioning his actions, and calling out his lies, Trump refers to these people as "Never Trumpers."
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It is of the utmost importance, that we the people, stay 100% focused on what the objectives are for this election.
The number one objective in 2020, is to remove Trump from office. The 2nd objective, is to remove Trump from office. The 3rd objective, is to remove Trump from office. If we the people, fail to achieve any of those objectives. America will officially become a failed dystopian state.
If we the people, fail to remove the existential threat to America from the Oval Office, it will mean the beginning of the end of our democracy, and the end of our 243 year old constitutional Republic. We will have traded those 243 years away for a career criminal, con-man, traitor, and tyrant. It would also mean watching Trump do the unthinkable, placing another one of his unqualified cultist on the Supreme Court. This will easily be the most important and consequential election in our lifetime, so we can't f**k this one up, because there won't be any "do-overs."
VOTE 💙 NO MATTER WHO!!! And that includes the Senate, because nothing changes unless we the people take back the Oval Office and the Senate.
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Marine Sgt, Maj. Dan Daly is known for being one of the most decorated service members of all time. He was awarded not one, but TWO medals of honor.
He coined an expression that will forever live on in books, movies, and among troops He almost earned a third for his part in a counter-attack against the enemy in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood. Instead, Daly was given the Distinguished Service Cross and, later, the Navy Cross.
In June 1918 at the battle of Belleau Wood in WW1, the Marines were pinned down under heavy artillery barrage. At one point in the battle, the now 44 year old Daly, led his Marines in a counter-attack against machine gun emplacements with a battle cry that has become Marines lore “Come on, you sons of B——, do you want to live forever?!” In the course of that battle he was wounded three times. 1,800 Marines died in the battle of Belleau Wood.
These are the types of Americans that our current sitting president refers to as "losers."
And Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Since then we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said. Two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes in nothing, honors nothing, and respects nothing. As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
Semper Fi.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
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Almost every president has occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 30,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully execute the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama..
• Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
• Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
• Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to his apologist Mark Meadows.
• Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
• Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-nazi5 while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
• Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
• Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
• Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
• Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
• Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
• Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
• Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
• Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
• Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
• Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
• Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is deviant despotism.
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This is what I learned.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be with his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence along the narrow path, leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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Today Trump openly admitted that he wants to dominate over the American people. This is the dictator that most of us knew was waiting to show itself since the day Trump was sworn in.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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This is a cautionary example of what can happen when you decide that you're going to ignore scientists, doctors and medical experts, and instead decide you're going to listen to the dumbest human being on the planet, Donald J Trump, a con-man who knows less than nothing about, viruses, infectious diseases, and how they spread.
A 60 year old Ohio man who dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as a “political ploy” and ripped his state’s lockdown as “bull s–t,” died of COVID-19 last month.
His wife has since stated that we should "use this as a reminder to continue practicing social distancing and keep each other safe.”
He passed away in Columbus Ohio — exactly a month after firing off angry messages on social media about the the virus and being quarantined.
He called “bulls–t” on Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s stay at home order and closing bars and restaurants.
“He doesn’t have that authority. If you are paranoid about getting sick just don’t go out. It shouldn’t keep those of us from living our lives. This madness has to stop" he wrote.
He tested positive for the coronavirus in late March and passed away on April 15.
“Does anybody have the guts to say this COVID-19 is a political ploy? Asking for a friend. Prove me wrong,” he wrote on March 13.
COVID-19: "Please inform your "friend" that I am very real, and that he has been proven wrong."
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Trump is doing to America, what he did to his casinos.
In 1990 Trump ran his casinos into the ground, and he almost brought down an entire city with them. Trump has said he got out of Atlantic City at the right time and that he left a rich man. But financial and legal records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act offer a glimpse into how he bankrupt his casinos.
On April 18, 1990, just two weeks after the Trump Taj Mahal opened its doors, Trump sat down for an interview with Larry King, in a suite at the new casino.
"The Taj Mahal is a tremendous success. The things that I do are trophies," Trump told King.
At this point, the Taj Mahal had already experienced four days in which its bank account contained less than zero dollars, with deficits as deep as $1.7 million dollars. It had been open for only 16 days, according to a NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement report from 1990.
The lack of money raised so many red flags that, by June, the state's Division of Gaming Enforcement began monitoring the Taj's bank balances on a daily basis -- a very unusual practice, according to a former Casino Control Commission regulator. The regulator said that the opening of the Taj Mahal was "especially absurd," particularly because of its high debt.
Trump already had other Atlantic City casinos -- the Castle, Regency and Penthouse -- and they were cash drains, according to a report issued by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in August 1990.
They were "generating an insufficient level of cash flow" that was pushing the Trump Organization towards "financial collapse," the report said. Trump had a lot on the line. The Trump Organization was approximately $3.4 billion in debt, $832.5 million of which was personally guaranteed by Trump, according the 1990 Casino Control Commission report.
The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement's report chronicled the dire condition of the Trump Organization, revealing that it wasn't bringing in enough money to support daily operations or its debt. Trump used junk bonds at high interest rates — even though he had testified before the casino commission that he wouldn't, according to the former Commission regulator.
At the time of the Taj Mahal's opening, a number of slot machines were failing. Trump told King that this was because the machines were "too hot" -- so busy that they shut down. However, reports at the time showed that Trump's back of the house couldn't keep proper track of the money coming in and out of the machines.
During the first month, the Taj's revenue fell below forecasted levels. And this trend continued through the summer.
The Casino Control Commission began fielding calls and letters from contractors angry they hadn't been paid by the Trump Organization. At least four lawsuits were filed in just one month claiming as much as $80 million, according to the August 1990 Division of Gaming Enforcement report.
Trump offered to pay $20 million in cash to contractors, and issued notes for the remaining $50 to $60 million over the next five years.
There was a deadline hanging over the Trump Organization's head: June 15, 1990.
Trump had a personal loan payment of approximately $28 million due, and Trump Castle had to come up with $20 million, according to the Division of Gaming Enforcement report. Trump Castle couldn't make it -- it was in default, though with a 10-day grace period.
Then on June 26, in what the Casino Control Commission describes as "an 11th hour" save, Trump sought a $65 million dollar loan from nine banks -- $20 million was handed out that day, allowing the organization to make its immediate payments.
Less than a year later, the Taj Mahal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991.
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In his final speech, the night before he died, he said: “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” What he said in Memphis on April 3, 1968 — riffing without notes to an audience of striking black sanitation workers — clearly resonates today. We all know his closing line (“I’ve been to the mountaintop … and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you”); less well known is the speech itself — and why he was in Memphis to deliver it.
“The world is messed up. The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around … We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying we are God’s children, and if we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live …
“All we say to America is to be true to what you said on paper. If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand … the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right"
“Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation … standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”
--Dr Martin Luther King.
As a Marine veteran,Vote 💙 all the way through. 🇺🇸
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Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth..
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics..
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
Trump's failed coup on January 6, was very reminiscent of AdolfH's failed coup.
On January 6, Trump had only one card left, and that was theViolence Card, and he played it. His idol felt the same way back in 1923.
Germany November 9, 1923: AdolfBelieves the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, he stages the Beer Hall coup. It fails.
In the aftermath of the failed coup,
AdolfWas convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison.
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Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
The optimism was part of a larger embrace by Russia of Trump's "America First" outlook, which emphasizes U.S. business interests and national security over promoting freedom and democracy, said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a researcher who has worked with the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Initiative.
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said.
2 years later, the sanctions are still in place😂😂😂😄 and the thrill of Trump's election has faded amid an intensifying federal investigation of possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. Thanks Robert Mueller. America will forever be in your debt. Make Traitors Fear Again!!!!!😄
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Our Constitution vs Project 2025. Pick a side.
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived.
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
The creation of the U.S. Constitution depended upon the knowledge, experience, and dedication of its framers, just as its endurance depends upon the knowledge and experience of each succeeding generation of Americans. For this reason, it is important for us to learn and understand the governing principles of our nation, set forth in the Constitution.
Semper Fi.. 🇺🇸
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Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it is that Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic, and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and his presidency? Not a f**king thing.
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“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
As we've seen time and time again, Trump, Rudy, Graham, Nunes, Gaetz and others, are wilfully aiding and abetting Putin and his Russian security services in propagating their false narratives and propaganda here in America. What's worse is that they are attacking America's democratic institutions and our intelligence agencies, the very same institutions and agencies that exists to protect America from foreign adversaries like Russia. This constitutes an immediate threat to America's national security. This is something that should concern every American, regardless of party affiliation..
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A narcissistic sociopath like Trump is a person that only cares about power, control, and self-adulation. There will be no guilt, no apologies, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a sociopathic narcissist.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises..
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way...
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities..
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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Everyone has that person in their life who "always plays the victim." When something goes wrong it's "never their fault."
They're the type of person who does something wrong then tries to paint you as being the real problem for calling them out. Because their bad deed was just them making things even.
These people can be impossible to deal with because they're never wrong. This mentality also stunts their developmental growth, because when you're never wrong, you don't have to change a thing.
According to research, the VictimMentality or, as they call it, "Tendency for InterpersonalVictimhood," or TIV, is a stable construct that people can carry with them throughout their lives.
It's defined as "an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships." That's why your friend with the VictimMentality always plays theVictim and everything that happens in the world is an affront to them.
"HI, my name is DJT, but you can call me Victim. Many big strong men with tears in their eyes are saying this." 🤣
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing. Because Republicans don't want to govern, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about.
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. We have this under control. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance, lies, and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, or flag waving. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. Currently there is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. I recognize no one's authority. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I've had success in other countries, but America is making me great again."
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Trump: "For the record, and just so you know, I wanted to invoke the defense production act back in January when I said the coronavirus was a pandemic. In fact, I was the first person to call it a pandemic, way before anyone knew what a pandemic was. But no one would listen to me."
Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, magic real, and my uncle attended MIT."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am absolutely real, magic is not. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when Easter is, I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense."
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Trump: "And when you storm the Capitol in my name, don't worry, because I'll be there with you!!"
But when Ashli Babbitt went down, Trump was no where to be found.
"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
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Rudy was right about one thing, This has nothing to do with collusion, but it has everything to do with a criminal conspiracy. And remember, Manafort was in that Trump Tower meeting along with Don Jr, Kushner, and Russian agents. This trial is simply about putting pressure on Manafort. Once he's faced with the full weight of the amount of years he's facing, he'll cut a deal and reveal everything he knows about the treasonous Trump traitor family. And make no mistake, Mueller has Manafort dead to rights. Because the case against Manafort is all on paper and in black and white. It's called a paper trail of evidence.
It's all financial crimes that aren't much different than the evidence used against Bernie Madoff. Money laundering, mail fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, fake LLCs,, tax evasion, bank deposits, bank withdrawals.....and it all leaves a paper trail leading right back to Manafort. He's skrewed.
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In 2015, McConnell made the best case for getting rid of the filibuster.
Mitch McConnell made history in January 2015 when he filibustered his own bill on the Senate floor.
Mitch filibustered his own proposal, which he had introduced only hours earlier. The bill was a measure proposed by the White House, based on a "last-choice," one-off fix McConnell himself came up with in the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff, to take America's borrowing limit out of Congress' hands — the president could raise the debt ceiling, and Congress could override him only with a veto-proof majority.
McConnell introduced the bill to show that President Obama doesn't have the votes for such a measure even in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Well on that day, Majority Leader Harry Reid called his bluff.
McConnell demanded an up or down vote on a measure that would allow the president to have more authority in raising the debt ceiling.
McConnell was betting that some Democrats would vote against the move, which would have allowed McConnell to portray President Barack Obama's desire for such authority as something even Democrats opposed. He also hoped it would show disunity among Democrats.
At first Dems opposed an up or down vote on McConnell's proposal, but after discussing it over, they decided to call McConnell's bluff, and agreed to his proposal for an up or down vote.
McConnell was immediately forced to turn around and say "I OBJECT!!!!," filibustering his own suggestion. 😂
"I don't know how the Republicans can say they're not abusing the filibuster after what we saw on the floor today," Sen. Durbin said at the time.
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We now have a president who doesn't need Saudi money to boost revenues in his failing hotels and resorts.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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These two quotes should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Twitter has shut down multiple accounts that it says were operated by a white supremacist group posing as liberal groups encouraging violence.
A white supremacist group created a fake Twitter account, posed as the Antifa movement and called for violence during the ongoing protests sweeping the nation, Twitter said.
“Tonight’s the night comrades," the group tweeted on Sunday. “Tonight we say ‘f--k the city’ and we move into residential areas... the white hoods... and we take what’s ours.”
Twitter said the white supremacist group Identity Evropa used one fake account, @Antifa_US, to call for violence in majority white suburbs, in the name of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"This account violated our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. We took action after the account sent a Tweet inciting violence and broke the Twitter Rules" the company said.
Twitter said it has also targeted other fake accounts run by Identity Evropa. The company said the accounts posted hateful tweets targeting race, religion and sexual orientation.
Twitter has seen a wave of fake accounts spreading false information about the ongoing protests in recent days.
Trump and his supporters have claimed, without evidence, that Antifa is behind the violence seen in some of the protests nationwide.
In an internal FBI situation report, the FBI’s Washington Field Office found no intel evidence indicating Antifa involvement or presence in the violence that occurred on May 31 during the D.C.-area protests. That same day, Trump announced on Twitter that he would designate “Antifa” a terrorist organization, even though antifa is not an organized group.
But not surprisingly, the report did warn that individuals from a far-right social media group had called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, and use automatic weapons against protesters. A Department of Homeland Security intelligence note warned law-enforcement officials that a white supremacist channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram encouraged its followers to incite violence to start a race war during the protests.
Antifa, short for anti-facist, poses a threat to a devout fascist like Trump, so it only makes sense that Trump would want to go after them. Adolf did the same thing to opponents of his fascist regime. It's only natural that a fascist would view any anti-facist group has his enemy.
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Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent expressed his disgust Wednesday over rioters who stormed the Capitol, and Trump's rhetoric that sparked the insurrection.
"He's committed a mortal crime against the republic," Dent said. "He should have resigned over this, but he won't, of course."
In an interview, Dent conveyed his anger with a pro-Trump rioter carrying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol building, calling it a "desecration."
"I always proudly took my constituents to a plaque right by the east-front Capitol, right by the front door. It's a plaque dedicated to the honorary first defenders from Allentown, Pennsylvania, in Redding, Pennsylvania ... who went to the Capitol, at the call of Abraham Lincoln, to defend the Capitol during the Civil War. ... The confederates never got there. They were there to protect against the rebellion. And here we are, watching Confederate flags running through the Capitol. To see this desecration to me, it's so upsetting as an American, as a Republican. How could this happen?"
"The voters, the courts, the states – they've all spoken. They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever. This election was actually not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000 and 2004 were all closer."
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter aDeath spiral. We’d never see the whole nation accept an election again. Every four years would bring a scramble for power at any cost."
--Mitch McConnell, Jan 6.
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Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, Israeli intelligence officials gathered at CIA headquarters, where they were told something astonishing: Russia, the agency believed, had “leverages of pressure” over the incoming president. Therefore, the agency advised the Israelis to consider the possibility that Trump might pass their secrets on to Russia. The Israelis dismissed the warning as outlandish. Who could believe that the world’s most powerful country was about to hand its presidency to a Russian dupe? That the United States government had, essentially, fallen?
A few months later, Trump invited Russian diplomats into the Oval Office. He boasted to them that he had fired “nut job” James Comey. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” At the same meeting, Trump passed on to the Russians a highly sensitive intelligence secret Israel had captured from a valuable source inside ISIS. It was the precise danger Israel had been cautioned about.
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“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it."
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham, May 3, 2016
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
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For the last four straight years, Trump, along with his surrogates, have adopted and used some of the most fiendish propaganda tactics on his followers. They have told so many lies, that Trump’s followers can no longer distinguish truth from fiction.
Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition, and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
-- Joseph Goebbels
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set you free
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
Vote 💙 like your right to vote, and our democracy depends on it, because it actually does.
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever—and possibly get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he could possibly get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Mos cow Mitch: "I thoroughly enjoyed ruining the Senate over the years. Its been my life's work."
Back in December of 2012, Senate negotiations took a strange turn when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to filibuster a vote that HE had called for himself.
It started when McConnell demanded an up or down vote on a measure that would allow the president to have more authority in raising the debt ceiling.
McConnell was betting that some Democrats would vote against the move, "which would have allowed McConnell to portray President Obama's desire for such authority as something even Democrats opposed.
He also hoped it would show disunity among Democrats.
But Dems soon realized a way to turn the tables and decided to call McConnell's bluff. Harry Reid objected at first, but told McConnell he thought it might be a good idea. After Senate staff reviewed the proposal, Reid came back to the floor and proposed a straight up-or-down vote on the idea, which is what McConnell had demanded.
McConnell was forced to say no.🤣
McConnell was forced to turn around and say "I object," filibustering his own suggestion. True story.
"I don't know how the Republicans can say they're not abusing the filibuster after what we saw on the floor today," Sen Durbin told the Huffington Post at the time.
"It's somewhat comic, but sad as well, that we've reached the point where Sen. McConnell will not even accept a majority vote on his own measure."
McConnell introduced the bill to show that President Obama didn't have the votes for such a measure even in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Well on that day Majority Leader Harry Reid called his bluff, and McConnell folded
like a paper origami swan. 🤣
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
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What's so sad is that we don't even have a Secretary of Defense now. We use to have General Mattis, a highly decorated, universally respected Marine Corps General as our Sec of Def. Now we have Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive as our "acting" Sec of Def. As usual, General Mattis was way too qualified, too honorable, and too principled for Trump's tastes, so he was replaced. Maybe Shanahan realized that he was not qualified for the job as Sec of Def, and if that's so, I salute him for having the integrity to step down. Or maybe he realized like many of us do, that Trump's administration is simply a ruinous dumpster fire, from which nothing good will flow.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow...
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other."
-- Ulysses S. Grant
“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse,”
-- Ulysses S. Grant
“As soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.”
-- Ulysses S. Grant
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Dr. Fiona Hill
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves..
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified."
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016."
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
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Rittenhouse: "Sure, I may only be 17, and
although I have no formal, let alone informal training in the use of deadly force, I believe I am more than qualified to take my AR-15, and go into a town embroiled in chaos and disorder, and regulate the streets of Kenosha. What could possibly go wrong?
You can't argue with that logic.
Rittenhouse came to Kenosha that night with ill-will, and malice in his heart. And even though they'll never admit it, his supporters know that it's true. He used the chaos and disorder of that night, as an opportunity to live out his Call of Duty fantasies. And in the process, he took two lives.
There's no way Rittenhouse should have walked away scot-free after taking two lives. At the very LEAST, he's guilty of manslaughter.
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Instead of fantasizing about ki//ing his fellow members of Congress, shouldn't Gosar be focused on writing legislation that will help the citizens in his district, and the country? I mean, it's kind-of like his job, right?
"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state..
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017. The tycoons were given unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle.
Rick Gates was heavily involved in planning the inauguration, with a Yahoo News report in 2016 calling him the “shadow chair” of the event. There have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it all went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised an astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear. The chair of GW Bush’s 2nd inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “Trump had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events that we had, and yet they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. Counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Back in June of 2017, ABC News reported that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.
It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. Mueller was exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration. Sometime around March of 2018, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee..
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
Blavatnik is a Soviet-born, UK-based billionaire who is a US citizen. He is also partnered with Vekselberg, in Russia’s aluminum industry. Together, they built the largest aluminum company in Russia by merging with Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Deripaska is also a player in Mueller's investigation — he employed Manafort, and Manafort tried to get in touch with him during 2016.
Alexander Mashkevitch, a Kazakh mining billionaire, was on the guest list for the “candlelight dinner,” and happens to have been in the Seychelles around the same time as Erik Prince.
And Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended Don Jr’s infamous Trump Tower meeting, were in town too — they attended an inauguration night party thrown by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who’s widely viewed as the biggest supporter of Putin’s regime in Congress.
Several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent over $100 million for what they got. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, it is Rick Gates.
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.
Lev Parnas" lawyer sent a letter to Moscow Mitch stating that he is ready to give testimony, as well as provide documents, that will prove that GOP Super PAC America One, Rudy, Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mulvaney, Bill Barr, Nunes, Pence, and Desperate Housewife of Capitol Hill 👉Lindsey Graham, were all part of Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Is it any wonder why Republicans were so vehemently against introducing witnesses and evidence into the Senate trial. They were covering up their own crimes. But it will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
--Buddha
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Trump has tweeted about Putin 66 times.
November 2013: “I do have a relationship”
Trump: “I do have a relationship and I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today. He’s probably very interested in what you and I are saying today, and I’m sure he’s going to be seeing it in some form.”
March 2014: “Putin even sent me a present”
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump told the audience that he’d interacted with Putin’s team when he was in Moscow.
Trump: “You know, I was in Moscow a couple months ago, I own the Miss Universe pageant, and they treated me so great. Putin even sent me a present, beautiful present, with a beautiful note. I spoke to all of his people. And, you know, you look at what he’s doing with President Obama. He’s, like, toying with him. He’s toying with him.”
May 2014: “I spoke … with President Putin”
Speaking at the National Press Club:
Trump: “I was in Russia, I was in Moscow recently. And I spoke indirectly — and directly — with President Putin, who could not have been nicer.”
November 2015: “I got to know him very well”
Asked what Trump would do to confront Russian aggression, Trump first downplayed Russia’s role, noting that there were issues with other countries, too. Then he described knowing Putin — because he and the Russian leader had both been on the same episode of “60 Minutes.”
Trump: “But, as far as the Ukraine is concerned, and you could Syria — as far as Syria, I like — if Putin wants to go in, and I got to know him very well because we were both on ‘60 Minutes,’ we were stablemates, and we did very well that night. But, you know that.”
July 2016: “I don’t know who Putin is” 🤣
During his last news conference before the election, Trump was asked about a relationship with Putin.
Trump: “I never met Putin, I don’t know who Putin is. He said one nice thing about me. He said I’m a genius. I said thank you very much to the newspaper and that was the end of it. I never met Putin.”
(Putin did not call Trump a genius.)
“I have nothing to do with Putin. I’ve never spoken to him. I don’t know anything about him other than he will respect me.”
July 2016: “I have no relationship with him”
Trump was asked about his relationship with Putin in more detail a few days later during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”
HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: What exactly is your relationship with Vladimir Putin?
TRUMP: I have no relationship to — with him. I have no relationship with him.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But if you have no relationship with Putin, then why did you say in 2013, I do have a relationship. In 2014, I spoke …
TRUMP: Because he has said nice things about me over the years.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Yet you said for three years, ’13, ’14 and ’15, that you did have a relationship with him.
TRUMP: No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me …
STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m asking you.
TRUMP: — with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don’t think I’ve ever met him. I never met him. I don’t think I’ve ever met him.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You would know it if you did.
TRUMP: I think so.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But I just want to clear this up, because you did say on three different occasions you had a relationship with him. Now you say there is none.
TRUMP: "Well, I don’t know what it means by having a relationship. I mean he was saying very good things about me, but I don’t have a relationship with him. I didn’t meet him. I haven’t spent time with him. I didn’t have dinner with him. I didn’t go hiking with him."
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
This pretty much sums up the loathsome state of the Republican party today
We are currently facing a Constitution crisis, and our democracy as we know it is on the line.
The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did he do the right thing? So far, republicans have failed..
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
I salute true patriots like Schiff, Doug Jones, Romney, and their colleagues, who had the courage to do the right thing, when it truly mattered. Thank you for standing up for the American people, the country, and our Constitution.
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In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him. It was a pathological barrage of serial lies in which he obliterated all of his old records.
Trump told 664 lies in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.
Trump averaged 26.3 lies per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.
Trump told more lies in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).
The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.
Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.
Trump’s pre-midterm barrage, Oct. 5 to Nov. 5
NOV 5, 2018
Trump lie: “And we gave our great warriors their largest pay raise in more than a decade.”
in fact: The military pay increase in the 2019 defense bill, 2.6 per cent, is the largest in nine years, since the 3.4 per cent increase under Obama in 2010. More than a decade" is simply incorrect.
Trump lie: “And there's more coming. We passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor rather than waiting on line for weeks and months to see a doctor. Forty-four years, they tried to pass that. And I came up with that idea, and I thought it was brilliant. I went back to my people and I said, you know what we'll do? There's no way there are so many people in line, takes months and months. I said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to have those people get off line, go outside, see a doctor. And we'll pay for the doctor. I said, ‘I'm so smart. I am the most brilliant human being that has ever lived.’ 😂😄😂
in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was passed and created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, simply modified the program.
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal" admits that the book was “full of falsehoods.” Schwartz said.
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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It's clear that Trump sees himself as a dictator like Putin and Kim Jung Un. And if were not for that stubborn constitution,😠 the rule of law, 😠and the free press,😠 he would be living the dictator's dream right now.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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Greed over lives. Money over lives. Metal over lives.
Oh well, the only question now is, who's next? We can say this with confidence, because Trump, Moscow Mitch and republicans in Congress have made it abundantly clear, that greed, the NRA, and money, is more important than your life and even your kid's life. So....whose next? What will be the name of the next school I wonder. Whose kids will be next I wonder? Who will be the next parents to have to bury their child I wonder?
There is at least one Republican in Congress who finally gets it. He finally understands. That Republican is Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio. Mike Turner announced his support for a ban on sales of “military style weapons” following the deadly mass shooting in Dayton Ohio after he discovered his daughter came close to being one of the casualties.
“I believe these are necessary steps forward in protecting our country and a testament to American values, which include protecting human life,” Turner, said in a statement
Turner, a Dayton native, said he would also support legislation placing restrictions on high-capacity magazines as well as so-called red-flag laws, which allow police and family members to “quickly identify people who are dangerous and remove their ability to harm others.
Turner made this statement after he found out that his teenage daughter was across the street from the shooting that night and she had just missed being out on the street when the shooting started by just seconds.
So now all of a sudden he cares. It took his daughter nearly being one of the victims for him to finally get it. He should have gotten it after Vegas, Orlando, and after Parkland. He should have cared back in 2012 when 20 babies, 6 and 7 years of age, were cut down with an assault rifle.
So.....whose going to be next?
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Trump interview, May 2020:
Reporter: "Mr President, I want to ask you one more question, about the 70k American lives that have been lost. Grandparents, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters... we've lost more people now than we lost in the Vietnam War. What do you want to say to those families tonight?"
"First I want to say that we all warriors now. And as warriors, some of them are going to die. I always felt 70 80 90 100 thousand people. And as horrible as that is....we're talking about filling up Yankee Stadium with death. BUT as horrible as that is, the number is probably going to be a lot higher than that."
Just to put things into perspective:
Vietnam War 1961 to 75 - 58k Americans died.
Korean War 1950 to 53 - 36k Americans died.
WW1 -- 116K Americans died.
The Trump virus, Feb to July - 155k Americans died.
Never forget..
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Trump: "You've got Guatemalans, Mexicans, ISIS, the Menendez Brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, decepticons, those flyingMonkeys from the Wizard of Oz, Hannibal Lecter, Thanos, and severalBabadooks, all crossing the border illegally. Its scary stuff."😂😂
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“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
A GOP precinct chair in Utah wrote on Facebook this week that he thinks giving voting rights to women was a “grave mistake.”
“The more I study history, the more I think giving voting rights to others not head of household has been a grave mistake,” Casey Fisher, a Davis County precinct chair who oversees Republican caucuses in his district.
Fisher deleted both the post and his Facebook account when he began receiving angry messages,.too late!🤣)
If the Republican party gets it's way, people will start to lose their right to vote in the future.
Vote 💙 like your very right to vote, and our democratic republic depends on it. Because it literally does.
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"Since Donald was elected, I’ve been surprised by nothing he’s done or said. But I have been shocked by the wholesale abdication of responsibility by the Republican party during this election campaign and throughout the past four years. I didn’t understand the extent to which they would be willing to enable him in Congress and in his cabinet. If they had done their job and acted as a separate branch of government, he would have been contained. By siding with him 100% of the time, they have ensured we are now faced with several concurrent disasters that are getting exponentially worse.
No other president in history has been able to push the envelope the way Donald does. He’s always trying to see what he can get away with and, as I have seen through the course of his life, he’s always got away with everything. No one holds him accountable. He constantly gets rewarded for failing. The Republicans understood what he was capable of and have allowed him to push through an agenda that is completely at odds with what the majority wants.
My theory about the way Donald has run his campaign is that he knows he’s in desperate shape, so he’s going to burn it all down, sow more chaos and division, because that’s where he succeeds. He knows that he’s losing – he’ll deny it mightily – and at some level he understands what’s at stake. If he loses, he’s probably going to prison. So, if he’s going down, he’s going to take us all down with him.
I’ve always believed that deep down Donald is a terrified little boy. The amount of fear he’s feeling now has got to be unhinging him. Not only did he get sick with the virus, there’s the tax story and his prospects in the election looking really bad right now. He’s got to be absolutely panicked.
He’s ignored the severity of the pandemic all year because the idea of illness as weakness is so deeply ingrained in my family, that even an association with it is unacceptable, and that’s why now we’ve got 210,000 Americans dead. But now his statement – you can beat it, don’t be afraid of it – is going to result in more people becoming sick, and many of those will die. Even before he said that, I believed he was engaging in mass murder, but that sealed it for me. Anybody who’s capable of putting hundreds of millions of people at risk to avoid looking bad doesn’t care about you."
--Bob Woodward
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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"The scale of Trump’s delusion is quite startling. This is not merely an eccentric interpretation of the facts or an interesting foible, nor is it an irrelevant example of anguished post-presidency chatter. It is a rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government. There is no Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. He//, there is nothing even approximating a Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. The election has been certified, Joe Biden is the president, and, until 2024, that is all there is to it. It does not matter what one’s view of Trump is. It does not matter whether one voted for or against Trump. It does not matter whether one views Trump’s role within the Republican Party favorably or unfavorably. We are talking here about cold, hard, neutral facts that obtain irrespective of one’s preferences; it is not too much to ask that the former head of the executive branch should understand them."
-- Charles Cooke, National Review
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"Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended, by political parties and organized citizens but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not.
This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy – packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence) and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy, gradually, subtly, and even legally, eliminate it.
Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one."
How Democracies Die --by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
This is the state of the Republican party today.
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Make no mistake, most republicans on Capitol Hill are fully aware of exactly who and what Trump is. They know that Trump is an existential threat to America, to our Constitution, and to our democratic institutions. Trump is a criminal minded, narcissistic sociopath who never puts anyone or anything before himself, unless he's physically using that person or thing as a shield. What most of us would call treason or betrayal, Trump calls it " looking out for the only thing that matters" himself.
Trump has always been a self-absorbed extreme narcissist. Every decision Trump has ever made in his entire life, before and and since he became president, has been based solely on his own best interests. There can be no other gods in an extreme narcissist’s world, because as far as Trump is concerned, he is god. Ego rules supremely in a narcissist’s life. And What motivates Trump is whatever fuels his ego, things like power, control, adulations, praises, cruelty to others, and personal monetary gain.
Another way that an extreme narcissist like Trump energizes his ego is through playing the role of the victim. The goal of Trump's deception is to make you believe that he suffers more than you, or anyone for that matter.
Trump is incredibly adept at the game of manipulation, especially when it comes to his gullible and cultish base. So instead of taking responsibility for his actions, and the consequences that results from them, he tries to make others feel responsible for his plight. Because In the eyes of an extreme narcissist like Trump, their actions and behavior are always right and totally justified.
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An ode to Cassidy Hutchinson.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
I salute you Cassidy!! 👏
Semper Fi..
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@sareeyemanusqaame8723
Thanks for providing a perfect example of Soviet era whataboutism.
Deflecting or changing the subject is called "what-aboutism" — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. It's an attractive tactic for Putin, Trump, and Russian trolls. Whataboutism allows them to be vague, but appear straight-talking at the same time. What-aboutism is essentially a schoolyard taunt, brought to a national and global level.
The idea behind what-aboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A's faults — "Yeah? Well WHAT ABOUT that bad thing you did?"
It's not a complicated tactic — any grade-schooler can master it. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia.
One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it's a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings..
Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a black-and-white worldview. But in this worldview, it's very difficult to be the good guy; idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be "unmasked" as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency. If nobody is perfect, then it means that Trump and Putin should get a pass for any wrongdoings.
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Trump and Republicans had a field day criticizing Obama’s response to the Ebola virus. Trump even tweeted that Obama should resign after only 11 reported Ebola cases and 2 deaths.
Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there.
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
After the Ebola virus outbreak, President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it in 2018.
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018. "And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump." Rhodes said.
"And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House."
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Experts have criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle the National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Trump: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a full grown baby, I spoke like a man-baby, I thought like a man-baby, I reasoned like a man-baby."
Trump is basically a 73 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He has no redeeming qualities to speak of. He is essentially an indecent human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind..
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Manafort will never see the light of day again. But he won't be alone. Trump is a highly infectious disease, and anyone who's gotten too close to him will go down. And Trump, being the sociopath that he is, will forget that he ever knew them.
One of the traits of a sociopath like Trump, is a complete lack of remorse, shame or guilt. He does not see others around him as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims and accomplices, who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, Stone, etc) The end always justifies the means.
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Richard Grenell, Trump’s inexplicable pick for the Director of National Intelligence, has less than zero experience in intelligence or national security. He had even less experience in diplomacy when Trump named him as the Ambassador to Berlin. What Grenell does have however, are shady connections to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, who are connected to the Russian mob, and the Kremlin. And this is the man that Trump's wants to trust with the entire treasure trove of Amercan intelligence and classified information.
In interviews, Lev Parnas described a meeting he and Rudy had in London where they met two associates of indicted Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, one of whom was on his legal team. The Washington Post reported on that meeting, and a Firtash lawyer confirmed that a meeting with Giuliani happened. Parnas said he was in the meeting, and that Giuliani used it to try to get material from the oligarch that would bolster his attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Trump.
Firtash is wanted in this country on multiple felony corruption and bribery charges. DOJ prosecutors say Firtash is an "upper-echelon associate" of Russian Organized Crime.
"Firtash is at dead center of the greatest corruption operation in Ukraine's history," said a former senior U.S. diplomat who served in the region. "He managed the flow of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine and beyond and it kept Ukraine dependent on Russia's gas supplies."
In 2013, as the Obama administration was pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine, federal prosecutors in Chicago indicted Firtash, charging him with a scheme to bribe Indian officials to obtain a lucrative mining deal to sell titanium to Boeing for the 787 Dreamliner. He was arrested in Vienna in March 2014, and released on $174 million bail and has been contesting his extradition to the U.S. ever since. The $174 million bail, said to be the largest in Austrian history, was paid by the Russian billionaire Vasily Anisimov, who is also under U.S. sanctions.
After the meeting, two of Giuliani’s allies joined Firtash’s legal team. Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova began representing Firtash in the summer of 2019, and worked to score political gifts for Trump from Firtash. Parnas said they also tried to leverage their Trumpworld connections to help Firtash.
“During the situation that was going on with the Firtash case, Victoria called Ric Grenell because he was the ambassador to Germany and Vienna was in the same orbit there,” Parnas said. “She basically asked him, if he sees any pressure coming from DOJ to extradite Firtash, if he could let us know. She told me that Grenell said he would.”
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From day one most Americans rightfully predicted that Trump's presidency was going to be one of the worst in modern history, but I don't think anyone ever imagined it would be an unmitigated catastrophe of this magnitude. And to add insult to injury, Trump announced that he's not responsible for anything that has happened. I'm assuming it's because deep down, he only considers himself to be a "pretend president." Trump has taken many things in life, but responsibility has never been one of them. But what he will do, is blame others for his clear and obvious failures.
Because of Trump, America has had the worst response to the pandemic than any country in the world. So far, more than 140 thousand Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. And many of those lives were needlessly lost due to Trump's indifference, gross incompetence, lack of leadership, criminal negligence, and dereliction of duty. When America needed sound leadership the most, we had a draft dodging president who was, and still is, AWOL.
I can still remember Trump telling us that everything was under control, and all we had to do was inject ourselves with disinfectants, and the virus would just magically disappear. Well today, we can all acknowledge that the virus did not disappear, but tens of thousands of Americans did.
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The seeds for the failure of Trump's presidency were planted before Trump was even sworn in, and he planted them himself. With his own hands, Trump sowed the seeds of ineptitude, indifference, and criminal incompetence, that have now defined his presidency...
From The Guardian:
Chris Christie volunteered himself for the job of running Trump's presidential transition team. But when he went to see Trump about it, Trump said he didn’t want a presidential transition team. Why did anyone need to plan anything before he actually became president? It’s legally required, said Christie. Trump asked where the money was going to come from to pay for the transition team. Christie explained that Trump could either pay for it himself or take it out of campaign funds. Trump didn’t want to pay for it himself. He didn’t want to take it out of campaign funds, either, but he agreed, grudgingly, that Christie should go ahead and raise a separate fund to pay for his transition team. “But not too much!” he said.
The transition team now moved into an office in downtown Washington DC, and went looking for people to occupy the top 500 jobs in the federal government. They needed to fill all the cabinet positions, of course, but also a whole bunch of others that no one in the Trump campaign even knew existed.
The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trump’s very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence, many floors above. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my phucking money! What the phuck is this?
Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my phucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain federal law to man-baby. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: phuck the law. I don’t give a phuck about the law. I want my phucking money. Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn’t have both his money and a transition.
Shut it down, said Trump. Shut down the transition. Bannon was finally able to convince man-baby why he needed a transition team. So Christie went back to preparing for a Trump administration. He tried to stay out of the news, but that proved difficult. From time to time, Trump would see something in the paper about Christie’s fundraising and become upset all over again. The money that people donated to his campaign Trump considered, effectively, his own money.
Christie would eventually be fired by Jared Kushner. Kushner’s role in his sacking was confirmed to him by Steve Bannon. But it wasn’t just Christie who would be fired. It was the entire transition team – although no one ever told them so directly. As Nancy Cook reported in Politico, Bannon visited the transition headquarters a few days after he had given Christie the news, and made a show of tossing the work the people there had done for Trump into the bin. Trump was going to handle the transition more or less by himself. Not even Bannon thought this was a good idea. “I was phucking nervous as sh*t,” Bannon later told friends. “I go, ‘Holy phuck, this guy Trump doesn’t know anything. And he doesn’t give a sh*t.’”
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In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction.
As far as I'm concerned, placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into a position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act.
The economic fate and national security of America should have never been placed in the hands of a mentally impaired, and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored...
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Republican Taliban: "Her body, my choice."
Republican Taliban: "Don't tread on me. Now if you'll excuse, I'm off to write laws that will tread on you."
Let's face it, Republicans have way more in common with the Taliban than they do with America.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. Conservatives tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession.
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
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"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Vote 💙 all the way through.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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How is that in these cases, some people believe that the unarmed person has no right to defend himself from an armed aggressor? And they view the person who is clearly armed, as the victim.
In this country, all you have to do is say that you felt threatened, and you can literally get away withMurder.
Fun fact: Arbery had every right to try and defend himself from two men with guns. The only person who's life was in danger, was Arbery's. Arbery posed no threat to them. Instead, it was the other way around. The same way Trayvon Martin had the right to defend himself from a grown man who was stalking him with a gun. Trayvon posed no threat to George Zimmerman that night, it was the other way around.
The sad truth is that theseFascistsTruly believe that Trump has given them the green light to act on their worst impulses.
Look at the guy from Charlottesville whoPlowed his car into a crowd of people. He did that because he thought it would please Trump. And it probably did. Rittenhouse did what he did because he thought it would please Trump and other like-mindedFascists. And it clearly did.
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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The worst recorded case of voter fraud in modern US history was carried out by who?
That's right, you guessed it.....Republicans.
A basic manipulation tactic of Trump's and the GOP, is to accuse your opponent of the exact thing that you are doing, so when you get caught doing that thing yourself, it doesn’t seem that drastic. Republicans know that when everyone votes they lose. The Repub party may not have the numbers, but they most certainly have the money. A large majority of money from Big Business and billion dollar corporations is funneled to Repub candidates. This money is used to buy republican politicians for the purpose of giving corporations control over our government.
In 2019, the NC Republican operative at the center of an absentee ballot fraud scheme that led the state to order a rerun of a congressional election was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. The operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, was charged with three felony counts of obstruction of justice, two counts of conspiring to commit obstruction of justice and two counts of possession of absentee ballots.
Allegations that operatives working for Dowless illegally collected, and sometimes filled in, absentee ballots on behalf of Republican Mark Harris’ campaign emerged shortly after the Nov. 6 election. They caused the state to hold off certifying Harris’ apparent narrow victory over Democrat Dan McCready.
During 4 days hearings, the state Board of Elections heard evidence of a well-funded and well-organized campaign to tip the election for the state’s 9th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which stretches southeast from Charlotte.
Ballot fraud is extremely rare. But when this case was uncovered in a congressional race in 2018, orchestrated by Republicans, Trump and other republicans looked the other way.
The election fraud committed in NC was the largest case in modern American history. Republican Mark Harris, hired a felon, Leslie McCrae Dowless, who promised to deliver unbelievable absentee ballot margins, as he had done in past elections. Dowless hired workers who went to voters’ doorsteps in poor, rural Bladen County, N.C., and “helped” them request, fill out and turn in their ballots. That help included forging signatures and filling in vote choices, and possibly even discarding ballots. The operation mostly targeted black voters. It also appeared the county elections board may have also leaked early vote totals to Republicans.
Altogether, it was an egregious attack on our democracy, in an election where the margin was only 905 votes. Voters on both sides of the aisle were horrified. But not the Republican Party. When evidence of fraud emerged in the party’s primary, it's state director, Dallas Woodhouse, turned a blind eye; later, when evidence emerged in the general-election race, he backed Mark Harris, in a lawsuit to be seated in Congress without an investigation 😲 while attacking the bipartisan state elections board and blaming Dems for the fraud. 😲
It turned out that even the local U.S. attorney, who was appointed by Trump, had failed to act on warnings by the state elections board that Dowless had stolen votes in a different race two years before. Instead, the attorney’s office went on a fishing expedition for fraud committed by immigrants, under the guidance of Jeff Sessions.
Trump and the GOP love to claim that voters commit fraud, even though it almost never happens, BUT, when one of their own was caught committing the worst case of voter fraud in modern history, they weren’t concerned at all. Just one more page from the Republican Party’s dirty elections playbook.
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Trump is attempting to scapegoat the WHO, the media, and everyone else for his criminal incompetence, and his failure to protect this country from a virus that he was warned about multiple times.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
There were multiple warnings throughout December for the NSC and the White House. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House, but they went unheeded. The first case of COVID-19 reached the U.S. on Jan15. The WHO declared it a pandemic on March 11. Trump declared the U.S. outbreak a national emergency on March 13.
On Jan. 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first briefed Trump on the threat of the virus in a phone call. Trump made his first public comments about the virus on Jan. 22, saying he was not concerned about a pandemic and that "we have it totally under control."
On Jan. 27, White House aides met with then-acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney to try to get senior officials to take the virus threat more seriously. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, warned it could cost Trump his re-election.
On Jan. 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House in a memo addressed to the National Security Council that COVID-19 could take more than half a million American lives and cause nearly $6 trillion in economic damage.
On Jan. 30, Azar warned Trump in a call that the virus could become a pandemic and that China should be criticized for its lack of transparency. Trump dismissed Azar as alarmist and rejected the idea of criticizing China. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency.
On Feb. 5, senators urged Trump in a briefing to take the virus more seriously and asked if additional funds were necessary. The administration made no requests at the time for emergency funding.
On Feb. 14, a memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with the National Security Council that recommended the targeted use of quarantine and isolation measures. Officials planned to present Trump with the memo when he returned from India on Feb. 25, but the meeting was canceled.
On Feb. 21, the White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives.
On Feb. 23, Navarro doubled down on his warnings in another memo, this time addressed to the president, stating that up to 2 million Americans could die of the virus.
On Feb. 25, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Nancy Messonnier publicly warned of the virus threat and said "we need to be preparing for significant disruption in our lives.” Trump reportedly called Azar fuming that Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily and caused the stock market to plummet.
On Jan 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal negligence of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. So far, more than 23 thousand American lives have been lost, and many of them needlessly, as a direct consequence of Trump's moral ineptitude, sociopathic behavior, and criminal negligence, and for that, he must be held accountable.
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July 23, 2019, Trump said this: "I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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If Trump ever sits down for an interview with Mueller, he will surely walk out of that interview in handcuffs, and Trump's lawyers know it.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter Tim O'Brien. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times. The lies Trump told during the deposition were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump would blame others for the error. or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
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As a Marine veteran, it warms my heart to know that there are still some true American patriots out there who are still willing to resist, still willing to stand-up and speak truth to power. Patriots who still believe in putting country first. Patriots who still believe in serving a cause greater than themselves. Patriots like Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Lt.Col. Vindman, David Holmes, Jennifer Williams, and others. To all of these patriots, and others out there like them, I salute you.
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From day one most Americans rightfully predicted that Trump's presidency was going to be one of the worst in modern history, but I don't think anyone ever imagined it would be an unmitigated catastrophe of this magnitude. And to add insult to injury, Trump announced that he's not responsible for anything that has happened. I'm assuming it's because deep down, he only considers himself to be a "pretend president." Trump has taken many things in life, but responsibility has never been one of them. But what he will do, is blame others for his clear and obvious failures.
Because of Trump, America has had the worst response to the pandemic than any country in the world. So far, more than 140 thousand Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. And many of those lives were needlessly lost due to Trump's indifference, gross incompetence, lack of leadership, criminal negligence, and dereliction of duty. When America needed sound leadership the most, we had a draft dodging president who was, and still is, AWOL.
I can still remember Trump telling us that everything was under control, and all we had to do was inject ourselves with disinfectants, and the virus would just magically disappear. Well today, we can all acknowledge that the virus did not disappear, but tens of thousands of Americans did.
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House.
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing. While in the real world, America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 15k deaths. Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world. I sh¡t thee nay.
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If Trump and republicans withhold witnesses and evidence that are directly connected to what Trump is being accused of, it will be clear to the world that the Senate trial is an egregious sham. It will go down as the biggest cover-up in American history.
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
Trump's failed coup on January 6, was very reminiscent of AdolfH's failed coup.
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On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29.
Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”
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Trump said he didn't have an affair with Stormy Daniels. We now know that was a lie. He said he didn't pay her off with hush money. We now know that was a lie. He said he didn't know what Rudy was doing in Ukraine. We now know that was a lie.
O'Reilly: " but what was Rudy Giuliani doing in Ukraine on your behalf?"
Trump: "Well, you have to ask that to Rudy. But Rudy, I don't, I don't even know. I know he was going to go to Ukraine, and I think, he canceled a trip. But, you know, Rudy has other clients other than me. I'm one person --"
O'Reilly: So, you didn't direct him to go there on your behalf?"
Trump: No, but -- but you have to understand, Rudy is a great corruption fighter. He's one of the greatest in the last 50 years."
O'Reilly: So, you didn't direct him to go to Ukraine to do anything or put any heat on them?"
Trump: "No, I didn't direct him but he's a warrior, Rudy's a warrior. Rudy went, he possibly saw something. But you have to understand, Rudy has other people that he represents."
Trump said he didn't know Lev Parnas. We now know that was a massive lie. He said he didn't bribe Ukraine with 400 million in taxpayer dollars. We now know that was a flat out lie.
Trump said he would release his taxes. We now know that was a lie.
Trump said his father was born in Germany. We always knew that was a lie.
Trump said he was at ground zero on 9/11, and that he helped 1st responders. We now know that was a despicable lie.
Trump said Mexico would pay for the wall. We immediately knew that was an absurd lie.
In 2020, let's make FACTS great again!!! Lets Make the TRUTH great again!!!
Vote 💙
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Because cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
Trump and his supporters believe in law and order, right up until the moment when law and order comes for them.
In other words, it's law and order for YOU, but not for THEM. Their actions on January 6 proves this.
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Sen Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and other republicans on Capitol Hill,
have been unmasked as Russian operatives for disseminating Russian conspiracy theories, and for aiding and abetting Putin's efforts to interfere in the 2020 election.
Last month, four lawmakers who make up the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight, the group of congressional and intelligence committee leaders who are privy to top-secret intelligence, demanded a briefing for all members of Congress focused on foreign interference in the 2020 election, based on their assertions that lawmakers are being targeted by those meddling efforts. They also have urged Trump to publicly reveal additional information about the nature of the foreign-influence campaign. Intelligence officials told House lawmakers last week that the Russians are seeking to boost Trump in the 2020 campaign.
The public version of the letter was vague about those threats, but the classified addendum to the letter specifically names Sen Ron Johnson’s investigation as a vehicle for “laundering” Russian propaganda for the foreign influence campaign aimed at denigrating Biden.
The addendum states that the Ukrainian lawmaker linked to the Kremlin, Andrii Derkach, sent information packets about Biden to Johnson, Grassley and other Trump stooges who have pushed similar Russian conspiracy theories, as part of Putin's disinformation campaign on America.
NCSC Director William Evanina, along with other senior national security officials, briefed lawmakers in multiple classified sessions in late July and August. His statement explicitly accused the Ukrainian politician, Derkach, of undermining Biden through weaponized leaks. Derkach is known to have met late last year with Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
The packets were sent by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who met with Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani in Ukraine last December. Andrii Derkach, who was formerly aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, is also an alumnus of Moscow’s FSB academy, formerly known as the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. Andrii Derkach’s father Leonid was a KGB operative who later became the head of Ukrainian intelligence, and who was fired in 2004 shortly before Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
The packets were sent late last year to Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declined to answer a colleague's question about whether he had received derogatory information about Joe Biden from Andrii Derkach.
During that closed-door meeting in late July — a transcript of which was made publicly available — Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of Russian propaganda were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham. Nunes refused to answer the question.
Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received" by Nunes. 😲
That evidence, according to committee officials, is in the form of a DHL shipping receipt that was sent to the Intelligence Committee’s majority office shortly after the package was sent to Nunes.
"If any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation-state, or anybody acting on behalf of a nation-state, about influencing or interfering with an election then that's something the FBI would want to know about,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on June 12, 2019 — a day before Trump rebuked him and said he would probably accept such help.
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Helsinki July 16, 2018:
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
On that day, in front of the world, Trump stood next to America's adversary, a man who poses a national security threat to this country, and defended him, while throwing America and the men and women of our intelligence agencies under the bus.
NEVER FORGET...
“It was like a miracle, everything stopped. I will never forget the beautiful scene — it’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene, but to me it was. They went in and it was like a knife cutting butter. You saw the scene on that road where ever that may be in the city, they lined up and walked straight … it was a short evening and everything was fine. If something’s really bad, you have to do it with real strength, real power. We’re dominating the street with compassion."
June 1, 2020
This was Trump, a sitting US President, bragging about using force against the American people. On that day, America watched in horror and disbelief, as Trump authorized the use of brute force against peaceful protesting American citizens in Lafayette Square, just so he could stage a 5 minute photo-op of him standing in front of St. John's Episcopal Church, fumbling with a Bible.
NEVER FORGET...
Now we've learned that Putin has placed a bounty on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. In 2019, John Bolton told colleagues that he briefed Trump on the matter in March of 2019.
But Trump had access to the information earlier in February of that year. It appeared in his daily brief on Feb. 27. The investigation has homed in on a car bombing in April 2019 that took the lives of 3 Marines. That attack occurred the month after Bolton briefed Trump about the bounties. And yet Trump has said nothing, and he has done nothing. To this day, he refuses to utter even one word of condemnation towards Putin. Not....one.
NEVER FORGET. I know that I never will.
Semper Fi...
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The famous Italian writer and philosopher
Umberto Eco, list the 14 traits of fa scism in his 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism." Eco grew up under Mussolini’s fascist regime..
• The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
• The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
• The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
• Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
• Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
• Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
• The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
• The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
• Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
• Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
• Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
TimothyMcVeigh saw himself as a hero.
• Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
• Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
• Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
If the shoe fits.....
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There are 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, and hostility.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
Trump and hisMAGAs will never make it to stage 5, because they will forever be stuck in an endless loop of stages 1 through 4.
Stage 5 is the stage that a malignant narcissist like Trump will never reach, because he will NEVER allow himself to truly admit that he lost the election.
In fact, Trump will spend the rest of his life waking up every morning at stage 1, and slowly working his way down to stage 4 by the end of the day, and starting back at stage 1 all over again the next morning.
Trump reminds me of Gollum. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either after losing his precious.😄
Trump: "He stole it from us!! Trixie Bidenses!!!"😭😭
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal" admits that the book was “full of falsehoods.” Schwartz said.
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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COVID-19: "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear the first time, so let me try again. I am an equal opportunity virus. To me, all of your lives are equally worthless. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, flag waving, or denial. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, maturity, unselfishness, and common sense. Medical experts like Dr Fauci make me nervous. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. Trying to ignore me won't save you. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. You may not be interested in me, but I am obsessed with you. Currently there is no vaccine for me, and that's the problem. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I may have lost some strength in other countries, but thanks to Trump, America is making me great again." 💪😆
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"Christian nationalists like to say that this is a christian nation. Not only is that historically inaccurate, not only is that theologically blasphemous, but it's also just not true. Look around us. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would forgive student debt. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would guarantee healthcare to every single person. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would love all of our LGBQ neighbors. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would make sure that every child in this state and country is housed, fed, clothed, educated, and insured. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would never make it, because we know the table of fellowship is open to everybody, including our Buddhist, Hindu, JewishMuslimsSikh, and atheist neighbors. Jesus could have started a Christian theocracy, but love would never do that. Christian nationalists are more committed to the love of power, than to the power of love. And it exposes a lack of faith. Because the opposite of faith is not doubt, the opposite of faith, is control."
--Texas Rep James Talarico
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
Saying that what happened at the Capitol on January 6th was legitimate political discourse is like saying the Civil War was just legitimate political discourse.
So according to the RNC, sedition, along withBeating theCrap out of cops, is considered legitimate political discourse. Fascinating.
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A survivor of the Florida high school shooting says she has “never been so unimpressed by a person in my life” than when Trump called her in the hospital.
Samantha Fuentes, an 18-year-old student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was hospitalised after a shooter opened fire on the school, k//ling 17 students and staff members. Ms Fuentes was shot in both legs and hit in the face with shrapnel. She was recovering at a local hospital when Trump called to offer his "condolences."
He said he heard that I was a big fan of his, (she wasn't) and then he said, ‘I’m a big fan of yours too’," Fuentes told the New York Times of the conversation. "I’m pretty sure he made that up,”
Trump, Fuentes said, called the shooter a “sick puppy” and said “‘oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,’ like, seven times.”
She added: “Talking to the president, I’ve never been so unimpressed by a person in my life. He didn’t make me feel better in the slightest.”
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"There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated,"
Trump can be heard saying to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Trump threatened Georgia’s secretary of state in an attempt to bully him into "finding" the votes that would overturn the state’s presidential election results. In the call Trump told Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger that he was taking “a big risk” by refusing to violate the Constitution by falsifying verified election results that showed Biden winning by 11,779 votes.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
First of all, the people of Georgia and the American people weren't angry, because the majority Georgians voted for Biden. Trump was trying to project his anguish and agony over losing onto them.
Trump also told Raffensberger and his general counsel, “I just want to "find" 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
On January 6, Capitol Hill Police Officers stopped the steal that Trump had planned.
Our nation owes them a debt of gratitude.
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Anything China said is irrelevant, when you consider the FACT that our intelligence agencies tried to warn Trump about what was going on in Wuhan dating back to November. And Trump did what he always does, he completely ignored them. So even if China tried to hide what was happening, Trump was presented with the truth, and he did nothing.
Trump did the exact same thing when our intelligence agencies warned him about Russian cryber espionage and interference in our elections. He completely ignored them, and sided with Putin the perpetrator instead. Make no mistake, Trump is directly responsible for the needless loss of thousands of American lives.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Trump supporters are all united by one word.....kruelty. Kruelty is the point.
Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to kruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.
It is not just that the perpetrators of this kruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.
Trump’s only true skills are kruelty, and the con. His ability to carry out that kruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.
"All kruelty springs from weakness."
---Seneca
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The Republican National Committee has conveniently removed an inconvenient webpage from 2020 in which it praised Trump for signing a "historic peace agreement with the Taliban."
The page had been removed with the web address redirecting to a 404 error page featuring the quip: "It looks like you're as lost as Biden is."
Featured as part of a section titled "President Trump Is Bringing Peace In The Middle East," the page described how Trump had "continued to take the lead in peace talks."
In the now-deleted GOP webpage, it is stated that Trump negotiated a deal for the withdrawals by May 2021 "in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the organization's current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at the request of the US while Trump was in office.
As recently as April, Trump was also voicing his support for withdrawal, stating that "getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do."
"Nineteen years is long enough, in fact, far too much and way too long," he said.
The Trump White House agreed to a May 1 troop withdrawal. Biden had to decide whether to honor a deal that included the Taliban but not the Afghan government.
Under the agreement, the militants also agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in the areas they control.
Speaking at the White House, Trump said the Taliban had been trying to reach an agreement with the US for a long time.
He said US troops had been eliminating terrorists in Afghanistan "by the thousands" and now it was "time for someone else to do that work, and it will be the Taliban and it could be surrounding countries".
"I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we're not all wasting time," Trump added. "If bad things happen, we'll go back with a force like no-one's ever seen."
The deal was signed by US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar with Secretary of State Pompeo as a witness.
In a speech, Pompeo urged the militant group to "keep your promises to cut ties with al-Qaeda".
Baradar said he hoped Afghanistan could now emerge from four decades of conflict.
"I hope that with the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan the Afghan nation under an Islamic regime will take its relief and embark on a new prosperous life," he said.
Meanwhile Defence Secretary Mark Esper was in Kabul alongside Afghan President Ashraf Ghani - whose government did not take part in the US-Taliban talks.
Esper said: "This is a hopeful moment, but it is only the beginning. The road ahead will not be easy. Achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan will require patience and compromise among all parties."
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life,” he added.
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Cheating and lying are his only tools for survival. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
Mary Trump, a 55-year-old psychologist, blames Trump's father for giving Donald his bad habits. Fred Trump Sr was a cold and forbidding patriarch who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps – demanding Trump to follow less-than-scrupulous real estate practices and eventually propping him up if his own initiatives failed.
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes.
"His monster had been set free."
She also writes that in order to get into a private Ivy League university, Trump hired someone to take his Scholastic Aptitude Test.
The book says that after Trump announced his White House run in 2015, Trump's sister, retired appeals court judge Maryanne Trump Barry, mocked him.
“He’s a clown – this will never happen,” Judge Barry said.
In order to get into the prestigious University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, the future president paid someone to take his SAT.
"To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him," Mary Trump wrote. "That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records."
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mitch McConnell, "all whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred," recognized after the election that Donald Trump's personal history and personality flaws made him vulnerable to manipulation, Mary Trump writes.
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
"Fear – the equivalent of weakness in our family – is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old," she said.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Donald "I believe in magic not science" Trump, will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 14 thousand American lives..
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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As a Marine veteran I realized after Helsinki, that if Trump has to choose between America and Russia, America doesn't stand a chance. His track record has proven that he will choose Russia everytime.
So Putin invades the sovereign country of Ukraine, engages in nerve agent attacks against our ally in England, shoots down a commercial airliner over Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers, including 80 children, he interferes in our presidential elections, and now we've learned that he has placed a bounty on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. In 2019, John Bolton told colleagues that he briefed Trump on the matter in March 2019.
Trump had access to the information earlier, in February. It appeared in the president’s daily brief on Feb. 27. The investigation has homed in on a car bombing in April 2019 that k!lled three Marines. That attack occurred the month after Bolton reportedly briefed Trump about the bounties.
Felicia Arculeo, whose son Cpl. Robert Hendriks, 25, died in the attack, told CNBC that she wanted an investigation into the claims that the victims were targeted by Taliban fighters who were offered bounties by Russian military intelligence agents. Sgt. Benjamin Hines, 31, and Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, were the other Marines k!lled in the attack, which came days before they were due to return home from Afghanistan.
And now after all of that, Trump wants to reward Putin's tyrannical and hostile behavior, by lifting sanctions on Russia, and bringing it back into the G-7. And since Trump received the first briefing about the Russain bounties in Feb, he has been laughing it up with Putin in multiple phone calls on Mar 30, April 9, 10, 12, 25, May 7, and June 1. And even NOW, Trump has never uttered one word of condemnation towards Putin. Not......one..
Let all of that sink in for a minute. Take your time.
Semper Fi..
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She should have asked Jared if Trump should apologize for coveting his wife.
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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Well what else would you call a group dressed up like terrorists, and are armed to the teeth, who are testing explosives, making plans to blow up bridges, and conducting video surveillance on a person's home for the purpose of kidnapping them, and possibly ki//ing them??? Hmmm.😞
If that isn't terrorism, then there's no such thing as terrorism.
Terrorism is defined as: The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political, religious or ideological goals. Call these people what they are.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's perfectly okay to call it a duck.
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"From the start, authoritarians stand out from other kinds of politicians by appealing to negative experiences and emotions. They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation’s saviors. Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears, they present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety from racial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies."
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present
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The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act..
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote...
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"I pledge allegiance, to Lord King Donald Trump, of the Dystopian States of America, and to the monarchy for which he stands, one ruler, the chosen god, with oppression and subjugation for all."
---Trump supporters
Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason..
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much theylove and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. That was pretty low even for Trump.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
Semper Fi..
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, the violence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with those bomb packages, and the synagogue, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedo started in a Facebook post, and spread to Twitter, and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
" TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.
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In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the assault weapons ban after it expired.
We can thank the GOP for what happened today in Illinois.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the killing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victims dead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest mass shooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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There is literally video of Moscow Mitch, Graham, Thom Tillis, Rubio, John Cornyn, Roger Wicker, Tom Cotton, John Barrasso, Grassley, and Ted Cruz, promising that they would NOT do what they're trying to do right now. THIS is why you should never trust or believe the Republican party. The GOP is void of honor, integrity, ethics, dignity, and human decency.
The Republican party has redefined what he all thought hypocrisy was. This level of hypocrisy should be a federal crime.
There's nothing the Republican party loves more than giving a middle finger to the American people. It's their passion.
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Today, in 2020, Trump and Republicans have said, that we can no longer keep it.
America's democracy and Constitutional republic, has never been in more peril than it is right now. Trump and republicans, are attempting to reverse our victory in our War of Independence, that began 1775 and ended in 1783. They are attempting to throw it all away, like it never happened, and install a new King, a new monarch, a new tyrant, to rule over the American people. We are witnessing history folks. This is America's darkest hour.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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This MLK quote should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
This quote aptly describes Mike Johnson, and McConnell.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Ever since his inauguration, Trump has been collecting the dignity, integrity, moral compasses, and the souls of republicans who have come crawling and groveling to him, prostrating themselves at his feet, like the sniveling slavish sycophants that he's turned them all into. Barr, Sessions, Graham, Kennedy, Moscow Mitch, Jordan, Nunes, Meadows, and Gaetz , rounds out the Allstar list of Trump's most subservient sentient suppositories.
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it..
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
On Nov 3rd, make a decision. Who's side are you on?
Biden/Harris 2020💙
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In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction. Placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into any position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act. Nothing good has ever resulted from anything that Trump has ever touched or been involved with. He is void of any and all goodwill or human decency. He is a purely toxic, insidious and malevolent being, who constitutes a malignant affliction on this country.
The safety and national security of America should have never been placed into the hands of a mentally impaired and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored.
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When British writer George Orwell published a dystopian novel called 1984, he had seen, at age 45, both World Wars, the rise of fascism in Italy, the rise of Adolf in Germany; the invention of airplanes, television, antibiotics, along with atomic power, guided missiles, napalm.
1984 takes place in Airstrip One (formerly Great Britain), in the superstate of Oceania, a country embroiled in a seemingly never-ending war. Individualism and independent thought are persecuted as "thoughtcrimes" by the Thought Police. The people are controlled by the elite, privileged Inner Party, whose cult-personality leader is referred to as Big Brother. And hey, the government even has its own invented language: Newspeak. Sound at all familiar?
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
-- George Orwell, 1984
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party (Trump) is always right.”
-- George Orwell, 1984.
In George Orwell's novel 1984, a thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding beliefs that oppose or question the Party. Thoughtcrime is thinking of anything that the Thought Police and the Party deem is illegal. Doubting the party line, or thinking anything contrary to Party's message
Within Trump's cult, he has a name for those who commit "thought crimes" like questioning his actions, and calling out his lies, Trump refers to these people as "never Trumpers."
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Not only has Trump encouraged and incited his cult to commit acts of violence at his rallies, he also encouraged Cops to commit acts of violence against people within their custody.
Trump speech to Police Officers in July 2017, Long Island NY.
"When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, I said, please don't be too nice."
23 February 2016:
"I'd like to punch him in the face." Trump said this in front of a crowd of his cultists, after a protester was removed from one of his rallies.
22 November 2015:
" Maybe he should have been roughed up." Trump said this in reference Mercutio Southall Jr. who was ejected from a Trump rally. The video footage showed Trump supporters jostling, kicking, and punching Southall. It even prompted Fox & Friends hosts to question the violence from Trump's cultists.
March 2016:
" Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said "You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
February 2016:
" Knock the krap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees."
Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Has anyone ever heard of, or even dreamed of a president speaking in this manner??
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Telling people that they need to wear masks in public places during a pandemic is like suggesting to people that maybe they should open their eyes while they're driving. You naturally have the feeling that this is something you shouldn't have to tell a grown adult.
This is what happens when you decide that you're going to ignore scientists, doctors and medical experts, and instead decide you're going to listen to the dumbest human being on the planet, Donald J Trump, a con-man who knows less than nothing about, viruses, infectious diseases, and how they spread.
Why anyone would choose to listen to Trump instead of medical experts is beyond me. Call me Krazy, but if I want to know how to effectively deal with a pandemic outbreak, I'm calling Dr. Fauci and other medical experts. If I want to know how to bankrupt multiple casinos, or set up a fake university and charity foundation, or lie like it's my job, or launder money with the Russians, then I'm calling Trump, and nobody but Trump...
Trump supporters who would rather listen to Trump instead of medical experts, should not be allowed to receive any medical treatment from doctors or nurses of any kind. If they need a surgical operation, they have to call the White House and request an appointment with Trump to perform it. If they're about to give birth, they have to call the White House and request an appointment with Trump to deliver the baby. And If they're baby gets sick, Trump will be the baby's new pediatrician. If they need a root canal, Trump will perform it in the Oval Office. If they need a new pair of prescription glasses, Trump will perform their eye examination. If they've been in an accident, and are seriously injured, they can no longer be rushed to the E.R. they have to be rushed to the Oval Office where Trump will attend to their injuries.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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The 14 characteristics of fascism:
• Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
• Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
• Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; socialists, terrorists, etc.
• Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
• Rampant 5exism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition ToAbortion is high, as isHomophobiaAnd antiGay legislation and national policy.
• Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
• Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
• Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
• Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
• Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
• Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
• Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
• Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
As you can see, when it comes to fascism, Trump and supporters check all the boxes.
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In his final speech, the night before he died, he said: “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” What he said in Memphis on April 3, 1968 — riffing without notes to an audience of striking black sanitation workers — clearly resonates today. We all know his closing line (“I’ve been to the mountaintop … and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you”); less well known is the speech itself — and why he was in Memphis to deliver it.
“The world is messed up. The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around … We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying we are God’s children, and if we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live …
“All we say to America is to be true to what you said on paper. If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand … the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right …
“Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation … standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”
--Dr Martin Luther King .
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm just a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House.
So again, don't blame me for this, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham, who knows exactly what I am, but yet continues to defend me. I'm the same person that I've always been, an unscrupulous con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.
Economic inequality, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, is best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them...
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
But isn't conservatism about freedom? Of course everyone wants freedom, and so conservatism has no choice but to promise freedom to its subjects. In reality conservatism has meant complicated things by "freedom", and the reality of conservatism in practice, has scarcely corresponded even to the contorted definitions in conservative texts.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of state terror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
For thousands of years, conservatism was universally understood as being in opposition to democracy. Having lost much of its ability to attack democracy openly, conservatism has tried in recent years to redefine the word "democracy" while engaging in deception to make the substance of democracy unthinkable.
Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.
Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.
Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.
The main idea of public relations is the distinction between "messages" and "facts". Messages are the things you want people to believe. A message should be vague enough that it is difficult to refute by rational means.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact trying to take it from you. January 6 ring a bell? Trump tried to steal an election, by falsely claiming it was being stolen from him.
knowledge is best produced in a liberal culture. This is why the most prosperous and innovative regions of the United States are also the most politically liberal, and why the most conservative regions of the country are also the greatest beneficiaries of transfer payments. Liberals create wealth and government redistributes it to conservatives. This is, of course, the opposite of the received conservative opinion in the media, but it is true.
Conservatism is almost gone. People no longer worship the pharaohs. To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world..
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Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, the violence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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This is a perfect example of why fox is the definition of fake news, and why it constitutes a national security threat to the country.
"I'm right on this, the coronavirus is the common cold folks. The hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the Andromeda strain, as OMG if you get it you're dead."
-- Rush Limbaugh, February 24
"The more I learn about coronavirus, the less concerned I am."
-- Pete Hegseth, Fox News, March 8
"The national left wing media, playing up fears of the coronavirus."
-- Lou Dobbs, Fox News, March 9
"The sky is falling because we have a few dozen cases of coronavirus on a cruise ship. I am far more concerned with stepping on a used heroin needle than I am of getting the coronavirus, but maybe that's just me."
-- Tomi Lahren, Fox News, March 10
"It's a virus, like the flu. All the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly, doesn’t reflect reality."
-- Jeanine Pirro, Fox News, March 7
"This virus should be compared to the flu, because at worst, at WORST, worst case scenario, it could be the flu."
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News, March 6
" You wanna know how I really feel about the coronavirus? If I get it, I'll beat it. I'm not afraid of the coronavirus!!! And no one else should be that afraid either."
-- Jesse Watters, Fox News, March 3
"It's milder than we thought, and the fatality rate is going to drop."
-- Dr. Drew Pinsky, Fox News, March 2
"It very very difficult to contract this virus."
-- Matt Schlapp, Fox News, March 11
"Its actually the safest time to fly."
-- Ainsley Earnhardt, Fox News, March 13
"One of things that you can do is if you're healthy, you and your family, it's a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easily."
-- Devin Nunes, Fox News, March 15
"I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. I took it very seriously."
-- Trump, March 17
"By the way, this program has always taken the coronavirus seriously."
-- Hannity, Fox News, March 18
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels..
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Everyone makes mistakes, but the wisest people know it, admit it, and accept it. The greatest failure is failing to recognize our proneness to mistakes.
"The buck stops with me."
-- President Biden, 08/20/2021
As president, Biden takes responsibility for the chaos of the Afghan withdrawal.
'No, I don't take responsibility at all'."
--Trump 03/13/2020
Trump deflects blame for his coronavirus testing debacle, and the soaring number of infections.
Personally, I like presidents who don't dodge drafts or responsibility.
History teaches that there has been a long-running battle with fear of the truth. People mistakenly fail to admit the truth, and in so doing, help to perpetuate recorded falsehoods. And if it’s not fear, then it’s distortion of the truth to promote a personal or political cause.
Loyalty to the truth should be the ultimate goal of the historian and the reader.
What can the individual learn from history — as a guide to living? Not what to do, but what to strive for. And what to avoid in striving. The importance and intrinsic value of behaving decently. The importance of seeing clearly—not least of, seeing yourself clearly.
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Nunes did what every Trump sycophant does whenever they're in trouble, he went on Fox to try and clear his already sullied name, and ends up making it worse. He was asked by the Fox host to explain what he and Rudy's indicted associate Lev Parnas talked about during their phone conversations.
Fox host: " What did you discuss with Lev Parnas?"
Nunes: " Well....I don't even know because I don't.....I've never met Parnas. And so it's a great question and many people wanna know including myself." 😲
Fox host: "So you've never had any phone conversations with him"
Nunes: "We...we have not been able to confirm that yet."😲😲
So after watching Nunes lie through his teeth on fox, Lev Parnas' lawyer, Joseph Bondy, posted this on Twitter.
Bondy: "Hey Devin Nunes, you don't remember what you spoke about? Lev remembers."
😂😄😆
I would have paid good money to see the look on Nunes' tortured face when he saw that tweet.😄
This is what life is like for republicans inside that highly exclusive community on top of
Bull💩Mountain.
Parnas is the founder of "Fraud Guarantee" 😂 a consulting firm with no “identifiable customers” that paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy. Along with their work with Rudy, Parnas and Fruman are accused of meeting at Trump’s Washington hotel to discuss a Ukraine gas deal linked to Yovanovitch’s removal.
Parnas was throwing Russian money at Republicans like beads at Mardi Gras to any republican that was willing to expose themselves to him.
I think it's safe say that not only do the Russians own Trump, they also own the GOP as well. It's going to be interesting to find out just how much Russia paid Trump and republicans to sellout and betray America. And make no mistake, we will find out. What's done in the dark will eventually come to the light.
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A "Trump opportunity zone?!?!"
Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85 and terminally ill, was in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Trump sole control over his dying father's estate..
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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Trump should apologize for assaulting more than 20 women. He should apologize for creating a fake charity foundation, and using it for his own financial gain. He should apologize for creating a fake university, and using it to con Americans out of their life savings. He should apologize for using his golf resorts to pocket millions in taxpayer dollars. He should apologize to American banks for all the loans he defaulted on. He should apologize to all the contractors he stiffed when he refused to pay them for work done on his properties. He should apologize for insulting gold star family members and American PoWs. He should apologize for his failed response to the coronavirus that has led to the loss of 130k American lives. He should apologize for betraying America in Helsinki. He should apologize for hanging our troops out to dry in Afghanistan, by allowing his idol and benefactor Putin to place bounties on their heads.
Helsinki July 16, 2018:
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
On that day, in front of the world, Trump stood next to America's adversary, a man who poses a national security threat to this country, and defended him, while throwing America and the men and women of our intelligence agencies under the bus.
NEVER FORGET...
“It was like a miracle, everything stopped. I will never forget the beautiful scene — it’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene, but to me it was. They went in and it was like a knife cutting butter. You saw the scene on that road where ever that may be in the city, they lined up and walked straight … it was a short evening and everything was fine. If something’s really bad, you have to do it with real strength, real power. We’re dominating the street with compassion."
June 1, 2020
This was Trump, a sitting US President, bragging about using force against the American people. On that day, America watched in horror and disbelief, as Trump authorized the use of brute force against peaceful protesting American citizens in Lafayette Square, just so he could stage a 5 minute photo-op of him standing in front of St. John's Episcopal Church, fumbling with a Bible.
NEVER FORGET...
Now we've learned that Putin has placed a bounty on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. In 2019, John Bolton told colleagues that he briefed Trump on the matter in March of 2019.
But Trump had access to the information earlier in February of that year. It appeared in his daily brief on Feb. 27. The investigation has homed in on a car bombing in April 2019 that took the lives of 3 Marines. That attack occurred the month after Bolton briefed Trump about the bounties. And yet Trump has said nothing, and he has done nothing. To this day, he refuses to utter even one word of condemnation towards Putin. Not....one.
NEVER FORGET. I know that I never will.
Semper Fi...
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Just imagine if Hillary had thrown a hissy fit in 2016, and tried to declare herself the winner of the election. She could have asked for a recount in Michigan, which she lost by 13,080 votes, and Wisconsin, which she lost by 27,257 votes, but she didn't. Like an adult, who believes in our democracy and our Constitution, she called Trump and congratulated him, and conceded the victory to him. But no one ever expected a full grown baby like Trump to do the adult thing, the right thing, the democratic thing.
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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So far, everyone who has been indicted by Mueller, is either in jail, been to jail already, on their way to jail, or they have cut a plea deal, and they are now working for Mueller. Robert Mueller is batting a 1000 so far. Now the latest witch to be caught, Roger Stone, has a a big decision to make. Because there is no possible way, that Mueller would have ever indicted Roger Stone, if he didn't already have proof of Stone's guilt. He's got Stone dead to rights, and if he's got Stone, then he's got Trump too.
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels..
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Fun fact: Past presidents have been shot for far less than what Trump has done. Just thought I'd put that out there.
So as far as I'm concerned, if a president can be shot, then a president can definitely be indicted as well.
If there's ever been a sitting President that deserves to be indicted, it's this one. And he deserves to be indicted on multiple charges, from tax evasion, money laundering, bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, to conspiring with a hostile country against the United States.
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"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
This quote aptly describes Meadows and many others in Trump’s orbit to a T..
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
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Trump's strategy so far has been clear from the beginning. He and his sycophants in Congress are telling the American people to ignore everything that you see, and everything that you hear. That's the only strategy you're left with when you have no defense.
Trump and his shameless defenders are trying to convince the American people, that if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's an extremely talented cat.
Trump's cultists should take a moment to consider that maybe, just maybe, that thing that looks, walks, and quacks like a duck, is just that....a duck.
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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It finally took a pandemic for some Americans to finally realize that Trump constitutes a threat not only to our constitution and our democracy, he also constitutes a threat to our very lives. It's just sad that the tens of thousands of Americans who will have died because of his criminal incompetence and dereliction of duty, won't be around to see him removed from Office in November, and then tossed to the SDNY for his long overdue reckoning.
Just a cursory search of Trump's past would have revealed that from the beginning, he was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. His history shows that he has always been an agent of chaos, destruction, and buffoonery. Which shouldn't come as a surprise when you realize he possesses every character flaw known to mankind, combined with the cognitive capacity of a toddler, the intellectual curiosity of a dungbeetle, and the attention span and impulse control of a chimpanzee high on bath salts.
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In August 1989, just two months after Trump launched his Trump Shuttle Airline, one of his Boeing 727s made a crash landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The shuttle was to fly white-collar passengers between New York, Washington and Boston. The passenger jet had malfunctioning nose gear that failed to deploy. The nose and underbelly of the plane scraped and dragged along the runaway upon landing, with sparks flying. The pilots had to perform an emergency dumping of fuel to avoid a greater catastrophe. It's all on video.
Trump purchased the airline for 365 million, and in 3 years, it never turned a profit.😄
And when Trump was asked by reporters about the crash landing in Boston, he said, and I quote: “It was the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen." 😲😨
Back in 1986 and likely for many years before, Trump colluded in tax evasion with Bulgari Jewelry Store in NY, a high-end posh location with tony clientele right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here's how the scam worked:
Trump would go into the store with his wife, his girlfriend, his...whatever (to use his vernacular). He would then buy her an expensive necklace or wristwatch. Normally, such a transaction would face the NY and state sales tax, which would be pretty high on luxury jewelry.
In an illegal attempt to evade the tax, Trump "asked" the store to instead ship the jewelry to an out of state location, where no NY sales tax could be collected. In fact, the store would merely send an empty jewelry box to the location, while Trump and his lady friends walked out the door with the jewelry that very day.
The state and city tax collectors eventually caught onto this scheme, and Trump promptly testified against his erstwhile tax evasion colluding partners at the jewelry store in order to save his own skin.😲 Anyone who gets close to a disease like Trump will end up getting pushed off a curb by him, and into an oncoming bus.
The empty box scam is just one example of Trump's history of illegal tax evasion. Another story can be told about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida by local reporter Frank Cerabino.
Trump bought the property from the estate of breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. He got it for a relative bargain at $7.5 million, something he bragged about in The Art of the Deal. Yet he refused for years to pay local property taxes on the actual value of the property, $11.5 million at the time he bought it. He tried to have it both ways--buy the property for a steep discount and also pay property taxes at that same under-valued level.
Try that with your town's property tax assessor sometime and see what he says.😲
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Last year during an interview with Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked about his opinion on Article 5, NATO’s joint defense agreement, in relation to NATO’s newest member, Montenegro.
Trump: “Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. They have very aggressive people. They may get aggressive and congratulations, you’re in World War III, now I understand that. But that’s the way it was set up.”
Trump's comments about Montenegro were perplexing at best, and at worst, they were dangerous and provocative. Montenegro has a population of only 630k, with practically no military to speak of. Naturally Trump's comments drew criticism.
Fabrice Pothier, formerly NATO’s director of policy planning stated: “Once more I think President Trump is doing Putin’s job.”
John McCain had a similar reaction. “By attacking Montenegro and questioning our obligations under NATO, the President is playing right into Putin’s hands,” McCain wrote on Twitter the next morning.
Andrew Weiss, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the President was “parroting Kremlin talking points.”
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This MLK quote should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
This quote aptly describes Mike Johnson, and McConnell.
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For the last four years, DJT has engaged in an unprecedented level of shameless and flagrant corruption and lawlessness never seen before. Like when he proclaimed, that Article II of the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”
Trump has undermined the constitutional order to a degree unprecedented in modern U.S. history. He has subverted the rule of law by politicizing the DoJ and interfering in its investigations. Trump has also fired inspectors general across the government, whose only job is to uncover wrongdoing. Trump has repeatedly attacked the press, declaring them to be the “enemy of the people.”
He has also disparaged the courage and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform; his eagerness to use troops domestically prompted military leaders to issue an unprecedented reminder that our men and women in uniform owe their ultimate allegiance to the Constitution and not the president.
Trump has made a mockery of constitutional norms, like the requirement of Senate confirmation for his cabinet members and other executive officials, by granting power to “acting” department heads, saying it gives him “greater flexibility.” Without any evidence, Trump has also consistently cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process itself and has declined to state that he will abide by the judgment of the electorate. At the same time, in spite of the overwhelming evidence, Trump has downplayed the reality of foreign powers interfering in our elections.
"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
--Abraham Lincoln
"We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, 'We, the people.'
-- Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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As a Marine veteran, my heart goes out to you doctors and nurses on the front lines of this virus. America will forever owe you all a debt of gratitude. There's no shame in having a breakdown due to fear or exhaustion. The only shame is in not getting up from it, and letting it control you. Hold the line!!!
Semper Fi..
During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like many of our Governors, and especially the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Trump is currently going through the 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety. Currently Trump is stuck between this stage and stage 1 of grief.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. During grief, you may feel vulnerable and helpless. In those moments of intense emotions, it’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, hostility, flight.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
This is the stage that a malignant narcissist like Trump will never reach, because he will NEVER allow himself to truly admit that he lost the election. In fact, Trump may spend the rest of his life waking up every morning at stage 1, and slowly working his way down to stage 4 by the end of the day, and starting the process over again the next morning. 😄
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Never forget, Trump is a complete sociopath, in every sense of the word.
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims and accomplices, who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Stone, Manafort, Flynn, etc) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blamed Dems for his government shutdown, even after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown.
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"Ignorance is Strength." This is the creed of the cult known as Trumpism. We know this because of Trump sycophants like Kellyanne, who promotes the idea of "alternative facts." And Rudy Giuliani, who famously declared that " truth isn't truth."
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party (Trump) is always right."
-- George Orwell, 1984
In George Orwell's novel 1984, a Thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding beliefs that opposes or questions the Party. A Thoughtcrime is thinking of anything that the Thought Police and the Party deems is illegal, or doubting the party line, or thinking anything contrary to the Party's message..
Within Trump's cult, he has a name for those who commit "Thoughtcrimes" against him, like questioning his actions, and exposing his lies by fact checking him. Trump refers to these people as "Never Trumpers."
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Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with Russian crime bosses for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. Russian Oligarchs as well as the Russian mafya are both connected to Russian intelligence. It's virtually impossible to tell who is who. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafya and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mob in 1984. In ‘92, the Russian mob had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mob.
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin.
The Russians used Trump's apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s..
With Trump's constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. Public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all, Semion Mogilevich.
In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. Mogilevich’s greatest talent, the one that places him at the top of the Russian mob, is finding creative ways to cleanse dirty cash. According to the FBI, he has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world. In 1991, he made a move that led directly to Trump Tower. That year, the FBI says, Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring a fellow mob boss, Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. If Mogilevich was the brains, Ivankov was the enforcer..
The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. “He was like a ghost to the FBI,” one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years..
The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. “We were looking around, looking around, looking around,” James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section, told Friedman. “We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.”
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Since Trump refuses to take responsibility, the American people will replace him with someone that will.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview..
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully.
—Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases, 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” —Trump at the White House.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting..
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Trump's admiration for dictators and bullies is a product of his own insecurities. He's an extraordinarily flawed human being, just like any bully or dictator, and belittling and shaming others makes him feel better about himself.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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This MLK quote should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
This quote aptly describes Mike Johnson and McConnell.
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It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, The UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab. All anyone has to do is take a step back and open your eyes, and you'll see that what Trump and his family are doing is happening right in front of our faces.
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Trump is leaving a trail of broken careers and lives behind him in his wake.
Manafort - in prison, Cohen - in prison, Papadopoulos - convicted/ time served, Mike Flynn - convicted and awaiting sentence, Robert Gates - convicted, Roger Stone - convicted and awaiting sentence. Many other people associated with Trump have had their careers and reputations ruined. Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mulvaney, Kirstjen Nielsen, Sean Spicer,
Ryan Zinke, Scaramucci -- and the list goes on and on. Rudy and Pompeo will be joining this list in the near future. Trump's white house is where the truth, careers, and reputations go to die.
Trump is like the Typhoid Mary of Presidents.
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Trump's disastrous response to the coronavirus is the reason why America has the worst numbers than any country in the world. How can a nation properly deal with a pandemic, when their so called leader, calls the whole thing a hoax???
Trump and Republicans had a field day criticizing Obama’s response to the Ebola virus. Trump even tweeted that Obama should resign after only 11 reported Ebola cases and 2 deaths.
Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there.
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
After the Ebola virus outbreak, President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it in 2018.
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018. "And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump." Rhodes said.
"And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House."
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Experts have criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle the National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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Everyone has that person in their life who "always plays the victim." When something goes wrong it's "never their fault."
They're the type of person who does something wrong then tries to paint you as being the real problem for calling them out. Because their bad deed was just them making things even.
These people can be impossible to deal with because they're never wrong. This mentality also stunts their developmental growth, because when you're never wrong, you don't have to change a thing.
According to research, the victim mentality or, as they call it, "Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood," or TIV, is a stable construct that people can carry with them throughout their lives.
It's defined as "an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships." That's why your friend with the victim mentality always plays the victim and everything that happens in the world is an affront to them.
Researchers say there are four main components to TIV:
Need for recognition – whereby individuals have a high level of need for their victimization to be seen and recognized by others
Moral elitism – seeing oneself as morally pure or "immaculate," and seeing those who oppose, criticize or "victimize" oneself as completely and totally immoral and unjust
Lack of empathy – having little empathy or concern for the suffering of others, because your own victimhood is so much greater than the suffering of others. Also includes an entitlement to act selfishly or harmfully towards others, without recognizing their pain or experience
Rumination – a strong tendency to brood and remain extremely fixated on times, ways, and relationships where they experienced victimization and being taken advantage of.
A person who has TIV may be very vocal about their victim status whether it's caused by societal issues, a personal problem, or something they've fabricated. They believe their status affords them moral superiority to others and allows them to behave in ways that are unassailable.
People with TIV are also more likely to try to seek revenge on those who've aggrieved them.
This type of person is defined by, and clings to, their perceived trauma and weaponizes it against others. Scott Kauffman of Scientific American says that people can develop TIV without even "experiencing severe trauma or victimization."
Kauffman believes that people who have experienced trauma are capable of using it for unhealthy self-aggrandizement.
"HI, my name is Donald Trump, but you can call me victim. Many people are saying this." 🤣😅
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
On Nov 3rd, make a decision. Who's side are you on?
Biden/Harris 2020💙
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As president ,DJT represented the very worst in mankind; pettiness, selfishness, wilful-ignorance, depravity, indifference, and malice. Biden represents the very best in all of us.
I want to give a big shout-out to THE RESISTANCE. Thank you for refusing to remain silent. Thank you for the vigilance you showed in protecting our democracy. Thank you for never giving into fear and fatigue, even in our darkest moments. Thank you for helping to defeat the despotism that was trying to kick in our door, and snuff out our democratic republic.
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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Trump has bragged time and time again about only hires the very best people. He even bragged that he hand-picked only the best to teach at Trump University. But dozens of those he picked had checkered pasts, including serious financial problems and even convictions for cocaine trafficking and child mol.... The lawsuit against Trump found that he and his fake real-estate seminars were a massive fraud, designed to "upsell" students into buying course packages costing as much as $35,000. Many of those hired to teach did not have college degrees and were not licensed to broker real estate. At least four had felony convictions.
Ron P. Broussard Jr. was hired to the Trump University staff in 2007, even though he was never licensed as a real estate agent or broker, Broussard was listed as "staff" or "coordinator" for at least five Trump seminars titled "Fast Track to Foreclosure." Records show the former Army sergeant was convicted at court-martial in 1994 for indecent acts with a child. The child was an eight year old daughter of a fellow soldier. He served five years in the military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. He's currently a registered 5ex offender.
Timothy C. Gorsline taught at least eight Trump University seminars in 2008 He pleaded no contest a decade earlier to felony cocaine possession, according to an electronic database of Florida court records. Copies of Gorsline's resume at Trump University showed that when asked if he had been convicted of a felony, Gorsline marked an X indicating "Yes."
Damian D. Pell, who helped teach at least 23 Trump University seminars from 2008 to 2010, pleaded guilty in Florida to a felony charge of trafficking cocaine. Court and arrest records show that Pell's car was pulled over by Sheriff's deputies in June 1999. Authorities recovered 62 grams of powder cocaine from his car, and 1,200 grams in a subsequent search of his home — a haul with a street value in excess of $154,000.
Spencer J. Raffel, who staffed a Trump University event in 2008, had a felony conviction in FL for grand theft, according to court records. He was sentenced to serve three years of probation in 1989. Court records also showed that Raffel, 52, had a multi-decade history of failing to pay debts, including defaulting on real estate loans, during the same period he was helping teach students how to profit from properties in foreclosure.😲
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump in 2013, alleging that the university was a "fraud from beginning to end," geared toward pressuring students into buying ever more expensive seminars, course materials and mentoring services of little educational value. Regulators say Trump University staff often targeted senior citizens or those already in dire financial straits, encouraging them to max out their credit cards to pay for classes they couldn't afford.
In his 2005 video, Trump said his hand-picked instructors would give his students a better education than top-level university business schools.
"Honestly, if you don't learn from them, you don't learn from me. If you don't learn from the people we're going to be putting forward — these are all people that are hand-picked by me — then you're not going to make it in terms of the world of success," Trump said.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him..
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
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It's plain to see that Trump and his people are trying to normalize treason.
Jared and Ivanka suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon that leads incompetent people to overestimate their ability because they can't grasp just how ignorant they really are.
He should have asked Kushner why he lied more than 100 times on his security clearance form, and why he discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities, and encrypted Russian communications equipment, and why did he secretly meet with Oligarch Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who has close ties to Putin, and whose bank Vnesheconombank, was currently under sanctions placed on it by President Obama, and why did he lie about that meeting. So many unanswered questions.
Of course Putin is going to interfere in our elections again. Putin is going to do every thing he can to protect his Russian asset in the Oval Office. He invested too much time and money into Trump, and other republicans in Congress. Putin won't stop unless America makes it extremely painful for him and his gang of mobsters/Oligarchs, because that's the only thing thugs like them understand. Economic sanctions should be placed on Russia that are so crippling, that it threatens to topple that criminal organization that Putin calls a government, but that would take real leadership from the Oval Office.
Putin is America's enemy, and not because we want him to be, he's America's enemy because that's what he has chosen to be. And he should be treated accordingly with the choice he has made.
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How do you know when America's democracy is under siege? It's when our president believes he is above the law, and brags about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
Semper Fi...
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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The only real case of voter fraud was committed by who? That's right, you guessed, republicans.
A basic manipulation tactic of Trump's and the GOP, is to accuse your opponent of the exact thing that you are doing, so when you get caught doing that thing yourself, it doesn’t seem that drastic. Republicans know that when everyone votes they lose. The Repub party may not have the numbers, but they most certainly have the money. A large majority of money from Big Business and billion dollar corporations is funneled to Repub candidates. This money is used to buy republican politicians for the purpose of giving corporations control over our government.
In 2019, the NC Republican operative at the center of an absentee ballot fraud scheme that led the state to order a rerun of a congressional election was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. The operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, was charged with three felony counts of obstruction of justice, two counts of conspiring to commit obstruction of justice and two counts of possession of absentee ballots.
Allegations that operatives working for Dowless illegally collected, and sometimes filled in, absentee ballots on behalf of Republican Mark Harris’ campaign emerged shortly after the Nov. 6 election. They caused the state to hold off certifying Harris’ apparent narrow victory over Democrat Dan McCready.
During 4 days hearings, the state Board of Elections heard evidence of a well-funded and well-organized campaign to tip the election for the state’s 9th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which stretches southeast from Charlotte.
Ballot fraud is extremely rare. But when this case was uncovered in a congressional race in 2018, orchestrated by Republicans, Trump and other republicans looked the other way.
The election fraud committed in NC was the largest case in modern American history. Republican Mark Harris, hired a felon, Leslie McCrae Dowless, who promised to deliver unbelievable absentee ballot margins, as he had done in past elections. Dowless hired workers who went to voters’ doorsteps in poor, rural Bladen County, N.C., and “helped” them request, fill out and turn in their ballots. That help included forging signatures and filling in vote choices, and possibly even discarding ballots. The operation mostly targeted black voters. It also appeared the county elections board may have also leaked early vote totals to Republicans.
Altogether, it was an egregious attack on our democracy, in an election where the margin was only 905 votes. Voters on both sides of the aisle were horrified. But not the Republican Party. When evidence of fraud emerged in the party’s primary, it's state director, Dallas Woodhouse, turned a blind eye; later, when evidence emerged in the general-election race, he backed Mark Harris, in a lawsuit to be seated in Congress without an investigation 😲 while attacking the bipartisan state elections board and blaming Dems for the fraud. 😲
It turned out that even the local U.S. attorney, who was appointed by Trump, had failed to act on warnings by the state elections board that Dowless had stolen votes in a different race two years before. Instead, the attorney’s office went on a fishing expedition for fraud committed by immigrants, under the guidance of Jeff Sessions.
Trump and the GOP love to claim that voters commit fraud, even though it almost never happens, BUT, when one of their own was caught committing the worst case of voter fraud in modern history, they weren’t concerned at all. Just one more page from the Republican Party’s dirty elections playbook.
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Trump never misses an opportunity to display the utter contempt he has for America and the American people.
Trump: “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” Trump wrote. “75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”
Trump was parroting lies and propaganda from One America, a far-right network that's actually more craven than Fox. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
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COVID-19: " So just so we're clear, I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance, and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, flag waving, or denial. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, maturity, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. Currently there is no vaccine for me, and that's the problem. I recognize no one's authority. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I may have lost some strength in other countries, but thanks to Trump, America is making me great again." 💪😆
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters that year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
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On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
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I'm sure we all remember the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil incident in the Gulf of Mexico. I still remember watching the 24hr live video stream of thousands of gallons of oil being dumped into the gulf. Well days before the Trump administration unveiled its plans for a massive expansion of offshore drilling, it moved to gut the Production Safety Systems Rule, a set of safety regulations the Obama administration created pertaining to maintenance of offshore platforms. The changes, finalized last month and slated to take effect on Dec. 27, loosen notification and certification rules for oil companies and toss out a requirement that offshore equipment be designed to withstand the most extreme weather and pressure conditions.
In May, Trump took aim at the Well Control Rule, a safety monitoring regulation meant to prevent the kind of Deepwater Horizon incident that killed 11 workers and resulted in some 200 million gallons of crude oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. The rule requires additional inspection and maintenance of blowout preventers, a device designed to automatically seal a well, and stop an uncontrolled release of oil and gas. Stripping the Obama era regulations would loosen the inspection and oversight requirements for this equipment.
Trump's reckless, irresponsible, and controversial drilling plan called “energy dominance” would make available for oil and gas leasing, roughly 90 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, including large swaths of the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Interior Department, led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, who's currently under multiple ethics investigations is leading the charge for Trump's plan.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement estimates that rolling back these safety regulations would save oil companies just shy of $1 billion over a 10-year period. I mean sure, it could lead to another Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It could result in the loss of lives again. It could cost fishermen their entire livelihoods again. But who cares, just as long as billion dollar oil companies can save millions of dollars, that's on top of the millions they're already saving from the massive tax cuts Trump gifted them. Now that's what I call MAGA!!! 😔
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Duterte, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, MBS, Xi Jinping, and Al-Assad all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, loyalty, and dogmatic obedience to them and them alone. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Time and time again, Trump keeps telling us exactly who and what he is. But unfortunately some people still refuse to believe him, or even listen to what he's saying.
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Deep down, Trump has always despised America and our democratic republic. He has nothing but contempt for our Constitution, and the " idea" of America. Trump has always favored despotic dictatorships. That's why he speaks so highly of tyrants like Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi, Duterte, and MBS. And anyone who has been paying attention, knows that Trump has never hidden his true feelings about any of this. When someone repeatedly tells you, and shows you who they are, it would behoove you to believe them.
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How is it that every country was infected with the same coronavirus, but America had the worst national response to the outbreak, with more deaths and infection cases than any country in the world?
Perhaps If Trump had not been so incompetent and derelict in his duties as president, we would be in a better position to reopen the country and end social distancing sooner. If only he had read the multiple national security briefings that warned of the potential threat of a pandemic, many Americans would still be alive today. If only Trump had been a leader, and not a fraud, and a decent human being, instead of a failed human being, the country wouldn't have the highest number of infections, and the highest number lives lost, than any other country in the world.
Trump said it was one person coming from China. He literally said that. He should be dragged out of the White House for that comment alone.
Trump Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Trump March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.”
Trump's indifference, sincere ignorance, and conscientious stupidity, are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And no amountof lies, spin, or deflections will ever change that.
And Trump has trained his supporters to be just as indifferent, reckless, selfish, and sociopathic as he is. They are more than willing to contaminate an entire town, just so they can go bowling.
So do Trump and his supporters believe that the Spanish flu and the bubonic plague were hoaxes too? The bubonic plague wiped out half the population of Europe. It took Europe 200 years to return to the population numbers before the plague.
And the Spanish flu came in two waves. The first wave of infections came in March of 1918, and wasn't as deadly or widespread, but that was just the calm before the storm. A second and more deadly mutated wave came back in the fall, and it was lethal enough to take the life of a perfectly healthy man in his twenties within 24 hours of showing symptoms. It infected at least 500 million people, and took at least 50 million lives. In the US alone, the virus took 195 thousand lives, in just October alone.
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Trump: "When I said, 'Go to the church,' I didn't know protesters or not. Nobody tells me that. No one tells me anything around here. Like during that solar eclipse, no one told me not to stare directly at it. So they say, 'Yes my Lord, we'll go to the church.'"
"When I went, I didn't say, 'Oh, move them out'—I didn't know who was there. I simply told them to dominate the streets. I figured I was just going to take a leisurely stroll over to the church, very nearby, and in the spirt of Caligula, casually dominate everything along the way."
"So we walked over to the church - It was a very fast walk, but not too fast, but kinda fast. It could've been faster, but Bill "lunchbox" Barr kept slowing me down. I think it was very symbolic. Yes, I did hold up a Bible, but not for too long, because that Bible got really really hot. It started to burn my hands. It must have been one of those deep state Bibles or something.
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine. In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to abstract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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As the number of infection cases rises, and hospitals continue to run out of beds and space, patients should be sent to the Governor mansions of Kemp, DeSantis, and Abbot. They should also be sent to Trump's Mar-a-Lago and Doral resorts.
Abbott, Kemp, and DeSantis have been downplaying the coronavirus in order to curry favor with their master Trump, but what they don't realize, is that as the situation gets drastically worse in their States, Trump is going to throw them all under the bus by placing the entire blame on them, even though they were only following his wishes. Trump already has 3 buses standing by with their names on them, ready to park on top of them at his earliest convenience.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear.
So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have
either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it wreaks of corruption,
paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes.
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Trump: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a full grown baby, I spoke like a man-baby, I thought like a man-baby, I reasoned like a man-baby."
Republicans like Joni Ernst and Susan Collins are trying to convince us that by some miracle, Trump has finally seen the light, and that he has now learned his lesson. Really?!?!
Republicans are treating Trump the exact same way that his parents treated him as a child, by rewarding him for his bad behavior. They have basically told Trump that there will be no consequences for anything that he does, and not only will they not punish him, they will protect him from being punished by anyone else. This is how Trump's parents created a monster without boundaries. A sociopath who is oblivious or indifferent to the devastation he causes to everything around him. A sociopath who will never accept blame himself, but instead blames others, even for acts he obviously committed.
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On his show on May 19, Howard Stern asked the same question I've been asking myself since the 2016 campaign. Howard Stern, who has personally known Trunp for decades, questioned why people would vote for Trump, when in reality, Trump is disgusted by his biggest supporters. Stern went on to say that Trump would be “disgusted” by the MAGA crew..
Howard Stern: “The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most,” Stern said. “The people who are voting for Trump for the most part... he wouldn’t even let them in a f---ing hotel. He’d be disgusted by them. Go to Mar-a-Lago, see if there’s any people who look like you. I’m talking to you in the audience - the Trump voter who, you know, idolizes the guy. He despises you."
“I don’t hate Donald,” he continued. “I hate you for voting for him, for not having intelligence. For not being able to see what’s going on with the coronavirus, for not being able to see what the Justice Department is doing. I hate you, I don’t want you here.”
Trump: “Maybe this Covid thing is a good thing. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.”
In case any of you Trump supporters are confused, Trump was talking about YOU. 😆
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
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Inspectors Generals serve as independent watchdogs. They are responsible for investigating wrongdoing within our government, which makes them an existential threat to a criminal and con-man like Trump. Trump is going after anyone and anything that poses a threat to him and his swamp.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and Republicans are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we the Amercan, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
America's democracy and Constitutional republic, has never been in more peril than it is right now. Trump and republicans, are attempting to reverse our victory in our War of Independence, that began 1775 and ended in 1783. They are attempting to throw it all away, like it never happened, and install a new King, a new monarch, a new tyrant, to rule over the American people..
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85 and terminally ill, was in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Trump sole control over his dying father's estate.
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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18 U.S. Code § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection
"Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."
18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy
"If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both."
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As a Marine veteran, my heart goes out to you doctors and nurses on the front lines of this virus. America will forever owe you all a debt of gratitude. There's no shame in having a breakdown due to fear or exhaustion. The only shame is in not getting up from it, and letting it control you. Hold the line!!!
Semper Fi..
During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like many of our Governors, and especially the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.
Economic inequality, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, is best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them...
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
But isn't conservatism about freedom? Of course everyone wants freedom, and so conservatism has no choice but to promise freedom to its subjects. In reality conservatism has meant complicated things by "freedom", and the reality of conservatism in practice, has scarcely corresponded even to the contorted definitions in conservative texts.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of state terror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
For thousands of years, conservatism was universally understood as being in opposition to democracy. Having lost much of its ability to attack democracy openly, conservatism has tried in recent years to redefine the word "democracy" while engaging in deception to make the substance of democracy unthinkable.
Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.
Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.
Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.
The main idea of public relations is the distinction between "messages" and "facts". Messages are the things you want people to believe. A message should be vague enough that it is difficult to refute by rational means.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact trying to take it from you. January 6 ring a bell? Trump tried to steal an election, by falsely claiming it was being stolen from him.
knowledge is best produced in a liberal culture. This is why the most prosperous and innovative regions of the United States are also the most politically liberal, and why the most conservative regions of the country are also the greatest beneficiaries of transfer payments. Liberals create wealth and government redistributes it to conservatives. This is, of course, the opposite of the received conservative opinion in the media, but it is true. The republican party's greatest fear, is that America will one day live up to it's promise.
Conservatism is almost gone. People no longer worship the pharaohs. To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general.
B: It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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Trump said that our men and women in uniform, and America’s fallen in Arlington Cemetery, are suckers and losers. Well if we allow Trump to steal this election, which he has already admitted to trying to do, and turn America into the dictatorship he dreams of, then his reprehensible comments about our fallen, our veterans, and our active duty service members, will become true. Because it would mean that they all served, sacrificed, and died for nothing.
Trump: "The men and women who serve in our military, along with America's fallen in Arlington, are nothing more than suckers & lo5ers. And to prove it, I'm going to destroy the America that they served, fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice for. And republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Lindsey Graham, are going to help me do it."
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McConnell have proven over the years that he has the moral compass of a weather vane. When it truly matters, McConnell has failed to do the right thing.
December 6, 2012, that was the day Moscow Mitch made history, by filibustering his own proposal on the Senate floor.
Mitch McConnell, in an effort to bluff Democrats, demanded a straight up or down vote on a measure that would give President Obama the authority to raise the debt ceiling. The GOP calculation was that some Dems would vote against it, proving Dem disunity on the debt ceiling.
But then the maneuver backfired, forcing McConnell to filibuster the proposal he’d previously wanted subjected to a straight vote just a few minutes ago.
Moscow Mitch apparently did not think Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would take him up on his offer, which would have allowed McConnell to portray President Obama’s desire for such authority as something even Democrats opposed.
Reid objected at first, but told McConnell he thought it might be a good idea. After Senator Reid consulted with Dems, and they reviewed the proposal, Reid came back to the floor and proposed a straight up-or-down vote on the idea, just like McConnell had asked for. McConnell immediately objected.😲
McConnell was betting that some Democrats would vote against the move, but when Democrats called his bluff, he folded like a paper airplane.
McConnell was forced to turn around and say "I object," filibustering his own suggestion.
Moscow Mitch basically objected to himself. 😂
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was incredulous, and later stated: " This may be a moment in Senate history, when a Senator made a proposal, and when given an opportunity for a vote on that proposal, filibustered his own proposal."
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"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
Trump’s complete failure as a human being is now complete, and on full display. Let's face it, he is simply a mistake of human nature....an anomaly....a glitch in the human genome. He is less of a person, and more of a menagerie of every human flaw known to mankind. He is a contemptible and irredeemable moral abomination, who has never done one decent or sincere thing in his life, not even by accident. America would never survive another four years of his incompetence, corruption, and ineptitude.
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The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!!
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Since day one, Trump has been moving the goal posts on the pandemic, and on Sunday, "stable genius" said that keeping the U.S. death toll between 100,000 and 200,000 would be “a very good job.”
“We can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000, that’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000 — so we have between 100- and 200,000 — we all, together, have done a very good job,” Trump said during a task force press briefing.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
Trump is clearly mentally impaired, and his psychosis infects everything and everyone around him. He has turned his white house into an asylum for the criminally insane, and criminally incompetent. Trump's White House is a vortex of lies, pandemonium, betrayal, treason, thievery, nepotism, upheaval, moral turpitude, skulduggery, and sanctioned lawlessness.
There's enough chaos going on in Trump's white house, than even Nurse Ratched herself would be reduced to tears and a complete nervous breakdown.
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How do you know when America's democracy is under siege? It's when our president believes he is above the law, and brags about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
Semper Fi...
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
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Trump is running the country with the exact same type of logic, wisdom and leadership that he used with his casinos. And it worked out great for him personally, but it was a disaster for the casinos, investors, and the thousands of his casinos employed.
A close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings leaves little doubt that Trump’s casinos were protracted failures. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed the city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.
But even as his companies did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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@Dani_Capozzi
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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Thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party of today, isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away, and today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower, even after Interpol issued a red notice for Tokhtakhounov. And then, in Dec 2013, this fugitive from American justice, appeared seated near Trump in the VIP section of Trump's Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News..
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Conservatives don't actually believe in freedom or liberty.
Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and then going afterCivil liberties in the next.
Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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Jim Jones convinced his cultists that they should give their kids cyanide laced punch, and then they should drink the same poisoned punch themselves, and they did. I am 100% certain that Trump could convince his cultists to do the exact same thing.
Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts,
pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, gaslighting, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon this past March 17th, an angry hostile woman took to the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official who will govern by the Constitution, on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
This is what happens when for the first time in American history, we have a president who openly admires dictators, and brags about how he has fallen in love with Kim Jung Un, the most despotic dictator in modern history.
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The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The unredacted emails were secured through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act launched by the Center for Public Integrity. The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act..
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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As Trump stood in front of that church holding a bible, the look on his face was the look of a madman. It was the look of a deranged lunatic, without boundaries.
Trump once said, “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do!” yet when he was pressed to name his favorite verse, he made one up that does not even exist. In an interview, Trump said that he's never asked God for forgiveness, because he's never done anything wrong. Trump has absolutely nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus Christ. He breaks every commandment daily, has proven he knows nothing of the Bible, and still gets over 87% of the Evangelical Christian vote. To say that evangelicals hold him to a lesser standard would be incorrect, since that would imply that they hold him to any standard at all..
Trump is simply an irredeemable human being. He seems to possess every human flaw known to mankind, as well as everyone of the $even deadly sins.
1. L.UST: a strong inordinate and inappropriate passion or longing, especially for Ivanka and for assaulting random women.
2. G.LUTT0NY: an excessive and ongoing eating of food or drink. An inordinate desire to consume way more than one requires.
3. G.REED: an excessive and insatiable pursuit of money and material goods by any means necessary.
Charity cures greed by putting the desire to help others above storing up treasure for one’s self. Trump created a fake charity foundation, and used it for his own financial gain.
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been gr.eedy, gr.eedy, gr.eedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so gr.eedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a gr.eedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
4. S.L0TH: an excessive laziness or the failure to act and utilize one’s talents.
5. W.RATH/ANGER: a strong anger and hatred towards others.
6. ENVY: the intense desire to have an item that someone else possesses. The desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
7. PRIDE: an excessive view of one's own self, and one's own abilities, without regard for others. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
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Trump's presidency will be remembered as "The Great Oppression." And he will be remembered as "The Great Pretender." Trump is, and has always been, a fraud. Therefore his failure as a leader and as a president was inevitable.
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone else, or something else.
In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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"COVID-19 is certainly revealing some uncomfortable truths about America. For example, everyday brings a new reminder that we are a country of extreme-haves, and extreme have-nots. And I'm not talking about money - we all knew that. I'm talking about people having accurate information. In this pandemic, "accurate" information has made toilet paper seem plentiful.
America, the country that has the most Nobel Prizes in science, also has the most willfully ignorant people per capita when it comes to understanding science.
How else can we explain electing a low-information bu.ffoon, who wheezes medical tips on our TVs about poisoning ourselves with disinfectants.
And maybe the most clueless aspect of that supposedly "sarcastic" advice is that Trump thinks we can still find disinfectants at stores. I guess we're finding that a pandemic isn't the ideal thing to happen to a country that believes science is just an opinion. Just something you roll the dice and decide whether you believe, instead of something you actually try to understand. And whether it's evolution, vaccines, or viruses, Americans are far busier dismissing inconvenient science as politically motivated, than they are learning about how it will effect their lives. Because NOT believing in Darwinism, IS Darwinism.
Because America is a country that cares more about the financial health of its corporations, than the actual health of its citizens. After all, who got most of the bailout cash? Corporations!!
And who is behind the "grassroots" push to prematurely reopen America? Corporations, and the (republican) politicians corporations pay. But science doesn't watch foxnews, so it doesn't know that it's just a DNC "hoax" or some other childish QAnon conspiracy.
Republican Governors believe that sacrifices have to be made for corporate profits. And that your grandmother, may just be one of them. And because Donald " I don't take responsibility at all" Trump, is passing the buck to Governors to make decisions, so Donald won't be blamed.
America's approach to this pandemic is ad-hoc, conflicting, and piecemeal. Exactly the type of uncoordinated response that helps spread a pandemic. South Korea's response was like a well conducted symphony. America's is like an open mic night at improv.
We have states with policies founded on epidemiological research, surrounded by states with policies founded on Twitter hashtags. Oddly enough, viruses don't respect state lines. Or your beliefs in how deadly they are. The worst states spread the virus, and prolong the pandemic for the rest of us.
This pandemic has proven two things: You're only as healthy as the most stupid person in America; and his name, is Donald J Trump.
Trump: "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy."
-- David Frum: The Corruption of the American Republic.
Vote 💙 like your right to vote, and our democracy depends on it, because it actually does.
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picoloas cage
He runs a criminal organization out of the White House, which he and his worthless kids have used to line their pockets with millions in taxpayer dollars and foreign money.
So far Trump's presidency as amounted to nothing more than a 3 year long smash and grab for him and his pointless kids...Jared included.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂😲😆
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Trump has been violating the Constitution since noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “profit, gain or advantage.” This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials profiteering from new federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decisionmaking to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or from the new federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it, because he doesn't believe in science or facts, so he didn't understand it..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018..
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump..
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
No amount of lies or deflections will wash away the facts of Trump's historic failure as president, and as a human being..
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Trump will go down in history as the greatest pathological liar that ever lived.
A pathological liar like Trump is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way.
Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies. Trump does this constantly at his rallies. He tries to play the victim and the hero at the same time.
Pathological liars are great storytellers. Their lies tend to be very detailed and colorful.
Even though obviously over-the-top, the pathological liar may be very convincing.
Along with being made the hero or victim in their stories, pathological liars tend to tell lies that seem to be geared at gaining admiration, sympathy, or acceptance by others.
A pathological liar tells lies and stories that fall somewhere between conscious lying and delusion. They sometimes believe their own lies. It’s difficult to know how to deal with a pathological liar who may not always be conscious of their lying. Some do it so often that experts believe they may not know the difference between fact and fiction after some time.
When asked questions, a pathological liar may speak a lot, without ever being specific or answering the question...
Most people lie at one time or another. Previous research has suggested that we tell an average of 1.65 lies every day. Most of these lies are what are considered “white lies.”
Pathological lies, on the other hand, are told consistently and habitually. They tend to appear pointless and often continuous. It's been reported that DJT tells at least 20 lies per day.😲
Identifying a pathological liar isn’t always easy, that is unless his name is DJT. The following are some signs to help identify a pathological liar:
They often talk about experiences and accomplishments in which they appear heroic, they're also the victim in many of their stories, often looking for sympathy, their stories tend to be elaborate and very detailed, they respond elaborately and quickly to questions, but the responses are usually vague and don’t provide an answer to the question, they may have different versions of the same story, which stems from forgetting previous details, or previous lies.
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Trump: "I can only reveal, that I might believe, that it may have been, an imminent attack, on a possible embassy, or perhaps a number of possible embassies, that were perceived to be, under imminent threat, from an imminent attack, of an imminent variety."
Trump....the Buffoon King, I can do anything.
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1888 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Trump lies with the confidence of a man who believes no one's watching or paying attention.
Trump 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’
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So after Republicans broke their own rules and went back on their word about picking a Supreme Court Justice during an election year, when millions of Americans have already voted, Dems have every right to pack the court, and Republicans have absolutely no room to talk. Republicans made a promise to the American people, and they broke that promise without even blinking an eye or giving it a 2nd thought. So If Dems decide to pack the court, republicans have no one to blame but themselves. Because it didn't have to be this way. All republicans had to do, was honor the promise they made.
Because let's face it, if the situation were reversed, and Dems broke their promise, and went back on their word, what would republicans do? We all know the answer to that question.
So, by breaking their own rules and going back on their word, Republicans are giving Dems a green light to pack the Supreme Court. I love it!!!!😆 👏👏👏
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Back in December of 2012, Senate negotiations took a strange turn when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to filibuster a vote that HE had called for himself.
It started when McConnell demanded an up or down vote on a measure that would allow the president to have more authority in raising the debt ceiling.
McConnell was betting that some Democrats would vote against the move, "which would have allowed McConnell to portray President Obama's desire for such authority as something even Democrats opposed.
He also hoped it would show disunity among Democrats.
But Dems soon realized a way to turn the tables and decided to call McConnell's bluff. Harry Reid objected at first, but told McConnell he thought it might be a good idea. After Senate staff reviewed the proposal, Reid came back to the floor and proposed a straight up-or-down vote on the idea, which is what McConnell had demanded.
McConnell was forced to say no.🤣
McConnell was forced to turn around and say "I object," filibustering his own suggestion. True story.
"I don't know how the Republicans can say they're not abusing the filibuster after what we saw on the floor today," Sen Durbin told the Huffington Post at the time.
"It's somewhat comic, but sad as well, that we've reached the point where Sen. McConnell will not even accept a majority vote on his own measure."
McConnell introduced the bill to show that President Obama didn't have the votes for such a measure even in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Well on that day Majority Leader Harry Reid called his bluff, and McConnell folded.
Well, that's a first, said Tommy Christopher at Mediaite. "The Obama-era Republican Senate minority has made unprecedented filibuster abuse their calling card, but this may be the first instance of filibuster self-abuse." Seriously, McConnell just made the best case yet for filibuster reform, says Martin Longman at Booman Tribune. Remember, Reid is from Nevada, and "they know a little something there about calling people's bluffs and making them show their cards. He just ate McConnell's lunch and drank his milkshake."
Republicans are the reason why we need to get rid of the filibuster. Republicans are too corrupt, too unethical, and they never play by the rules. They basically ruin everything.
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Trump: “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” Trump wrote. “75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”
Trump was parroting lies and propaganda from One America News, a discredited far-right network that's actually more craven than Fox. If Fox is Al qaeda, then OAN is ISIS.
These are the types of wild baseless conspiracy theories that you would expect from some random yahoo siting in his mom's basement trolling on social media. It's definitely something that should be beneath a sitting President. That is unless the sitting President happens to be Trump, and like the troll in his mom's basement, sits in his bunker, trolling on twitter all the live long day.
I imagine Trump sitting alone in his underground bunker while rage tweeting, surrounded by empty soda cans and chicken bones, wearing nothing but tighty whities and a t-shirt, stained with ketchup, and Colonel Sanders' 11 secret herbs and spices.
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Trump: "You've got Guatemalans, Mexicans, ISIS, the Menendez Brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, decepticons, those flyingMonkeys from the Wizard of Oz, Hannibal Lecter, Thanos, and severalBabadooks, all crossing the border illegally. Its scary stuff."😂😂
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All 44 presidents before trump would have been impeached and removed from office for what Trump has done, and for what he is still doing.
A sociopath like Trump, with no impulse control, who doesn't know right from wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible, and completely incapable of being corrected.
Trump is like a child who has never been told no, and has never been told that what he is doing is wrong. He doesn’t know right from wrong because he's never been punished for his wrong doings, instead, he is like a child who is rewarded for his bad behavior. This child will inevitably grow up to be an incorrigible monster without boundaries, and republicans are continuing to feed this monster..
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"Character" he says. Well how's this for character:
MARCH 2016:
" Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said " You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
FEBRUARY 2016:
" Knock the krap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees." Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Trump’s history of creepy comments about the looks of his daughter Ivanka are well known. But his younger daughter, Tiffany, has largely stayed out of the spotlight—much like her father’s equally creepy comments about her anatomy..
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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Let's be honest, deep down, we all know he said it. They'll never admit it to themselves, but even his supporters know he said it.
Obama visited our Troops overseas 7 times. That's not even counting the multiple times he visited our troops at military bases here in America during the holidays. Obama visited our troops in Iraq just 3 months after taking office. Traitor Trump waited TWO WHOLE YEARS before he visited our troops for the first time in Iraq. And that was only after he was pushed to do so by advisers.
I have no doubt that Trump complained about having to make that trip to visit our troops the same way he complained about attending the memorial ceremony for our fallen in France.
Trump: "Why do I have to fly all the way to Iraq just to visit troops. They're a bunch of losers anyway."
And then when he finally made the trip, he turned that visit into a campaign rally for himself and used our troops as political props. Trump continues to show his contempt for our men and women in uniform with his silence concerning the Russian bounties placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. To this day, he has not uttered one word about it. NOT.....ONE.
I knew back in 2016 before the election that Trump had no respect for our military the moment he said he knew more about fighting wars than our Generals do. He basically claimed to know more about fighting wars than Generals like Grant, Patton, Washington, MacArthur, Eisenhower, as well as our current living Generals like Mattis. This preposterous claim came from a draft dodger who has NEVER served one day in the military.
It goes without saying, that ONLY a vindictive draft dodging traitor, who has nothing but contempt for the men and women in our military, would utter something as outrageous and insulting as that. That was all I needed to hear.
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In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him. It was a pathological barrage of serial lies in which he obliterated all of his old records.
Trump told 664 lies in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.
Trump averaged 26.3 lies per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.
Trump told more lies in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).
The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.
Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.
Trump’s pre-midterm barrage, Oct. 5 to Nov. 5
NOV 5, 2018
Trump lie: “And we gave our great warriors their largest pay raise in more than a decade.”
in fact: The military pay increase in the 2019 defense bill, 2.6 per cent, is the largest in nine years, since the 3.4 per cent increase under Obama in 2010. Claiming that it was the largest in more than a decade is a blatant lie.
Trump lie: “And there's more coming. We passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor rather than waiting on line for weeks and months to see a doctor. Forty-four years, they tried to pass that. And I came up with that idea, and I thought it was brilliant. I went back to my people and I said, you know what we'll do? There's no way there are so many people in line, takes months and months. I said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to have those people get off line, go outside, see a doctor. And we'll pay for the doctor. I said, ‘I'm so smart. I am the most brilliant human being that has ever lived.’ 😂😄😂
in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was passed and created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, simply modified the program.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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So after Republicans broke their own rules and went back on their word about picking a Supreme Court Justice during an election year, when millions of Americans have already voted, Dems have every right to pack the court. Republicans have absolutely no room to talk. Republicans made a promise to the American people, and they broke that promise without even blinking an eye or giving it a 2nd thought. So If Dems decide to pack the court, republicans have no one to blame but themselves. Because it didn't have to be this way. All republicans had to do, was honor the promise they made. Because let's face it, if the situation was reversed, and Dems broke their promise, and went back on their word, what would republicans do?
So, by breaking their own rules and going back on their word, Republicans are giving Dems a green light to pack the Supreme Court. I love it!!!!😆 👏👏👏
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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Trump: "I take credit for everything, and responsibility for nothing. It's the con-man's creed."
Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House.
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable..
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing. While in the real world, America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 20k deaths. Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world. I
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift fromCommunism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia..
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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In 2014, there were 11 cases of Ebola and 2 deaths in the US, and Trump demanded that President Obama resign because of it.
Trump tweet, 10/23/14
"If this doctor, who is reckless flew into New York from West Africa has Ebola, then Obama should apologize to the American people & resign."
Today there have been 3.83 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US, and 143K deaths.
Most Americans rightfully predicted that Trump's presidency was going to be one of the worst in modern history, but I don't think anyone ever imagined it would be an unmitigated catastrophe of this magnitude. And to add insult to injury, Trump announced that he's not responsible for anything that has happened. I'm assuming it's because deep down, he only considers himself to be a "pretend president." Trump has taken many things in life, but responsibility has never been one of them. But what he will do, is blame others for his clear and obvious failures.
Because of Trump, America has had the worst response to the pandemic than any country in the world. So far, more than 140 thousand Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. And many of those lives were needlessly lost due to Trump's indifference, gross incompetence, lack of leadership, criminal negligence, and dereliction of duty. When America needed sound leadership the most, we had a draft dodging president who was, and still is, AWOL.
I can still remember Trump telling us that everything was under control, and all we had to do was inject ourselves with disinfectants, and the virus would just magically disappear. Well today, we can all acknowledge that the virus did not disappear, but tens of thousands of Americans did.
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On May 17, 2017, during a White House meeting days after Trump’s election, Obama warned Trump about Flynn, but Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie also directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017.
A number of red flags were raised about Flynn, beginning with his unusual paid trip to Moscow for an RT gala in December 2015 — an event in which he infamously sat directly next to Putin.
Both US and British intelligence officers were troubled about Flynn’s role in the Trump administration, given his dealings with Russia. But Trump being a traitor, and the very "stable genius" that he is, ignored all the red flags and decided to make Flynn his national security adviser anyway.
During the transition period, Flynn had phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in which he advised Kislyak not to respond to new sanctions Obama had placed on Russia for interfering (on Trump’s behalf) in the presidential election. Not only did Flynn undermine Obama’s (a sitting President) foreign policy, he then lied about it, telling FBI investigators during an interview conducted days after Trump’s inauguration that he and Kislyak did not discuss sanctions.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI prompted the DoJ to warn Trump ONCE AGAIN about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, acting AG Sally Yates, personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, Trump instead rewarded Sally Yates for doing her job, and for her due diligence in warning him about Flynn, by firing her 3 days later. Let that sink in for a moment....take your time.
And now Trump the traitor has the unmitigated gall to try and blame Obama, and everyone else under the sun, for not warning him about Flynn.
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"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for, or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such, I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."
--Malcolm X
"I'm for untruth, no matter who tells it. I'm for injustice, just as long as it's not against me. I'm a severely flawed human being first and foremost, and as such, I'm for whoever and whatever benefits me, and only me as a whole."
-- Trump
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Back when Trump was still pretending that he knew how to run a casino in Atlantic City--back when he still had the people of Atlantic City fooled that he was a legit business man, he
became friends with a man named Joseph Weichselbaum, an embezzler, mob associate, cocaine trafficker, and a thrice-convicted felon..
Trump hired Weichselbaum, who was a helicopter pilot, to fly in casino high-rollers in and out of town through a company formed by Weichselbaum, to whom he also entrusted maintenance of "The Ivana," Trump’s personal helicopter. Weichselbaum—at that point a twice-convicted felon—personally piloted the Trumps in that copter.
Weichselbaum also had another business: importing drugs from Colombia and shipping them from Bradford Motors, a Miami-area car dealership he partly owned, to Cincinnati. Because Weichselbaum was then a twice-convicted felon, NJ gambling regulators insisted to Trump that he not be involved with providing helicopter services to the Trump casinos. Yet Weichselbaum continued collecting a $100,000 salary from the helicopter company, and Trump kept using the company that paid Weichselbaum.
In his indictment and confession, it was revealed that Weichselbaum’s more lucrative business was having drugs delivered to Bradford Motors, the Miami-area car dealership he had an ownership stake in. In his testimony, Weichselbaum admitted to helping to load up to 1,500 pounds of drugs at the time into cars, that mules then drove to the Cincinnati area for distribution in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
NJ Casino Control Commission records show that Trump learned of the indictment in October of 1985. At that point, any decent person would have cut off all ties to Weichselbaum, because failing to do so could cost him his casino license. But of course as we all know, Trump is anything but a decent person. Instead, Trump became even closer to the drug trafficker.
Two months after the indictment, Trump rented apartment 32C in the Trump Plaza Apartments on E. 61st St. in Manhattan to the Weichselbaum brothers, according to NJ Casino Control Commission records. Trump personally owned the unit. Then Trump wrote a letter to the District Court on Trump Organization stationery pleading for mercy for his drug trafficking friend. He called him “a credit to the community.” Trump also described the drug trafficker as “conscientious, forthright and diligent,” 😲
When NJ gaming regulators first asked Trump about this letter, he denied writing it.😂 When they came back with a copy of the letter, Trump said under oath that his signature was on the page.😂 However, Trump’s letter must have worked. Weichselbaum served just 18 months, while the people who merely drove the drugs to Ohio got sentences of up to 20 years.
During his parole, Weichselbaum was required to inform authorities that he had a job and a place to live. He told authorities he would be working for Trump again as Trump's helicopter guy once released. Weichselbaum then moved into Trump Tower.
Just another example of the type of people that Trump associates himself with. Only the best people.😉
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"COVID-19 is certainly revealing some uncomfortable truths about America. For example, everyday brings a new reminder that we are a country of extreme-haves, and extreme have-nots. And I'm not talking about money - we all knew that. I'm talking about people having accurate information. In this pandemic, "accurate" information has made toilet paper seem plentiful.
America, the country that has the most Nobel Prizes in science, also has the most willfully ignorant people per capita when it comes to understanding science.
How else can we explain electing a low-information bu.ffoon, who wheezes medical tips on our TVs about poisoning ourselves with disinfectants.
And maybe the most clueless aspect of that supposedly "sarcastic" advice is that Trump thinks we can still find disinfectants at stores. I guess we're finding that a pandemic isn't the ideal thing to happen to a country that believes science is just an opinion. Just something you roll the dice and decide whether you believe, instead of something you actually try to understand. And whether it's evolution, vaccines, or viruses, Americans are far busier dismissing inconvenient science as politically motivated, than they are learning about how it will effect their lives. Because NOT believing in Darwinism, IS Darwinism.
Because America is a country that cares more about the financial health of its corporations, than the actual health of its citizens. After all, who got most of the bailout cash? Corporations!!
And who is behind the "grassroots" push to prematurely reopen America? Corporations, and the (republican) politicians corporations pay. But science doesn't watch foxnews, so it doesn't know that it's just a DNC "hoax" or some other childish QAnon conspiracy.
Republican Governors believe that sacrifices have to be made for corporate profits. And that your grandmother, may just be one of them. And because Donald " I don't take responsibility at all" Trump, is passing the buck to Governors to make decisions, so Donald won't be blamed.
America's approach to this pandemic is ad-hoc, conflicting, and piecemeal. Exactly the type of uncoordinated response that helps spread a pandemic. South Korea's response was like a well conducted symphony. America's is like an open mic night at improv.
We have states with policies founded on epidemiological research, surrounded by states with policies founded on Twitter hashtags. Oddly enough, viruses don't respect state lines. Or your beliefs in how deadly they are. The worst states spread the virus, and prolong the pandemic for the rest of us.
This pandemic has proven two things: You're only as healthy as the most stupid person in America; and his name, is Donald J Trump.
Trump: "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Trump: "Nobody in their wildest dreams could have predicted that a pandemic like this was possible. Perhaps if Obama had left me with something like a global health directorate within the National Security Council, I could have gotten a good head start on this. So I take no responsibility for any of this. This is all Obama's fault."
President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it, because he doesn't believe in science or facts, so he didn't understand it.
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018..
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Trump's presidency will be remembered as "The Great Oppression." And he will be remembered as "The Great Pretender." Trump is, and has always been, a fraud. Therefore his failure as a leader and as a president was inevitable.
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone else, or something else.
In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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It is jaw-dropping to see just how much contempt republicans have for the American people, and our Constitution. Time and time again, republicans have not hesitated to spit in the faces of the American people.
The majority of Americans were against their massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy, and republicans simply flipped us off, and passed it anyway. For years now, the majority of Americans have said they want common sense gun laws passed to protect their kids, and republicans simply flipped us off, and refused to do anything. 75% of Americans said they want witnesses and evidence introduced in this impeachment trial, and once again, republicans gave the American people the middle finger and said "you should know by now, that we don't care what you want."
Once again, the time has come, that WE THE PEOPLE, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, put an end to the republican party. And it is long overdue. Our republic and democracy as we know it, has never been in more peril than it is right now. In 2020, we must vote out Trump, and as many republicans as possible. The survival of our democracy depends on it.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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The Senate intel report has revealed that Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian-Russian who headed Manafort’s office in that country, posed a ‘grave security threat."
Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer,” the report said. Manafort’s willingness to share information with Kilimnik and other people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, it added, “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.” The 50-year-old Kilimnik was Manafort’s right-hand man in Ukraine.
Kilimnik rose to run Manafort’s operations in Ukraine after Manafort helped Ukrainian candidate Yanukovych win the election in 2010. When Yanukovych fled the country following a pro-Western revolution in 2014, Manafort and Kilimnik continued to work with pro-Russian Ukrainian parties and politicians.
Kilimnik was also the main contact with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, with whom Manafort had business dealings. Kilimnik served as a liaison between the two men, and their relationship continued during the U.S. presidential elections.
Manafort, Kilimnik and their associates took extensive measures to hide and destroy their communications, the report asserts.
Kilimnik was born in Ukraine but attended a military language institute in Moscow from 1987 to 1992 during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The institute was linked to the Russian military intelligence agency, or GRU.
When the full extent of Trump's treachery, crimes, and betrayal of this country are revealed, it will be far worse than most people ever imagined.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free...
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"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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@alfredpierre7154
It was Russians themselves. Russians were embedded with the separatists. Plus the separatists don't have the ability to operate sophisticated equipment like the one used to take down that aircraft.
The plane crashed after being hit by a Russian-made Buk missile over eastern Ukraine, a 15-month investigation by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) found in October 2015.
In September 2016, an international team of criminal investigators said evidence showed the Buk missile had been brought in from Russian territory and was fired from a field controlled by Russian-backed separatists. (Russians)
The Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT) concluded in May 2018 that the missile system belonged to a Russian brigade, and Australia and the Netherlands announced both were holding Russia responsible for downing the aircraft.
Then, in June 2019, the JIT named four men who were involved in bringing the missile into the area in eastern Ukraine, and charged them with theMurders of 298 passengers and crew. It announced that international arrest warrants had been issued.
The suspects, who prosecutors plan to try under Dutch law at a court hearing beginning on 9 March 2020, are:
• Igor Girkin (also known as Strelkov), a former colonel in Russia's FSB intelligence service, according to prosecutors. He was given the minister of defence title in the rebel-held eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk
• Sergei Dubinsky (known as Khmury), who was employed by Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, was a deputy of Mr Girkin and was in regular contact with Russia, investigators said
• Oleg Pulatov, known as Giurza, a former soldier of GRU special forces and deputy head of the intelligence service in Donetsk, according to the JIT
• Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian national who has no military background but led a combat unit as a commander in Eastern Ukraine, prosecutors said
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Ukraine scandal began in the spring of 2019, with a series of contacts between Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy, and Ukrainian officials. In mid-July, Trump decided to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine that had already been appropriated by Congress. The White House offered no explanation, except to blame “interagency delay.” A week later, Trump spoke by phone to the recently elected Ukrainian president, Zelensky. The memorandum released by the White House describing that call—which is consistent with the accounts of the whistleblower complaint that first brought this scandal to light—reads like a classic shakedown.
According to the memo, after exchanges of flattery, Trump states that “we do a lot for Ukraine” and that “we spend a lot of effort and a lot of time,” before he complains that the relationship is not always “reciprocal.” Zelensky then raises the question of military aid to Ukraine, to which Trump immediately responds, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” and proceeds to ask Zelensky to investigate two unfounded conspiracy theories: one involving the server containing emails stolen from the DNC during the 2016 election, and the other involving the thoroughly debunked claim about then-VP Biden, his potential reelection opponent.
Trump asks Zelensky to work with Giuliani and AG Barr to investigate his potential opponent and so aid his own reelection campaign. There can be no misunderstanding that Traitor Trump was abusing his official power in the conduct of foreign policy to get a foreign government to investigate his political rival.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, hypocrisy, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility towards entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
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Trump is essentially a 73 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He is basically an indecent human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind..
Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85 and terminally ill, was in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Trump sole control over his dying father's estate..
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country, are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
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"My own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."
--Ulysses S. Grant, on Lee"s surrender.
"Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have but one sentiment now: that is, we have a government, and laws, and a flag, and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter."
---Ulysses S. Grant
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I view Trump as the Officer who had his knee on George Floyd's neck, and I view America as George Floyd, and I view Republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Graham, as the other Officers who stood by and watched, and did nothing..
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
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The RICO statute was created specifically for criminals like Trump and his criminal organisation.
In order to be found guilty of violating the RICO statute, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) that an enterprise existed; (2) that the enterprise affected interstate commerce; (3) that the defendant was associated with or employed by the enterprise; (4) that the defendant engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity; and (5) that the defendant conducted or participated in the conduct of the enterprise through that pattern of racketeering activity through the commission of at least two acts of racketeering activity as set forth in the indictment.
A pattern of racketeering activity requires at least two acts of racketeering activity committed within ten years of each other.
The government must show that the racketeering predicates are related, and that they amount to or pose a threat of continued criminal activity. Racketeering predicates are related if they have the same or similar purposes, results, participants, victims, or methods of commission, or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated events.
Continuity refers either to a closed period of repeated conduct, or to past conduct that by its nature projects into the future with a threat of repetition.
As to the continuity requirement, the government may show that the racketeering acts found to have been committed pose a threat of continued racketeering activity by proving: (1) that the acts are part of a long-term association that exists for criminal purposes, or (2) that they are a regular way of conducting the defendant's ongoing legitimate business, or (3) that they are a regular way of conducting or participating in an ongoing and legitimate enterprise.
The government need not prove that the defendant agreed with every other conspirator, knew all of the other conspirators, or had full knowledge of all the details of the conspiracy. All that must be shown is: (1) that the defendant agreed to commit the substantive racketeering offense through agreeing to participate in two racketeering acts; (2) that he knew the general status of the conspiracy; and (3) that he knew the conspiracy extended beyond his individual role.
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Over the years Trump's ra.cist comments have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke and Richard Spencer..
Trump: "I have black guys counting my money. … I hate it. The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day. Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that."
"There is no question that Charlottesville wouldn’t have occurred without Trump. It really was because of his campaign and this new potential for a nationalist candidate who was resonating with the public in a very intense way. The alt-right found something in Trump. He changed the paradigm and made this kind of public presence of the alt-right possible.
--Richard Spencer, Alt-right leader and white-supremacist
David Duke, the former Klan leader, who participated in the Charlottesville rally, called it a “turning point” for his own movement, which seeks to “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
Trump has made it abundantly clear that he is a devout racist. Racist to the point of pathological obsession in fact. Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump is a man without a conscience. So there will be no guilt, no apologies, no shame, and certainly no sense of remorse coming from a racist narcissistic sociopath like Trump.
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The GOP is ready to throw away our 244 year old democratic republic, for a corrupt, mentally impaired, well known con-man. A republic that for 244 years, hundreds of thousands of American men and women have served, fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice to see that it is preserved. Just let that sink in for a moment.
Trump said that our men and women in uniform, and America’s fallen in Arlington, are suckers and losers. Well if we allow Trump to steal this election, which he has already admitted to trying to do, and turn America into the dictatorship he dreams of, then his reprehensible comments about our fallen, our veterans, and our active duty service members, will become true. Because it would mean that they all served, sacrificed, and died for nothing.
Trump: "The men and women who serve in our military, along with America's fallen in Arlington, are nothing more than suckers & lo5ers. And to prove it, I'm going to destroy the America that they served, fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice for. And republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Lindsey Graham, are going to help me do it."
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So last year we learned that on Donald's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to his failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland, for the sole purpose of lining his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that DJT wanted to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
Now we've recently learned that DJT asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland.
This is a level of corruption that we have never seen before, or even imagined. Its gratuitous, egregious and overt corruption on steroids. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, for Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history. T.rump's face belongs on the Mt Rushmore of corruption....all by itself. At this point, they should just wrap the entire White House with yellow police tape, and declare the whole thing a crime scene..
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Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent expressed his disgust over rioters who stormed the Capitol, and Trump's rhetoric that sparked the insurrection.
"He's committed a mortal crime against the republic," Dent said. "He should have resigned over this, but he won't, of course."
In an interview, Dent conveyed his anger with a pro-Trump rioter carrying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol building, calling it a "desecration."
"I always proudly took my constituents to a plaque right by the east-front Capitol, right by the front door. It's a plaque dedicated to the honorary first defenders from Allentown, Pennsylvania, in Redding, Pennsylvania ... who went to the Capitol, at the call of Abraham Lincoln, to defend the Capitol during the Civil War. ... The confederates never got there. They were there to protect against the rebellion. And here we are, watching Confederate flags running through the Capitol. To see this desecration to me, it's so upsetting as an American, as a Republican. How could this happen?"
"The voters, the courts, the states – they've all spoken. They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever. This election was actually not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000 and 2004 were all closer."
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter aDeath spiral. We’d never see the whole nation accept an election again. Every four years would bring a scramble for power at any cost."
--Mitch McConnell, Jan 6.
A Texas man charged in the Capitol insurrection threatened to ki// hisChildren if they told the FBI he had taken part in the riot, according to court documents.
Guy Reffitt, who the FBI says is part of a far-rightExtremist group called "Texas Freedom Force," (hilarious) was arrested and charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and obstruction of justice.
The FBI said in a charging affidavit that Reffitt, a 48-year-old oil worker from Wylie, Texas, first bragged about his trip to Washington, DC, to his family, saying he had filmed the riot on a GoPro-style camera.
Upon learning of the FBI's investigation into the insurrection, Reffitt threatened toShootHisChildren if they turned him in to authorities, the affidavit said.
His wife told the FBI that Reffitt told his son andDaughter: "If you turn me in, you're a traitor and you know what happens to traitors … traitors getShot."
He separately told his daughter he'd "put a bulletThrough her phone if she posted about him on social media, according to the affidavit.
But Reffitt's family did end up speaking to the FBI, the affidavit said, and days later, agents arrived at Reffitt's door with a search warrant.
This guy loves Trump more than his own family.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics..
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels..
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"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
Trump is by far the biggest coward in American history. And just like any coward, he has encouraged OTHERS to commit acts of violence in his name at rallies and across the country. He has also encouraged Cops to commit acts of violence against people within their custody.
Trump speech to Police Officers in July 2017, Long Island NY.
"When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, I said, please don't be too nice."
23 February 2016:
"I'd like to p.unch him in the face." Trump said this in front of a crowd of his cultists, after a protester was removed from one of his rallies.
22 November 2015:
" Maybe he should have been roughed up." Trump said this in reference Mercutio Southall Jr. who was ejected from a Trump rally. The video footage showed Trump supporters jostling, k.icking, and p.unching Southall. It even prompted Fox & Friends hosts to question the violence from Trump's cultists.
March 2016:
" Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said "You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
February 2016:
" K.nock the c.rap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees."
Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Has anyone ever heard of, or even dreamed of a president speaking in this manner??
Rosemary's baby is all grown up, and he's in the Oval Office now. Trump has always been a toxic poison that destroys everything he touches. He's destroyed his own businesses and marriages, and now he's trying to destroy America with his poison.
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Our Constitution vs Project 2025. Pick a side.
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived.
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
The creation of the U.S. Constitution depended upon the knowledge, experience, and dedication of its framers, just as its endurance depends upon the knowledge and experience of each succeeding generation of Americans. For this reason, it is important for us to learn and understand the governing principles of our nation, set forth in the Constitution.
Semper Fi..
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JimJones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"He was a master of manipulation, but you saw him with this dark hair, the sunglasses, and the way that he spoke -- he was a great orator -- and it moved you, it inspired you because he was so passionate. And so I was just enthralled," said former Peoples Temple member Leslie Wagner-Wilson.
As time went on, former members said Jones became more extreme.
In 1974, Jones leased more than 3,800 acres of isolated land in the jungle from the Guyanese government. By 1978, nearly 1,000 followers had moved to the Guyana compound. Having been forced to give up their passports and money upon arrival, some former members said they were cut off from the outside world.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
A cult environment like "Qanon" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing." The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also killed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Trump:
"Nope, I don't know this gentleman, I've never met him.
Okay, I may have met him once.
Okay, I met him at least a dozen times, but he was not working with Rudy in Ukraine.
Okay, he was working with Rudy in Ukraine, but it's not what you think.
Okay, so it is what you think, but it's not a big deal "something unintelligible" I'm being treated so unfairly, Hillary's emails." 😃😄
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@people744
I don't have to imagine. 🤣
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters that year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
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Trump has not only encouraged his cult to commit acts of violence at his rallies, he also encouraged Cops to commit acts of violence against people within their custody.
Trump speech to Police Officers in July 2017, Long Island NY.
"When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, I said, please don't be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over, like, don't hit their head and they've just killed somebody. Don't hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay."
Cops: "This man is clearly in medical distress!! There's only one thing left to do, put a knee on his neck."
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"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal"
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of public record.
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More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters that year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
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Russian GRU officers accused of hacking the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the DNC used cryptocurrency to pay for the necessary computer infrastructure in the U.S. Mueller’s indictment found that the defendants “conspired to launder the equivalent of more than $95,000 through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity” of bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies. The GRU hackers used hundreds of different email accounts to purchase servers to avoid creating a “centralized paper trail.” They also enlisted several third parties that “facilitated layered transactions through digital currency exchange platforms, providing heightened anonymity.” The extensive laundering of the funds was intended not only to further a crime, but also to obscure the origin of the funds, providing the operation a degree of plausible deniability.
It is not unusual for discussions of foreign political influence operations to pivot to embassies. Former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in particular, is a key figure in the narrative of alleged collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. He held a series of secret meetings with Trump campaign officials, including Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, former Trump adviser Carter Page, and former Trump adviser J.D. Gordon. During one private meeting Kislyak held with Kushner and Flynn, they discussed the possibility of establishing a secure communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. During the transition, Kislyak had also brokered a meeting between Kushner and the head of a sanctioned Russian government bank, Vnesheconombank. The bank maintains the meeting was about Kushner’s family business; Kushner denies this and says the meeting was a diplomatic one related to his role in the presidential transition.
On top of these controversial meetings, Kislyak’s embassy also carried out several suspicious transactions that U.S. bank investigators have flagged to U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
First, in November 2016—10 days after Trump won the presidency—the Russian government wired Kislyak a lump-sum payment of $120,000. Both the timing and the amount raise questions, as the sum was more than twice Kislyak’s normal salary payments.
Second, the Russian Embassy attempted to make a $150,000 cash withdrawal just a few days after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. The bank reportedly blocked this transaction, because it questioned the embassy’s justification that it needed cash in Washington to pay employees who had already returned to Russia.
Third, the embassy paid $2.4 million to a small construction company controlled by a Russian immigrant in the United States, who was reportedly not equipped to carry out the work commissioned. What’s more, the bank investigators found that the money was “cashed quickly or wired to other accounts.” Manafort’s trial showed, small vendors can be instrumental, intentionally or not, to laundering large amounts of money from abroad.
US law bans foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns, but they can circumvent the restrictions by routing financial support through anonymous bank accounts, shell corporations, and front companies. it is easy to set up a company without disclosing its purpose or the identity of its true owners.
Foreign adversaries can then use these companies to execute anonymous financial transactions that facilitate attacks on free and fair democratic elections.
A network of shell corporations could be used to hide the origin of foreign funds pumped into a political action committee, or a social media political ad campaign. The Kremlin has long had expertise in this area. During the Soviet Union’s heyday, the KGB perfected the craft of anonymously moving funds to seed foreign political campaigns. The FSB and the GRU, the KGB successors, are well-versed in these techniques as well.
Law enforcement and congressional investigations have revealed that Kremlin-linked actors paid considerable sums of money to support Trump and curry his favor. A Russian organization controlled by an oligarch close to Putin spent more than $1 million a month just on social media campaigns favoring Trump, according to the special counsel. A Russian American energy tycoon—who boasted to a Kremlin official in July 2016 of being “actively involved in Trump’s election campaign”—donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Victory fund. And a company affiliated with a sanctioned Russian oligarch paid $1 million to Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, for unspecified services after the election. These and other transactions examined throughout the report establish that, during the campaign and presidential transition, Trump had several compromising financial entanglements with actors representing a hostile foreign power.
Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov’s transferred $20 million to an American bank account just days after a meeting that he organized between Trump senior campaign officials, including Manafort, Kushner, and a Russian government attorney. Hackers, troll farms, and spies cannot operate without money. Following the money trail helps investigators discover who is funding these entities.
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Now we see Trump growing more and more despotic and totalitarian with each passing day.
In May of 2018, when Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, and has ambitions of being a dictator himself, said it was a good idea, and dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are 10 warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
• There are records, books, news articles, or broadcast reports that document the abuses of the group/leader.
• Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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"It is fear that makes people so willing to follow brash, strong-looking demagogues . . . capable of cleansing the world of the vague, the weak, the uncertain, the evil. Ah, to give oneself over to their direction—what calm, what relief."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mus solini to the Present
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
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As far back as 2015, Trump has been connected to documented acts of violence, with perpetrators claiming that he was even their inspiration. In fact, dozens of people enacted violence in Trump’s name in the years before the Capitol attack.
October 23, 2015:
After being interrupted by protesters at a campaign rally in Miami, Trump warned he’ll “be a little more violent” next time when addressing protesters. “See, the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time.’ The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent."
January 23, 2016:
At a campaign rally in Iowa, Trump, in describing the loyalty of his supporters, notoriously said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and sh○○t somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
March 9, 2016:
A white male Trump supporter punched a Black male protester being escorted out of a Trump campaign rally in Fayetteville, NC. The Trump supporter was recorded on video saying he enjoyed “knocking the he// out of that big mouth” and “Yes, he deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to ki// him.” He was arrested and charged with assault a day later.
FEBRUARY 2016:
"Knock the krap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees." Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
MARCH 2016:
"Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said " You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
October 18, 2018: At a rally in Montana, Trump celebrated Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who body-slammed a reporter in May 2017, telling the crowd, “Any guy who can do a body-slam ... he’s my guy.”
Gianforte assaulted journalist Ben Jacobs after Jacobs asked him a question about the GOP health care bill, on the day before Gianforte won election. Gianforte ultimately apologized (after his spokesperson first denied the assault) and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault.
On January 6, Rudy Giuliani addressed the crowd at Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally hours before the attack on Capitol Hill.
During his rant, Giuliani repeated baseless claims that widespread election fraud affected the outcome of the presidential election.
"Let's have trial by combat!!" Rudy shouted to the crowd.
On the very day that Congress counted the electoral votes that certified President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, Trump opened up the US Capitol to an insurrection.
He told a crowd rallying south of the White House to “walk down to the Capitol,” adding, “You will never take back our country with weakness.”
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DJT sat in the White House, and watched theVio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
AndVio.lence was the only option they had left. DJT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, theViolence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
On January 6, Capitol Hill PoliceOfficers stopped theSTEAL that Trump had planned for that day. We as nation, owe them a debt of gratitude.
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Helsinki July 16, 2018.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
On Nov 10 2016, during a White House meeting 2 days after Trump’s election, President Obama warned Trump about Flynn, but Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie also directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017..
The reason why Trump ignored the warnings about Flynn and his Russian ties are because Trump is a Russian asset too. And he admitted to it in Helsinki.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI prompted the DoJ to warn Trump ONCE AGAIN about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, acting AG Sally Yates, personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, Trump decided to reward Sally Yates for doing her job, and for her due diligence in warning him about Flynn, by firing her 3 days later. Let that sink in for a moment..
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For the last four years, Trump has engaged in an unprecedented level of shameless and flagrant corruption and lawlessness never seen before. Like when he proclaimed, that Article II of the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”
Trump has undermined the constitutional order to a degree unprecedented in modern U.S. history. He has subverted the rule of law by politicizing the DoJ and interfering in its investigations. Trump has also fired inspectors general across the government, whose only job is to uncover wrongdoing. Trump has repeatedly attacked the press, declaring them to be the “enemy of the people.”
He has also disparaged the courage and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform; his eagerness to use troops domestically prompted military leaders to issue an unprecedented reminder that our men and women in uniform owe their ultimate allegiance to the Constitution and not the president.
Trump has made a mockery of constitutional norms, like the requirement of Senate confirmation for his cabinet members and other executive officials, by granting power to “acting” department heads, saying it gives him “greater flexibility.” Without any evidence, Trump has also consistently cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process itself and has declined to state that he will abide by the judgment of the electorate. At the same time, in spite of the overwhelming evidence, Trump has downplayed the reality of foreign powers interfering in our elections.
"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
--Abraham Lincoln
"We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, 'We, the people.'
-- Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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DJT openly admitted on fox that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.
DJT: “The things they had in there were krazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox.
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Trump's former lawyer has already admitted in court that Trump's claims of voter fraud and the election being stolen from him was all a lie.
SidneyPowell's weekslong campaign to invalidate the results of the 2020 election was not based in fact, her lawyers said in federal court back in March.
Powell asked a federal judge to dismiss the $1.3 billion defamationSuit filed by DominionVoting Systems in January.
In court, lawyers for Powell told the judge that "no reasonable person" would believe that her false claims and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election were "truly statements of fact."
The filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claims Powell's statements were so absurd they couldn’t be taken seriously.🤣
“Plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements at issue as 'wild accusations' and 'outlandish claims,'" her lawyers wrote. "They are repeatedly labeled 'inherently improbable' and even 'impossible.' Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support defendant’s position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact."
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Trump Dec 7, 2019:
“People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water. We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where it rushes out to sea because you could never handle it. And you don’t get any water. You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. You can’t wash your hands practically, there’s so little water comes out of the faucet” and then you “end up using the same amount of water.”
😂😄😂😅
On Dec 23, at turning point USA, Trump gave what could be considered his most stupefying soliloquy to date.
“I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. (Don Quixote disagrees) I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?"
--Trump
Just let all of that sink in for a moment. Trump really enjoys giving the world little peeks inside of his diseased riddled mind. I dare any Trump cultist to try and explain to me exactly what it was Trump was trying to say, or what salient point he was trying to make. I dare you...
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
General John Kelly voted for Trump, and eventually became his White House Chief of Staff. And THEN, he got to know him.
“The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathet0ic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,”
--- Marine General Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff.
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Four police officers committedSuicide in the days and months after the riot.
The first was U.S. Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, 51, who had been guarding the Capitol for 15 years and was on duty at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He took his own life three days after the riots.
Several days later, D.C. Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, 35, who was injured in the riots on Jan. 6, also committedSuicide.
Smith’s wife, Erin, told the Washington Post her husband related to her the fear and panic he experienced the day of the assault on the Capitol, and that he was afraid he mightDie.
In defending the Capitol, Smith was struck on the helmet by a metal pole thrown by rioters. Later that night, his wife said he went to the police medical clinic, where he was prescribed pain medication and put on sick leave.
Smith’s wife said he “wasn’t the same” in the days after the riot and seemed to be in constant pain. After visiting a police clinic on Jan. 14 and being ordered back to work, SmithShot himself on the way to work, the Post reported.
The familiesof Liebengood and Smith both sought to have them recognized as “line of dutyDeaths," which would afford their families enhanced benefits.
In a letter sent to Rep. Jennifer Wexton of Virginia, Liebengood’s widow wrote, “After assisting riot control at the Capitol on January 6th, USCP scheduled Howie to work lengthy shifts in the immediate days following. He was home for very few hours over the course of four days. Although he was severely sleep-deprived, he remained on duty- as he was directed- practically around the clock from January 6th through the 9th. On the evening of the 9th, he took hisLife at our home.”
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
Jesse Lee Peterson is a right-wing "pastor," certified nutter, and talk show host, who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” When Rep. Elijah Cummings died last October, Peterson declared on his radio show, “He dead”—like Trump enemies John McCain and Charles Krauthammer, Peterson noted. “That’s what happens when you mess with the Great White Hope. Don’t mess with God’s children.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29.
Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”
From The Atlantic
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
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I love it when our American Generals call Trump out for being the traitor that he is.
Trump has announced he is removing sanctions on Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum company, United Co. Rusal. Oleg Deripaska, who has deep connections to Paul Manafort. Deripaska invested $18.9 million into a Ukrainian telecom venture ran by Manafort, but was never paid back. Mueller has investigated the links between the two men.
Deripaska, who is close to Vladimir Putin, was “accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering” when the Treasury hit him with sanctions in April. In 2005, Manafort started working for Oleg Deripaska. Manafort had hired himself out to Deripaska, promising he would “influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet Republics to benefit Putin’s government.
Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
Oleg Deripaska happens to be business partners with Russian Oligarchs who attended exclusive dinners at Trump's inauguration. Sometime around March of this year, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
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There's a reason why Trump is having a hard time finding good lawyers to represent him. His past lawyers say he was nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid.
Michael Cohen told the Post. “He’s also a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally.”
Trump famously shortchanged many small businesses on the money he owed them. The list includes companies that worked on Trump’s properties or supplied him with chandeliers, pianos, marble, and other luxury touches. But Trump also tried to underpay the very same lawyers who helped him save money, and some ended up suing their former client Trump.
The Atlantic City law firm of Levine Staller saved one of Trump’s companies tens of millions of dollars in taxes—and then sued the company, Trump Entertainment, after the business tried to pay Levine Staller $1.25 million less than the firm was owed.
In 2012, Levine Staller won a settlement that returned $35 million in overpaid taxes and cut $15 million from Trump Entertainment's future liabilities, leading to a total savings of $50 million for the corporation. Trump agreed to pay $7.25 million to the law firm in legal fees, but then only paid Levine Staller $6 million before trying to claim the rest as unsecured debt in ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. In response, Levine Staller sued its former client, Trump Entertainment, and in 2014, a judge rejected Trump Entertainment’s request to be absolved of this debt and told the company to pay up.
It wasn’t an isolated case. Trump underpaid at least four law firms or lawyers who worked for him. One of them, Morrison Cohen LLP of New York City, had represented Trump in a lawsuit against a construction contractor that Trump claimed had overcharged him for work on a golf course. According to USA Today, Trump sued Morrison Cohen for using the case to help promote its work, and the firm countersued for almost $500,000 in unpaid bills. The case was settled in 2009.
It wasn’t just big amounts Trump tried to get out of paying, either. Bill Scherer, a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had to sue Trump in 1994 to collect $5,000 in unpaid legal bills from a case Scherer won for the billionaire. The lawyer told Reuters last year that he had offered Trump a low rate to “curry favor” with the mogul, but still had to sue. “He’s a deadbeat,” Scherer told South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper. Trump told Reuters that he couldn’t remember Scherer or the case at all. 🤣🤣
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COVID-19: "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear the first time, so let me try again. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, flag waving, or denial. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, maturity, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. Trying to ignore me won't save you. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. You may not be interested in me, but I am obsessed with you. Currently there is no vaccine for me, and that's the problem. I recognize no one's authority. I hate medical experts, for obvious reasons. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I may have lost some strength in other countries, but thanks to Trump, America is making me great again." 💪😆
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In a recent AXIOS interview, Trump admitted that he has never confronted Putin with intelligence indicating Russia placed bounties on the heads of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Pressed on why he didn’t raise the matter in his phone call with Putin, he said: “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly that’s an issue that many people said was fake news.” No one other than Trump and Putin has stated it was fake news.
When Trump was asked about Russia supplying weapons to the Taliban, Trump said, "Well, we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia, too." 😲
During the interview, Trump defended Russia in the exact same manner that Putin would have. In fact, it was almost as if the reporter was interviewing Putin himself, based on the lies, deflections, and whataboutisms that Trump gave as answers.
Trump owes the Russians way too much money for him to be questioning Putin about anything. If Putin were to tell Trump that today is Christmas, Trump would have no choice but to nod his head in agreement and say "So it is. Merry Christmas Vlad!!!"
Since the 80s the Russians have been financially supporting Trump and bailing him out from bankruptcy after American banks stopped loaning Trump money. He is still indebted to them today. And just like any loyal dog, Trump knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him.
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When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another.
So to bring order and harmony to the chaos, he create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront. Building on the Ebola experience, President Obama set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council, and another in the Department of Homeland Security—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health, and the CDC, and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.
But that’s all gone now. In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down. This was the directorate charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of shock. Because experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
In the spring of 2018, Trump pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of the mess that I've cost. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president and a real leader. They're acting as if I actually care. But that's not who I am. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who ignored all the signs of my sociopathy. Blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They were both fully aware of exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. Now Lindsey is practically my golf caddie. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man, grifter and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like Governor Cuomo, and the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do, when it truly mattered?
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state..
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!
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Trump is a complete fraud, and he loves putting on a great production, and the bigger the spectacle, the better. The only thing that matters to him is that YOU believe that it's real.
In a 1996 Manhattan ribbon-cutting ceremony for a charity called the Association to Benefit Children. The association was celebrating the grand opening of a nursery school that would serve children with AIDS. Trump unexpectedly appeared at the event and took a seat on on stage alongside top donors, even though he had never donated to the charity. The seat he took belonged to Steven Fisher, a developer who had donated a hefty sum to help the charity build the nursery.
“Nobody knew he was coming,” Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais, told the Post. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down.” Trump had never donated to the charity.
Trump played the part of a big donor convincingly. Photos from the event show Trump smiling, right behind Giuliani, as the mayor cut the ribbon.” Trump later performed the macarena with Giuliani, Kathie Lee Gifford, and crowd of children, and then slipped out of the function without donating one red cent to the charity.
The time Trump's now defunct charity foundation gave $264,631 to fix a fountain outside one of his hotels. The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
The time Trump grabbed the spotlight at an event honoring an employee. For years, Trump relied on longtime employee Barbara Res to convince contractors to donate to charity galas sponsored by then-wife Ivana. But when she got an award, Trump didn’t buy any tables at the gala or sponsor the event as was customary for the employers of the honorees. He bought a $100 ticket to the event and then managed to convince someone to give him the microphone. He spoke for 15 minutes and made it seem like he had been a big contributor to the event.
For a con-man like Trump, everything is just one big show, and he's the lead cast member. Lights....camera.....action!!!
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So last year we learned that on Don the Con's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to his failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland, for the sole purpose of lining his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that DJT wanted to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
Now we've recently learned that DJT asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland.
This is a level of corruption that we have never seen before, or even imagined. Its naked, gratuitous, egregious and overt corruption on steroids. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, for Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history. T.rump's face belongs on the Mt Rushmore of corruption....all by itself. At this point, they should just wrap the entire White House with yellow police tape, and declare the whole thing a crime scene..
And win or lose in November, one thing won’t change for Trump: Over the next few years, he must settle a series of TREMENDOUSLY large debts. Before the end of a theoretical second term, his company will have to refinance—or, in a far less likely scenario, pay off—nearly a half-billion dollars in loans. These debts are maturing at the worst time for Trump, whose roach hotels and resorts have been plagued by declining revenues. And that was before the pandemic pummeled the hospitality industry.
On financial disclosure forms, Trump has reported holding 14 loans on 12 properties. At least six of those loans, representing about $479 million in debt, are due over the next four years. Some are guaranteed by Trump himself, meaning a creditor could come after his personal—not corporate—assets if he defaults. If he holds onto the White House, the refinancing of these debts could take his conflicts of interest to absurd new heights. How will the public know if these deals are on the up and up or whether Trump is receiving sweetheart terms from a bank that wants an in with the president? And what might a lender desire in return for helping Trump out of a financial jam?
Trump’s biggest creditor is Deutsche Bank, the bank preferred by Russian mobsters and Oligarchs. In the late 1990s, Deutsche Bank took a gamble on Trump, whose history of bankruptcies made him untouchable by most other lenders. Deutsche’s commercial lending division learned the hard way one reason why other banks wouldn't touch Trump with a ten-foot pole: If pushed by his creditors on payments, Trump shoved back. In 2008, after he defaulted on a loan for his Chicago hotel and condo development, he filed a multibillion-dollar suit accusing Deutsche and others of contributing to the recent financial meltdown, which he blamed for his inability to repay the loan.
Nevertheless, Deutsche’s private banking division, which caters to wealthy clientele, continued to lend to Trump, giving him $125 million, spread over two loans, to finance the purchase and renovation of his Doral golf resort in 2012. Both are floating rate loans, meaning the interest rate fluctuates based on market conditions, which lending experts say usually indicates they are interest-only loans. If so, Trump probably hasn’t paid down much if any of the principal and will owe something close to the whole $125 million when the loans come due in 2023.
In 2014, Trump took out a separate floating loan from Deutsche’s private bank to bankroll the development of his luxury hotel in Washington, DC. The balance of this $170 million debt is payable in 2024. That year, Trump will also owe Deutsche between $25 million and $50 million in connection with his Chicago hotel and complex..
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DJT is currently going through the the 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety. Currently DJT is stuck between this stage and stage 1 of grief.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, hostility, flight.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
This is the stage that a malignant narcissist like DJT will never reach, because he will NEVER allow himself to truly admit that he lost the election. In fact, DJT may spend the rest of his life waking up every morning at stage 1, and slowly working his way down to stage 4 by the end of the day, and starting the process over again the next morning. 😄
DJT reminds me of Gollum when he lost his precious. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either. 😄
"He stole it from us!!!! Trixie Bidenses!!!!!"😭😭
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
Fun fact: The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham,
Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have
either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption,
paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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There are 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, and hostility.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
Trump and hisMAGAs will never make it to stage 5, because they will forever be stuck in an endless loop of stages 1 through 4 when it comes to the 2020 election.
Trump reminds me of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either after losing his "precious." 😂
Trump: "He stole it from us!! Trixie Bidenses!!!"😭
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Konstantin Rykov is a propagandist for the Putin government machine. “Rykov is considered to be one of the leading pro-Kremlin bloggers in Russia,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia .
Konstantin Rykov is the Russian who created Putin's troll farm, and has boasted online that he helped get Trump elected. His claims of involvement with the Trump team can't be dismissed for 2 reasons: first, he is very close to Putin, and had a long history of involvement with top levels of the Russian government; and, second, his description of how Trump’s campaign put together an effective internet strategy for information warfare is very close to the evidence revealed in the Mueller Report.
At about 11:14pm on November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election. At 11:29pm, Trump blasted out the following defiant tweet:
Trump: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
11:29 PM - Nov 6, 2012
Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.
Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Konstantin Rykov tells what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. In the first post, Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:
"Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him a reply, “I’m ready. What should I do?”
Trump replied with a picture. In the picture he was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully giving the thumbs-up sign.
Rykov explaines how things went from there:
"For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the US, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order.
Our idea was insane, but realizable.
In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man.
Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.”
British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.
Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others.
At the very beginning there was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.
The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it.
Keep in mind, Konstantin Rykov revealed all of this on Facebook just four days after Trump was elected. It was before people started asking questions about Cambridge Analytica or targeted social media ads. Rykov might have been boasting as he spiked the football in the end zone. What he didn’t think at that point, however, is that he had any reason to hide what he’d done..
His comments were also made well before details of Russian meddling in the presidential election were reported in the mainstream media. If Rykov wasn’t involved, then how on earth would he know as much as he confessed?
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free..
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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Trump is essentially a 73 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He is basically an indecent human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind..
Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85 and terminally ill, was in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Trump sole control over his dying father's estate..
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess.
On Jan. 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first briefed Trump on the threat of the virus in a phone call. Trump made his first public comments about the virus on Jan. 22, saying he was not concerned about a pandemic and that "we have it totally under control."
On Jan. 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House in a memo addressed to the NSC that COVID-19 could take more than half a million American lives and cause nearly $6 trillion in economic damage.
On Jan. 30, Azar warned Trump in a call that the virus could become a pandemic. Trump dismissed Azar as alarmist and rejected the idea of criticizing China. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency.
On Feb. 5, senators urged Trump in a briefing to take the virus more seriously and asked if additional funds were necessary. The administration made no requests at the time for emergency funding.
On Feb. 14, a memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with the NSC that recommended the targeted use of quarantine and isolation measures. Officials planned to present Trump with the memo when he returned from India on Feb. 25, but the meeting was canceled.
On Feb. 21, the White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives.
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable..
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing. While in the real world, America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 20k deaths. Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world.
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state..
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
Jesse Lee Peterson is a right-wing "pastor," certifiedNutter, and talk show host, who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” When Rep. Elijah Cummings passed away last October, Peterson declared on his radio show, “He dead”—like Trump enemies John McCain and Charles Krauthammer, Peterson noted. “That’s what happens when you mess with the Great White Hope. Don’t mess with God’s children.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His god-d tweets and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s***. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how ”She didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
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Trump: "You've got Guatemalans, Mexicans, ISIS, the Menendez Brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, decepticons, those flyingMonkeys from the Wizard of Oz, Hannibal Lecter, Thanos, and severalBabadooks, all crossing the border illegally. Its scary stuff."😂😂
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
Jesse Lee Peterson is a right-wing "pastor," certified nutter, and talk show host, who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” When Rep. Elijah Cummings died last October, Peterson declared on his radio show, “He dead”—like Trump enemies John McCain and Charles Krauthammer, Peterson noted. “That’s what happens when you mess with the Great White Hope. Don’t mess with God’s children.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when American banks stopped loaning Trump money. It was a win-win for both sides. The Russian mafia is totally different than the American mafia. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. In an interviewed, Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Putin’s boss at one point, was asked about the Russain mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.”
Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not.
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Adam Schiff has been the MVP of the trial so far. Trump's defense team has no answer or real defense for anything that Schiff has laid out before the American people. And this isn't Adam Schiff's first rodeo. He has a history of prosecuting traitors to this country. In the late 80s and early 90s as a District Attorney in Cali, Adam Schiff successfully prosecuted the case of a Russian spy named Svetlana Ogorodonikov, and an FBI agent named Richard W. Miller, who was seduced by Svetlana Ogorodnikov, and agreed to sell classified information to the Soviet government. Eventually, this man—Richard W. Miller, a 47-year-old Los Angeles-based counterintelligence agent on the Bureau’s Soviet squad—would become the first FBI agent ever convicted of espionage.
Agent Miller would eventually agree to turnover highly classified information to the Russians for large sums of money. It took Schiff 3 trails, and 6 years, but he eventually won the conviction against Agent Miller and the Russian spy, and they were both sent to prison.
During those years, Schiff stated that he learned a lot about Russian tradecraft, and how the Russians operate, who they target, and the vulnerabilities they look for. During his work on the case, Schiff was also in frequent contact with FBI agents investigating Miller—giving the future congressman an intimate look at, and respect for, the Bureau’s counterintelligence mission against threats from from Russia, and it's mission of protecting the national security of this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Mohamad bin Salman, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. What else do they have in common? They are all men that Trump admires and looks up to.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that Trump chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force on everyone else what he believes, and punish those who don’t.
Trump claims to support veterans after they return from service, but in the last two years he slashed funding for military housing assistance programs which help keep veterans off the street and gutted mental illness programs which help those dealing with PTSD and suicidal tendencies.
Trump cultists always brag about their love and support for our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
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Trump: "Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
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The sad reality is that Trump and republicans don't believe in democracy, our Constitution, or your right to vote. They would do away with voting and the Constitution all together if they could. Because the GOP doesn't want to govern, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two.
In March, Trump directly stated that an increase in voting numbers would hurt his party, saying proposed reforms would result in “levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Even a moron like Trump knows that republicans can't win without cheating and suppressing the vote.
In May 2017, Trump set up a fake commission, to investigate his fake claims of mass voter fraud. The "commission" disbanded less than a year later, without even issuing a report. His commission just disappeared, like magic. 😂😉😂
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Trump: "Yup, I'm taking it. I happen to be taking it. I'm currently taking many different elixirs. I'm taking hydroxychloroquine, bleach, Lysol, a little bit of turpentine,, and a little strychnine. However unfortunately, some very minor side effects of these miracle elixirs may include hallucinations, permanent blindness, complete memory loss, elephantiasis, and a somewhat mild death.".
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters that year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
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Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
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"Every age that has historical status, is governed by aristocracies.
Aristocracy with the meaning - the BEST are ruling.
People never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism."
--Joseph Goebbels
Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
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Trump is a classic demagogue in every sense of the word. His demagoguery is associated with dictators, and it appeals to the worst nature of people. Demagoguery isn't based on reason, issues, and doing the right thing; it's based on stirring up fear and hatred to control people.
Scapegoating:
The most fundamental demagogic technique is scapegoating: blaming all of his troubles, bad behavior, or bad optics on other groups, usually the media, or people of different ethnicity,
religion, or social class. This is done by projection. It relies on condemning others for what you're doing. Projection is absolutely necessary for effective scapegoating.
Fearmongering:
Many demagogues have risen to power by evoking fear in their audiences, to stir them to action and prevent deliberation. Trump and fox have mastered the art of fearmongering.
Lying
While any politician needs to point out dangers to the people and criticize opponents' policies, demagogues choose their words for their effect on their audience's emotions, usually without regard for factual truth or the real severity of the danger. Some demagogues are opportunistic, monitoring the people and saying whatever currently will generate the most "heat". Other demagogues may themselves be so ignorant or prejudiced that they sincerely believe the falsehoods they tell. Trump falls under both categories here. And When one lie doesn't work, the demagogue quickly moves on to more lies.
Promising the impossible:
Another fundamental demagogic technique is making promises only for their emotional effect on audiences, without regard for how they might be accomplished or without intending to honor them once in office. ( I'm going to build a great wall, and Mexico is gonna pay for it) Demagogues express these empty promises simply and theatrically, but remain extremely hazy about how they will achieve them because usually they are impossible.
Personal insults and ridicule:
Many demagogues have found that ridiculing or insulting others is a simple way to shut down reasoned deliberation of competing ideas, especially with an unsophisticated audience.
A common demagogic technique is to pin an insulting epithet on an opponent, by saying it repeatedly, in speech after speech, when saying the opponent's name or in place of it. This is easily one of Trump's favorite demagogues tools.
Attacking the news media:
Since information from the press can undermine a demagogue's spell over his or her followers, modern demagogues have often demonized the media, calling for violence against newspapers who opposed them, claiming that the press can't be trusted, or was secretly in the service of moneyed interests or foreign powers, or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get them.
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In the month of October alone, Trump has told at least 1100 lies. That's an average of 30 lies a day. I couldn’t lie that much even if I tried. I couldn't lie that much on a dare, not even on a triple dog dare could I lie that much. Because at some point, I would slip up and tell the truth about something. That many lies makes Trump an illegitimate president. In no way should an elected official get away with lying to the American people on such a massive scale. I don't know of any profession, that would tolerate someone who is that untrustworthy.
If you are lower to middle-class, and you're voting Republican, you are basically cutting your own throat. Mitch McConnell announced a few weeks ago, that republicans are planning to cut social security, Medicaid and Medicare, in order to pay for the massive tax cut that they gave to the most wealthiest corporations and people in the country. If that's not enough for you to realize that you shouldn't vote republican, then you deserve to lose your social security. You deserve to lose everything you have.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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Tucker Carlson: "I'm for getting along, I'm for color blindness, I'm for tolerance, 100 percent, but I also think that if things radically change in your country, it's okay for you to say, "what is this? And maybe I don't want to live in a country that looks nothing like the country that I grew up in. Is that bigoted?
John Oliver: "Uh yeah, yeah it is. That's like saying "I've got ten fingers and toes, a pointy face, with a little pink rosebud mouth, a cat sized body, a long weird tail, and I eat garbage. Does that make me a possum? YES, YES IT DOES!!!
That's the literal definition of the thing you just described."
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Trump: "Look, There's nothing wrong with you saying that you recalculated, and you magically found 11,780 votes for me out of thin air. Because I won."🤣
Really? Well if he won, he wouldn't need 11,780 more votes, now would he?
That's like a basketball player losing a game by 20 points, and then going to the refs and saying "look, there's nothing wrong with saying you recalculated, and that you found 21 more points for me, because I won that game." 🤣
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In March of 2018, China'sPresident changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power for life.
In closed-door remarks at the Mar-a-Lago golf club in March of 2018, Trump praised his recent power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life!! No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
--Marine Corps General James Mattis,
June 3, 2020...
Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful. 🇺🇸
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Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth..
Steve Bannon’s contacts with Stone during the 2016 campaign was one of the featured parts of Stone’s trial..
"I think we did, yes,” said Bannon, when asked during Stone's trial whether the Trump campaign viewed Stone as its “access point” to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Stone’s denials of having any contact with WikiLeaks was undercut by testimony from people like Bannon and a trail of emails and phone records. One message from Aug. 16, 2016, shows Stone telling Bannon on the day he took over as campaign CEO about the prospect that WikiLeaks would drop more damaging documents for the Clinton campaign.
“I have an idea … to save Trump’s @55,” Stone wrote.
Bannon testified that he heard repeatedly from Stone — before he even took over as Trump campaign chief — about his access to WikiLeaks. And Stone kept on talking about the potential of more detrimental materials through the late summer and early fall, at a time when Clinton had the lead in the polls.
Bannon’s contacts with Stone included an Oct. 4, 2016, exchange after a much-hyped Assange news conference, which fueled the hashtag "October?surprise" but it turned out to be a bust.
“It was a big dud, yes,” Bannon said.
But a few days later, WikiLeaks dumped emails stolen from the Clinton campaign just minutes after The Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape. Bannon described that chain of events as the “Billy Bush weekend” — a reference to Trump bragging about grabbing women by the p..
Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks.
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free...
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"From the start, authoritarians stand out from other kinds of politicians by appealing to negative experiences and emotions. They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation’s saviors. Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears, they present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety
fromRacial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies."
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present
"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people orTer rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."
-- David Frum: The Corruption of the American Republic.
Vote 💙 like your right to vote, and our democracy depends on it, because it actually does.
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Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people or ter rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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Trump has been violating the Constitution since noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “profit, gain or advantage.” This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials profiteering from new federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decisionmaking to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or from the new federal government.
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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It's very important that we all remember the unwarranted outrage and criticism Republicans leveled on President Obama and his response to the Ebola virus outbreak. And Trump of all people, even tweeted that Obama should apologize to the American people, and resign. And this was after only 11 reported Ebola cases and 2 deaths in America.
Republican Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the ebola outbreak resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there..
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
Trump tweet, 10/23/14
"If this doctor, who is reckless flew into New York from West Africa has Ebola, then Obama should apologize to the American people & resign."
Today there have been more than 6.42 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US, and 195K deaths.
So after 195k coronavirus deaths, what should Trump do?
Well lets see, not only should he resign, he should first drop to his knees and apologize to America for the needless loss of so many American lives. He should then get on his knees, and apologize to Obama, and beg him for forgiveness. He should then turn himself into authorities and admit to his criminal negligence, dereliction duty, and to violating his oath of office.
"What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by Trump in 2018.
Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
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Several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017 — and Mueller is seeking to find out why. The tycoons were given “unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle”—and investigators in special council Robert Mueller’s probe are interested in their attendance at the parties.
Rick Gates was heavily involved in planning the inauguration, with a Yahoo News report in 2016calling him the “shadow chair” of the event. There have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it all went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised an astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear. The chair of GW Bush’s 2nd inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “Trump had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events that we had, and yet they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. Counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Back in June ABC News reported that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration. These Russians had invites to events that were so exclusive, that even members of Congress had a hard time getting into.
It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. Mueller is exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration. Sometime around March of this year, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
Blavatnik is a Soviet-born, UK-based billionaire who is a US citizen. He is also partnered with Vekselberg, in Russia’s aluminum industry. Together, they built the largest aluminum company in Russia by merging with Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Deripaska is also a player in Mueller's investigation — he employed Manafort, and Manafort tried to get in touch with him during 2016.
Alexander Mashkevitch, a Kazakh mining billionaire, was on the guest list for the “candlelight dinner,” and happens to have been in the Seychelles around the same time as Erik Prince, a Trump adviser.
And Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended Don Jr’s infamous Trump Tower meeting, were in town too — they attended an inauguration night party thrown by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who’s widely viewed as the biggest supporter of Putin’s regime in Congress.
Several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent over $100 million for what they got. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, it is Rick Gates, who is now working with Mueller's investigation. So whatever Rick Gates knows, Robert Mueller now knows too.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
Fun fact: The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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A big question is why did Kushner ignore the intelligence community’s warnings about Russia. Once it became public that they were interfering in our election, which was in June, why did he continue to have contacts with them?
White house whistle-blower Tricia Newbold, who reported that Trump and his white house endangered national security by breaking security procedures in issuing security clearances to Jared, Ivanka and more than 20 white house aides and officials, who were deemed untrustworthy by intelligence agencies.
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by Jared Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
In fact, Kushner never raised Russia’s meddling during his two post-election meetings with Russians, according to his own accounts. Kislyak contacted Kushner on November 16th, and they met on December 1st. Once again, the Russians seemed to have a level of access to the Trump campaign that other countries, including Western allies, could only dream of. In his testimony, Kushner confirmed that at this meeting, which took place in Trump Tower, he and Kislyak and Michael Flynn, the incoming national-security adviser, who also attended, discussed using communications equipment at the Russian Embassy.
Gen.Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach. “Would they take the meeting?” he said. “So, then you get the willingness. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. So, while Kushner claimed that the meeting was irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
The Kushner-Kislyak relationship continued. On December 13th, at Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had—“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
The only reason why Trump never went through with the Moscow hotel was because Obama placed economic sanctions on the Russian bank that Trump needed to finance the hotel. Once that happened, the deal was officially dead. The sanctions were placed on the bank after the Russian hacking was discovered. Trump never had enough money to finance the building of such a massive hotel. The sanctions Obama placed on the Russian bank prevented any Americans from doing business with it. The Russian VTB bank is partially owned by the Kremlin, and remains under US sanctions.
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In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.”
The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement.
Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment..
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his crime family had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, Trump used his charity foundation to pay-off a $158,000 lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
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When Trump says he's concerned about corruption, he means that he's deeply concerned about going to prison for his own corruption. Trump didn't drain the swamp, he pardoned it.
Trump wants to create a world where nothing is wrong, and nothing is illegal anymore. It's the type of world that he's been dreaming of his entire life. A criminal's paradise. The Trump name will forever be synonymous with corruption.
Back when Trump was still pretending that he knew how to run a casino in Atlantic City--back when he still had the people of Atlantic City fooled that he was a legit business man, he
became friends with a man named Joseph Weichselbaum, an embezzler, mob associate, cocaine trafficker, and a thrice-convicted felon..
Trump hired Weichselbaum, who was a helicopter pilot, to fly in casino high-rollers in and out of town through a company formed by Weichselbaum, to whom he also entrusted maintenance of "The Ivana," Trump’s personal helicopter. Weichselbaum—at that point a twice-convicted felon—personally piloted the Trumps in that copter.
Weichselbaum also had another business: importing drugs from Colombia and shipping them from Bradford Motors, a Miami-area car dealership he partly owned, to Cincinnati. Because Weichselbaum was then a twice-convicted felon, NJ gambling regulators insisted to Trump that he not be involved with providing helicopter services to the Trump casinos. Yet Weichselbaum continued collecting a $100,000 salary from the helicopter company, and Trump kept using the company that paid Weichselbaum.
In his indictment and confession, it was revealed that Weichselbaum’s more lucrative business was having drugs delivered to Bradford Motors, the Miami-area car dealership he had an ownership stake in. In his testimony, Weichselbaum admitted to helping to load up to 1,500 pounds of drugs at the time into cars, that mules then drove to the Cincinnati area for distribution in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
NJ Casino Control Commission records show that Trump learned of the indictment in October of 1985. At that point, any decent person would have cut off all ties to Weichselbaum, because failing to do so could cost him his casino license. But of course as we all know, Trump is anything but a decent person. Instead, Trump became even closer to the drug trafficker.
Two months after the indictment, Trump rented apartment 32C in the Trump Plaza Apartments on E. 61st St. in Manhattan to the Weichselbaum brothers, according to NJ Casino Control Commission records. Trump personally owned the unit. Then Trump wrote a letter to the District Court on Trump Organization stationery pleading for mercy for his drug trafficking friend. He called him “a credit to the community.” Trump also described the drug trafficker as “conscientious, forthright and diligent,” 😲
When NJ gaming regulators first asked Trump about this letter, he denied writing it.😂 When they came back with a copy of the letter, Trump said under oath that his signature was on the page.😂 However, Trump’s letter must have worked. Weichselbaum served just 18 months, while the people who merely drove the drugs to Ohio got sentences of up to 20 years.
During his parole, Weichselbaum was required to inform authorities that he had a job and a place to live. He told authorities he would be working for Trump again as Trump's helicopter guy once released. Weichselbaum then moved into Trump Tower.
Just another example of the type of people that Trump associates himself with. Only the best people.😉
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For some strange reason, Kavanaugh and others seem to be under the impression that he is somehow entitled, or preordained to hold a seat on the Supreme Court. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kavanaugh is not entitled to a goddamn thing. However, the more than 320 million people in this country, are in fact entitled. We are entitled to have the very best people on the Supreme Court. That means that anyone, who's character, integrity, judgment, morals, and temperament is in question, has no business being a member of only 9 people who will hold sway and judgment over 320 million people. This whole thing is about us, and what we deserve. And we clearly deserve better than Kavanaugh. And we most definitely deserve better than Trump.
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Several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017 — and Mueller is seeking to find out why. The tycoons were given “unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle”—and investigators in special council Robert Mueller’s probe are interested in their attendance at the parties.
Rick Gates was heavily involved in planning the inauguration, with a Yahoo News report in 2016calling him the “shadow chair” of the event. There have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it all went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised an astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear. The chair of GW Bush’s 2nd inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “Trump had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events that we had, and yet they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. Counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Back in June ABC News reported that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.
It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. Mueller is exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration. Sometime around March of this year, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
Blavatnik is a Soviet-born, UK-based billionaire who is a US citizen. He is also partnered with Vekselberg, in Russia’s aluminum industry. Together, they built the largest aluminum company in Russia by merging with Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Deripaska is also a player in Mueller's investigation — he employed Manafort, and Manafort tried to get in touch with him during 2016.
Alexander Mashkevitch, a Kazakh mining billionaire, was on the guest list for the “candlelight dinner,” and happens to have been in the Seychelles around the same time as Erik Prince.
And Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended Don Jr’s infamous Trump Tower meeting, were in town too — they attended an inauguration night party thrown by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who’s widely viewed as the biggest supporter of Putin’s regime in Congress.
Several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent over $100 million for what they got. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, it is Rick Gates, who is now working with Mueller's investigation. So whatever Rick Gates knows, Robert Mueller now knows too.
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine. In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to abstract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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Trump lies a little bit more than waaaay too much.
Trump 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
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While the coronavirus highlighted Trump’s indifference, criminal negligence and incompetence, we may look back at his response to the current protests as the moment when his longtime flirtation with authoritarianism hardened into something more sinister. There’s no limit to what Trump will inflict to get reelected. His own sister called him a cruel human being.
He called protesters “ter.rorists,” and suggested they should be locked up for at least a decade to silence them, encouraged the use of force against American citizens and the free press, and promised to unleash the military on American citizens. These are the actions of authoritarian regimes in countries the world over.
In many countries around the world, it would be distressing, but not surprising to see the government use the fear of ter.rorism to demonize and encourage the use of force to squash these protest movements. Playing up violent acts committed by a small minority is right out of the authoritarian playbook.
It shifts focus away from Trump's many failures, and assigns blame to a bo.ogeyman. This step alone is critical for Trump. Trump is not to blame for the systemic racism and injustice, but addressing it is the LAST thing he would ever want to do. Why? Well for starters, he himself is a ra.cist.
Trump's actions have already caused immense pain to everyday Americans and the American way of life. They set a dangerous precedent. We are on a perilous path. We are now seeing how Trump and those around him who share is authoritarian impulses respond protests that resulted from genuine grievances. Consider how they will handle the protests that almost certainly will erupt if Trump tries to postpone the election, steal the election, suppress the vote in Democratic areas, or refuses to accept its result if he loses.
In a 2016 replay, Trump recently refused to say whether he would accept the election results if he loses. That was a clear threat, and a warning. Trump has identified his true enemies. and it is America's constitution, and us.
Trump doesn't even need Pence as a running mate. Trump's running mate is tyranny.
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Jared Kusher has been given a major role in the federal response to the national health crisis that has taken more than 7 thousand American lives. Many people were shocked and even horrified that Jared, who has absolutely zero medical or health experience, and zero experience in crisis management, would be given such a role on the coronavirus task force. But it turns out that Jared is married to Trump's daughter, and Trump had an uncle who attended MIT, which automatically makes Jared qualified to help lead America through a global pandemic. According to Trump, Jared might actually be over qualified for the job.
Jared suffers from what's called Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon that leads incompetent people to overestimate their ability, because they are totally oblivious to just how ignorant and incompetent they truly are. Even though Jared has less than zero experience in dealing with foreign affairs, the Middle-East conflict, crisis management, infectious diseases, or the medical field, he automatically believes he knows everything there is to know about all of them. NOW HOW SCARY IS THAT?!?!😲
Would you be okay with Trump picking Jared to perform major surgery on you, even though he's not a surgeon, and he has no medical background? Because I promise you, Jared would not hesitate for one secomd to perform that surgical procedure on you if given the greenlight by his father-in-law. The fact that he has no idea what he's doing wouldn't even cross his mind. NOW HOW SCARY IS THAT?!?!😲
This is the type of unbridled buffoonery we've all come to expect from Trump and his backwards and reckless administration. He appoints the most unprincipled and least qualified people, to the most crucial and vital positions. So now, in an hour of existential death and horror for the country, when more than 7 thousand Americans have already died, Jared will be making life-or-death decisions for all Americans. Let that horror sink in for a moment.
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"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
Trump's cult has bought into his commitment to willful ignorance. Trump feeds them lies and misinformation on a daily basis, and they accept it without questioning the validity of anything he says. And at the same time, they will say that they are protesting for their "freedom." What they don't realize is that no man or woman can ever truly be free without factual information....without the truth. Without the facts and the truth, they are nothing more than slavish little tools for the person feeding them lies.
McConnell acknowledged Thursday that he was "WRONG" when he falsely claimed that President Obama didn't leave behind a plan for tackling a pandemic. The Obama administration had in FACT prepared a 69-page playbook for pandemic response — which Trump clearly did not read or follow. I understand that Trump is semi-literate, but that's no excuse for him not tasking someone to read the playbook to him. I'm sure Baron would have been happy to read the playbook to his absent and wayward father.
Moscow Mitch blamed the Obama administration for not taking steps to be ready for a potential pandemic.
"We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell told Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law. "
"I was wrong," Moscow Mitch said in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier. "They did leave behind a plan. So, I clearly made a mistake in that regard." 😂😁
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set you free.
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine. In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to abstract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.
Lev Parnas" lawyer sent a letter to Moscow Mitch stating that he is ready to give testimony, as well as provide documents, that will prove that GOP Super PAC America One, Rudy, Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mulvaney, Bill Barr, Nunes, Pence, and Desperate Housewife of Capitol Hill 👉Lindsey Graham, were all part of Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Is it any wonder why Republicans were so vehemently against introducing witnesses and evidence into the Senate trial. They were covering up their own crimes. But it will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
Trump’s corruption and criminal nature is like a highly infectious and deadly pathogen. He will contaminate and destroy anyone and anything he comes into contact with. His corrosive and insidious nature is a full blown epidemic.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
--Buddha
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Trump & Bob Woodward'svirus Conversation Transcript: Trump ‘Playing it down’
February 7, 2020
Trump:
"Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation."
Woodward:
"Indeed, it is."
Trump:
"It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?"
Woodward:
"I know. It’s much forgotten.:
Trump:
"It’s pretty amazing. And then I said, “Well, is that the same thing?”
Woodward:
"What are you able to do for-"
Trump:
"This is moreDeadly. This is 5% versus 1%, and less than 1%. So this isDeadly stuff.:
March 19, 2020
Trump:
"Now it’s starting out it’s not just all people, Bob. But just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older-:
Woodward:
"Yeah. Exactly."
Trump:
"Young people too. Plenty of young people. We’re looking at what’s going on in-"
Woodward:
"So, give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci, or somebody who kind of… It caused a pivot in your mind, because it’s clear just from what’s on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, “Oh my God. The gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.”
Trump:
"Well, I think Bob, really, to be honest with you-"
Woodward:
"Sure. I want you to be."
Trump:
"I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down."
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
Wait for it. Some Republican like DeSantis will try to pass a bill banning critical thinking curriculum in schools and IDing misinformation classes like this one.
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There are 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, and hostility.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
Trump and hisMAGAs will never make it to stage 5, because they will forever be stuck in an endless loop of stages 1 through 4 when it comes to the 2020 election.
Trump reminds me of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either after losing his "precious." 😂
Trump: "He stole it from us!! Trixie Bidenses!!!"😭
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama
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How can Trump claim that President Obama was behind a conspiracy concerning Flynn , when it was President Obama who personally warned Trump about Flynn on Nov 10, 2016, when he visited the White House after winning the election? Trump was not only warned by President Obama, he was warned about Flynn by the Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. They were trying to warn Trump that Flynn could very well be compromised by the Russians, and giving him a high ranking cabinet position like National Security Adviser would be beyond insane.
Even Trump's longtime ally Chris Christie directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017..
But Trump ignored all of those warnings, and made Flynn his National Security Adviser anyway.
It's like Obama warning Trump that there's a landmine right in front of him, but instead of heeding Obama's warning, Trump walks straight ahead and steps on the landmine, and blows his legs off. Now Trump wants to accuse Obama of setting him up.😂
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A cult of personality, or a cult leader like Trump, arises when an individual uses propaganda, the big lie, spectacle, counterfeit patriotism, demonstrations and rallies, to create an idealized heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery, and praise.
The term came to prominence in 1956, in Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, given on the final day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the speech, Khrushchev criticized the lionization and idealization of Stalin, and by implication, his Communist sidekick Mao Zedong. Mao's cult of personality, like Stalin’s, portrayed him as larger-than-life and endowed with unrivaled wisdom. Cults of personality fell out of favor in the 1950s after Khrushchev's speech, but Trump's handler Putin, has revived the practice, guiding a wave of nostalgia for Stalin as he advocates for Russian nationalism and anti-West sentiment.
A main feature of Stalinism was its cult of personality. Whereas Lenin had claimed that the workers suffered from false consciousness and therefore needed a vanguard party to guide them, Stalin maintained that the Communist Party itself suffered from false consciousness
and therefore needed an all-wise leader—Stalin himself—to guide it. The resulting cult of personality portrayed Stalin as a universal genius in every subject, from linguistics to genetics.
Sounds very familiar to the wannabe dictator in the Oval Office who claims to be a stable genius.
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Richard Spencer, the current face of US’s alt-right, believes Russia is the “sole white power in the world.” David Duke, meanwhile, believes Russia holds the “key to white survival.” And as Matthew Heimbach, former head of the white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party said, Putin is the “leader of the free world”—one who has helped morph Russia into an “axis for nationalists.”
In March of 2018, Heimbach had himself a spectacular fall. He was arrested in his trailer after — in a twist as ludicrous as any over the past few years — having an affair with his mother-in-law, and battering his father-in-law when the latter found out. It was a bizarre ending for a man ThinkProgress had dubbed the “most important white supremacist” of 2016. 😂😆
Moscow’s appeal to the American far-right is, in a sense, understandable, if no less worrying. The links between Russia and America’s white nationalists and domestic secessionists have both expanded and deepened over the past few years. Moscow has been busily cultivating relationships with radical right-wingers in Europe.
links between Moscow and America’s white supremacy movement are far deeper than approving rhetoric. Richard Spencer, for instance, who has said that he “admires” Putin and who has called to break up NATO, also helped organize a 2014 conference in Hungary that was slated to feature, of all people, Alexander Dugin. A political philosopher, Dugin is both a Kremlin confidant and the progenitor of modern “Eurasianism,” which places Russia as the center of global anti-liberalism. But in reality, its a geopolitical theory that is little more than soft cover for Russian imperialism. However Spencer remains married to one of Dugin’s English translators, Nina Kouprianova. Originally from the Soviet Union, Kouprianova — writing under the name “Nina Byzantina” — had whitewashed Putin’s regime at every turn, appearing on Russian propaganda networks as an “independent scholar."
David Duke sees Russia as a country that “presents an opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. And a few years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center detailed Duke’s close personal ties with another American neo-Nazi, Preston Wiginton, who has made Moscow his adopted home..
In 2016, the Kremlin helped finance a secessionist conference in Moscow, bringing together contingents from Ireland, Spain, and Italy—as well as those from Texas, Puerto Rico, and California. The head of the main group pushing California secession, Louis Marinelli, not only lives in Russia, but opened an “Embassy of the Independent Republic of California” in Moscow. As Marinelli told a Russian interviewer, “In Russia, we have partners who are ready to support us in our aspiration.”
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Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Last week we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said.
The official said two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
Naturally Traitor Trump will accuse our troops of refusing to yield to his Russian comrades.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
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Trump: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a full grown baby, I spoke like a man-baby, I thought like a man-baby, I reasoned like a man-baby."
Republicans like Joni Ernst and Susan Collins are trying to convince us that by some miracle, Trump has finally seen the light, and that he has now learned his lesson. Really?!?!
Republicans are treating Trump the exact same way that his parents treated him as a child, by rewarding him for his bad behavior. They have basically told Trump that there will be no consequences for anything that he does, and not only will they not punish him, they will protect him from being punished by anyone else. This is how Trump's parents created a monster without boundaries. A sociopath who is oblivious and indifferent to the chaos and devastation he causes to everything and eberyone around him. A sociopath who will never accept blame himself, but instead blames others, even for acts he obviously committed.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
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The famous Italian writer and philosopher
Umberto Eco, listed the 14 traits of fascism in his 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism." Eco grew up under Mussolini’s fascist regime.
• The cult of tradition.
• The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
• The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
• Disagreement is treason.
• Fear of difference.
• Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
• The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
• The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
• Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
• Contempt for the weak.
• Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
• Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits."
• Selective populism.
• Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
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The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The unredacted emails were secured through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act launched by the Center for Public Integrity. The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB.
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing, because Republicans aren't interested in governing, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about...
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime adviser and partner in crime was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The verdict makes Stone only the latest among a growing list of people once in Trump's inner circle of goons who have been convicted on federal charges. Here is a list of others in Trump’s inner swamp circle convicted of federal crimes.
Michael Cohen
Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Cohen pleaded guilty to bank fraud, tax fraud, and campaign violations involving hush-money payouts (for Trump) to two women – the adult film star Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison.
Paul Manafort
The lobbyist who worked as Trump’s campaign chairman was convicted in August 2018 of bank fraud, tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. The next month, Manafort admitted to conspiracy, such as money laundering and unregistered lobbying, as well as a second conspiracy count involving witness tampering. Manafort, who will spend about seven and a half years in prison for the federal cases, also faces state criminal charges in NY for fraud and conspiracy.
While working as Trump's campaign chairman, Manafort shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies, according to special counsel Mueller.
Michael Flynn
Trump’s former national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over his communication with Russia amid the presidential transition in 2016. Flynn lied about his contact with Russia’s ambassador, such as urging Russia not to react to sanctions placed by Barack Obama.
Rick Gates
Manafort’s business partner pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiring to defraud the US and lying to the FBI. He also admitted to helping Manafort manipulate financial documents, conceal foreign income, cheat tax authorities and mislead banks for credit. Gates, who was also a Trump campaign official, cut a deal with Mueller – serving as a star witness against Manafort and Stone.
George Papadopoulos
In 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the schedules of meetings with purported Russian intermediaries. Papadopoulos in March 2016 met with a Maltese professor in London, who claimed that the Russians had incriminating information on Trump’s then rival, Clinton – “thousands of emails”. Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison.
Alex van der Zwaan
A Dutch lawyer who worked with Manafort, Van der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Gates and a person potentially linked to Russian intelligence. Van der Zwaan worked on a Manafort-commissioned report to defend ex-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych from international scrutiny. He was incarcerated for 12 days.
Richard Pinedo
The online fraudster pleaded guilty after it was revealed that his business setting up US bank accounts, and then illegally peddling them over the internet, had enabled a Russian operation that utilized social media to meddle with the election. His cooperation enabled Mueller’s pursuit of Russian troll farms.
Konstantin Kilimnik
The Russian political operative and Manafort associate is charged with obstructing justice. He was swept up in Manafort’s plan to leverage his relationship with Trump to settle multimillion-dollar debts to an oligarch. Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the 2016 election. In the Mueller report, Kilimnik is described as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU” by Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign.
Sam Patten
Lobbyist Patten had ties to Kilimnik. He admitted to diverting $50,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch to Trump’s presidential inauguration committee. He pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller.
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History: "Why oh why must I continually repeat myself? Sometimes I feel as if people believe I actually enjoy repeating myself. How many more times must I show the world what happens when people allow despotic and authoritarian dictators like Adolf, Mussolini, Lenin Stalin, Putin, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, and now Trump to come to power. It NEVER ends well. It never has, and it never will. But YOU people don't learn, and you clearly don't pay attention. It's like you're suffering from chronic amnesia. I have even gone so far as to keep a trash-heap of old tattered authoritarian regimes of the past as a reminder, and a warning, for the world to see. But alas, I am forced to repeat myself yet again, because you people don't learn.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear.
So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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Removing a duly elected president from office through impeachment is not a coup, and it's certainly not a crime. It is the only legal and Constitution way to remove a president from office.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did they do the right thing? So far, Trump has failed. And Trump has never failed to fail, because failing has always been the easiest thing for him to do.
When this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Donald "I believe in magic not science" Trump, will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 8 thousand American lives. And many of these Americans did not have to die.
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another.
So to bring order and harmony to the chaos, he create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront. Building on the Ebola experience, President Obama set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council, and another in the Department of Homeland Security—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health, and the CDC, and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.
But that’s all gone now. In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down. This was the directorate charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of shock. Because experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
In the spring of 2018, Trump pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated..
America would never survive another four years of Trump, and his criminally incompetent administration. Unfortunately, many Americans did not, and will not survive the first 3 years of his administration. May they rest in peace.
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Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return..
Trump has sent thousands of our troops to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil and HIS own personal business interests.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1888 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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There are 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, and hostility.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
Trump and hisMAGAs will never make it to stage 5, because they will forever be stuck in an endless loop of stages 1 through 4 when it comes to the 2020 election.
Trump reminds me of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either after losing his "precious." 😂
Trump: "He stole it from us!! Trixie Bidenses!!!"😭
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Trump: "For the record, I was never a big fan of testing, because I like the numbers where they are right now. So when the number of infection cases goes up because of more testing, don't blame me. And I take no responsibility for any of this, and the reason why is because everyone knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House. So again, don't blame me, blame the people who voted for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham who continues to defend me. I'm the same person that I've always been, an unethical con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Jared and his adviser Hope Hicks, were behind Trump's church photo-op on Monday, where peaceful protesters were dispersed with tear gas. Hicks, who served as Trump's closest campaign aide and later as White House communications director before a stint at Fox, recently returned to work at the White House under Jared Kushner.
Bunker Boy was reportedly embarrassed and upset by news reports that like Adolf, he had scurried down to his bunker as protests raged outside. So in the spirit of Caligula, Trump stormed over to St. John's Church to hold up a book that he has never read or opened for cameras. Police backed by the National Guard unleashed tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang shells on peaceful American citizens, just to clear the path for Bunker Boy.
Hicks and Jared reportedly hatched the dubious plan with others at the White House, to have Trump march over to the church, and pose for pictures holding a bible, while looking like a stone-cold lunatic.
Attorney General Barr personally ordered law enforcement officials to pull a Tiananmen
Square, and clear the park of protesters, a Justice Department official stated.
And even though the photo-op stunt was an unmitigated disaster, some of Trump's aides reportedly celebrated the incident, but apparently not all of them.
"I've never been more ashamed," one senior White House official told Axios. "I'm really honestly disgusted. I'm sick to my stomach, and they're all celebrating it. They're very very proud of themselves."
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
Mary Trump, a 55-year-old psychologist, blames Trump's father for giving Donald his bad habits. Fred Trump Sr was a cold and forbidding patriarch who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps – demanding Trump to follow less-than-scrupulous real estate practices and eventually propping him up if his own initiatives failed.
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes. "His monster had been set free."
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mitch McConnell, "all whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred," recognized after the election that Donald Trump's personal history and personality flaws made him vulnerable to manipulation, Mary Trump writes.
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
"Fear – the equivalent of weakness in our family – is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old," she said.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Ukraine scandal began in the spring of 2019, with a series of contacts between Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy, and Ukrainian officials. In mid-July, Trump decided to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine that had already been appropriated by Congress. The White House offered no explanation, except to blame “interagency delay.” A week later, Trump spoke by phone to the recently elected Ukrainian president, Zelensky. The memorandum released by the White House describing that call—which is consistent with the accounts of the whistleblower complaint that first brought this scandal to light—reads like a classic shakedown.
According to the memo, after exchanges of flattery, Trump states that “we do a lot for Ukraine” and that “we spend a lot of effort and a lot of time,” before he complains that the relationship is not always “reciprocal.” Zelensky then raises the question of military aid to Ukraine, to which Trump immediately responds, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” and proceeds to ask Zelensky to investigate two unfounded conspiracy theories: one involving the server containing emails stolen from the DNC during the 2016 election, and the other involving the thoroughly debunked claim about then-VP Biden, his potential reelection opponent.
Trump asks Zelensky to work with Giuliani and AG Barr to investigate his potential opponent and so aid his own reelection campaign. There can be no misunderstanding that Traitor Trump was abusing his official power in the conduct of foreign policy to get a foreign government to investigate his political rival.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
" TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason..
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
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Q is a cult of cruelty, among other things.
"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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And Jared never failed to fail. It was the easiest thing for him to do.
So far Trump's presidency as amounted to nothing more than a 3 year long smash and grab for him and his pointless kids.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂😲
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A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.
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I'm sure we all remember the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil incident in the Gulf of Mexico. I still remember watching the 24hr live video stream of thousands of gallons of oil being dumped into the gulf. Well days before the Trump administration unveiled its plans for a massive expansion of offshore drilling, it moved to gut the Production Safety Systems Rule, a set of safety regulations the Obama administration created pertaining to maintenance of offshore platforms. The changes, finalized last month and slated to take effect on Dec. 27, loosen notification and certification rules for oil companies and toss out a requirement that offshore equipment be designed to withstand the most extreme weather and pressure conditions.
In May, Trump took aim at the Well Control Rule, a safety monitoring regulation meant to prevent the kind of Deepwater Horizon incident that killed 11 workers and resulted in some 200 million gallons of crude oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. The rule requires additional inspection and maintenance of blowout preventers, a device designed to automatically seal a well, and stop an uncontrolled release of oil and gas. Stripping the Obama era regulations would loosen the inspection and oversight requirements for this equipment.
Trump's reckless, irresponsible, and controversial drilling plan called “energy dominance” would make available for oil and gas leasing, roughly 90 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, including large swaths of the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Interior Department, led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, who's currently under multiple ethics investigations is leading the charge for Trump's plan.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement estimates that rolling back these safety regulations would save oil companies just shy of $1 billion over a 10-year period. I mean sure, it could lead to another Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It could result in the loss of lives again. It could cost fishermen their entire livelihoods again. But who cares, just as long as billion dollar oil companies can save millions of dollars, that's on top of the millions they're already saving from the massive tax cuts Trump gifted them. Now that's what I call MAGA!!! 😔
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What's so outrageous is the notion that a life long criminal, and the most corrupt president in American history, was concerned about corruption in Ukraine and bogus allegations against Biden and his son, meanwhile, he has his daughter and son-in-law duo in the White House, running vast swaths of foreign and domestic policy, and using their positions to making a fortune from their business interests around the world.
So far Trump's presidency as amounted to nothing more than a 3 year long smash and grab for him and his pointless kids...Jared included.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂
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What's so outrageous is the notion that a life long criminal, and the most corrupt president in American history, was concerned about corruption in Ukraine and bogus allegations against Biden and his son, meanwhile, he has his daughter and son-in-law duo in the White House, running vast swaths of foreign and domestic policy, and using their positions to making a fortune from their business interests around the world.
So far Trump's presidency as amounted to nothing more than a 3 year long smash and grab for him and his pointless kids...Jared included.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂😲
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"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Today, Trump and Republicans are telling the American people that we can no longer keep it.
America's democracy and Constitutional republic, has never been in more peril than it is right now. Trump and republicans, are attempting to reverse our victory in our War of Independence, that began 1775 and ended in 1783. They are attempting to throw it all away, like it never happened, and install a new King, a new monarch, a new tyrant, to rule over the American people. We are witnessing history folks. This is America's darkest hour.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man"
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.
Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from fox, the current president, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy. It should be reported that these traitors are all willing partners in Russia's disinformation campaign on America. And they should be treated as a threat to America, because that's exactly they are. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America...
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As it stands now, practically anyone, and anything connected to Trump is now under investigation. His inauguration, his transition team, his Trump crime organization, his fake charity foundation, his fraudulent taxes, his tainted campaign, and his illegitimate presidency, are all under investigation. Most Americans already knew that Trump was totally unfit, and unqualified to be president, but I don't think anything prepared us for an unmitigated disaster of this magnitude. Trump's presidency has been such an unprecedented, and unimaginable debacle, that it can only be defined as a miracle. Because it cannot be explained with logic, reasoning or science.
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On January 6, Capitol Hill Police Officers stopped the steal that Trump had planned for that day. We as a nation, owe them a debt of gratitude.
"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
I have a feeling that if the "January 13th McCarthy" ever meets "today's McCarthy" they are going to have a serious falling out.🤣
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
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Almost every president has occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly, until now. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 25,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully execute the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama..
Trump has done considerable damage to America's democratic institutions, and brought the nation to the brink of civil catastrophe, and the Republican Party has protected him the entire way. Trump has left America grievously wounded, and now he's asking for another chance to finish her off..
No one should ever get a second chance to destroy our Constitution, and our 244 year old democratic republic.
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The Trump family's efforts to squash a highly anticipated tell-all book from Trump's niece Mary Trump, fell short in a Queens County court in New York on Thursday as the Judge dismissed their lawsuit.
The book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," is set to be released on July 28.
Trump has always been worried about anyone seeing into the dark catacombs of his past and that of his family's.
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.
Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.
A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.
Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.
-- Simon & Schuster
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These protesters are the most unpatriotic people in America. And what's worse, there is nothing grassroots about these protests at all. It may look homegrown, but it's not. They are being funded, guided and created by billion dollar corporations, and the conservative political groups that they own. But let's be clear, these protests are small, and they represent a very small minority of people in this country.
The protesters that show up armed to the teeth and dressed like insurgents should be treated for what they are....terrorists. They are truly the dregs of humanity. Like Trump, most of them have never served in the military, and they never will. Because they're too fat, too lazy, too selfish, too incompetent, and too cowardly. But that won't stop them from dressing up like insurgents and showing off their weapons of mass carnage, and stumbling around in public wrapped in a cloak of phony patriotism.
Like Trump, these counterfeit patriots are indifferent to the harm, stress, and potential devastation they are placing on our medical infrastructure by helping to spread this virus. It's like their minds have been infected with some sort of mental virus that blocks out logic, reasoning and critical thinking. The concept of serving a cause greater than themselves is completely foreign to them. If they can't eat it, grope it, or shoot it, then they don't want it.
Do they really believe that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 60 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? Our greatest generation from WW2 have to be spinning in their graves. I'm actually glad that most of them are not around to see this. The men and women of our greatest generation had true grit. These protesters are filled with true sh!t.
If they really want to protest something, they should be out protesting for more protective gear for nurses, doctors, and first responders. Or how about protesting for more testing nation wide. But once again, they're too selfish, and too unpatriotic. For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should for once give some consideration to growing the F. UP.
Marine veteran
Semper Fi..
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For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months, even after Interpol issued a red notice for Tokhtakhounov. And then, in April 2013, this fugitive from American justice, appeared seated near Trump in the VIP section of Trump's Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News.
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Why should anyone believe Trump when he can't even tell the truth about whether or not he ever met Putin before the election?
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
LOL!!!....😄😂. Trump tells lies that a 5 year old would tell.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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Trump's white house has been operating the same as Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.. It's nonstop chaos, pandemonium, betrayal, back-stabbing, thievery, treason, upheaval, nepotism, cronyism, bedlam, and sanctioned lawlessness.
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Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but the Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records.
Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle, according to the latest examination of spending by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Most of that has been spent by the Trump campaign ($1.3 million), the Republican National Committee ($123,000) and the Great America political action committee ($104,000), records show, the center reported.
The Washington Post explained in a story in July how such Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
But 48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
Spending will continue to grow as the election nears. Senate Republicans are hosting a two-day “Save the Senate” retreat at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel early next month, according to The Intercept. Room rates during that time will be nearly triple the average, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The top preferred businesses by spenders were Trump’s Washington hotel, followed by his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, according to the center. Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami was in fifth place for the amount of incoming campaign expenditures.
Traitor Trump is making a fortune while fleecing America and violating the Constitution. And his supporters defend this by saying he donates his presidential salary of 400k a year, so that makes it okay for him to fleece the American people out of tens of millions of dollars since he's been in office. His presidential salary amounts to slave wages compared to what he's actually making illegally by using the office of the presidency. If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you're probably a Trump cultist.
NEVER VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!
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In his book Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie tells the inside story of the data mining and psychological manipulation behind the election of Trump, the Brexit referendum, and the connecting to Facebook, WikiLeaks, Russian intelligence, and international hackers.
Mindfk goes inside Cambridge Analytica’s “American operations,” which were driven by Steve Bannon’s vision to remake America and fueled by ghoulish billionaire Robert Mercer’s money, as it weaponized and wielded the massive store of data it had harvested on individuals—in excess of 200 million—to disunite the US and set Americans against each other. Bannon had long sensed that deep within America’s soul lurked an explosive tension. Cambridge Analytica had the data to prove it, and in 2016 Bannon had a presidential campaign to use as his proving ground.
Christopher Wylie was only twenty-four when he got a job with a London firm that worked with the U.K. Ministry of Defense and was charged with helping to build a team of data scientists to create new tools to identify and combat radical extremism online. In short order, those same military tools were turned to political purposes, and Cambridge Analytica was born.
Wylie’s decision to become a whistleblower prompted the largest data-crime investigation in history. It has not only laid bare the profound vulnerabilities—and profound carelessness—in the enormous companies that drive the attention economy, it has also exposed the profound vulnerabilities of democracy itself. What happened in 2016 was just a trial run. Ruthless actors are coming for your data, and they want to control what you think.
At 24, he came up with an idea that led to the foundation of the company Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that went on to claim a major role in the Leave campaign for Britain’s EU membership referendum, and later became a key figure in digital operations during Trump’s election campaign.
In 2014, Steve Bannon – then executive chairman of the network Breitbart, was Wylie’s boss. And Robert Mercer, the secretive US hedge-fund billionaire and Republican donor, was Cambridge Analytica’s investor. And the idea they bought into was to bring big data and social media to an established military methodology – “information operations” – then turn it on the US electorate.
By that time, Bannon had become Trump’s chief strategist. Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL, had won contracts with the US State Dept and was pitching to the Pentagon, and Wylie was genuinely freaked out. “It’s insane,” Wylie said. “The company has created psychological profiles of 230 million Americans. And now they want to work with the Pentagon? It’s like Nixon on steroids.
Cambridge reached out to WikiLeaks to help distribute Clinton’s stolen emails in 2016. Wylie offers a unique, worm’s-eye view of the events of 2016. Of how Facebook was hijacked, repurposed to become a theatre of war: how it became a launchpad for an extraordinary attack on the US’s democratic process.
Russia, Facebook, Trump, Mercer, Bannon, Brexit. Every one of these threads runs through Cambridge Analytica. Paul-Olivier Dehaye – a data expert and academic based in Switzerland, who published some of the first research into Cambridge Analytica’s processes – says it’s become increasingly apparent that Facebook is “abusive by design."
Millions of people’s personal information was stolen and used to target them in ways they wouldn’t have seen, and couldn’t have known about, by a mercenary outfit, Cambridge Analytica, who, Wylie says "will work for anyone”. Who would pitch to Russian oil companies, who would subvert elections abroad on behalf of foreign governments. They're mercenaries. They’ll work for pretty much anyone who pays.
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country...
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for with Russian money.
It's why repubicans are fighting so hard to defend him instead of the Constitution. It's also why Republicans have been repeating the exact same lies and propaganda of the Russian government and Russian security services like the GRU.
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Several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017 — and Mueller is seeking to find out why. The tycoons were given “unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle”—and investigators in special council Robert Mueller’s probe are interested in their attendance at the parties.
Rick Gates was heavily involved in planning the inauguration, with a Yahoo News report in 2016calling him the “shadow chair” of the event. There have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it all went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised an astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear. The chair of GW Bush’s 2nd inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “Trump had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events that we had, and yet they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. Counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Back in June ABC News reported that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.
It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. Mueller is exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration. Sometime around March of this year, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
Blavatnik is a Soviet-born, UK-based billionaire who is a US citizen. He is also partnered with Vekselberg, in Russia’s aluminum industry. Together, they built the largest aluminum company in Russia by merging with Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Deripaska is also a player in Mueller's investigation — he employed Manafort, and Manafort tried to get in touch with him during 2016.
Alexander Mashkevitch, a Kazakh mining billionaire, was on the guest list for the “candlelight dinner,” and happens to have been in the Seychelles around the same time as Erik Prince.
And Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended Don Jr’s infamous Trump Tower meeting, were in town too — they attended an inauguration night party thrown by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who’s widely viewed as the biggest supporter of Putin’s regime in Congress.
Several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent over $100 million for what they got. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, it is Rick Gates, who is now working with Mueller's investigation. So whatever Rick Gates knows, Robert Mueller now knows too.
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What's so mind-boggling to me, is the fact that we have a sitting President, who isn't even trusted by his own people to testify under oath, because they know that he's incapable of telling the truth....about anything....EVER.
Trump isn't even trusted by his lawyers and the people closest to him, but yet the want the American people to trust him. Let that sink in for a moment.
This is the 3rd time that Trump has asked another foreign country to interfere in our elections. And if he gets away with it this time, he will absolutely do it AGAIN!!! Because a sociopath like Trump, with no impulse control, who doesn't know right from wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible, and completely incapable of being corrected.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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History: "You people don't listen, and you sure as he// don't learn. How many more times must I repeat myself? How many more times must I show the world what happens when people allow despotic and authoritarian dictators like Adolf, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Putin, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, and now Trump to come to power. It NEVER ends well. It never has, and it never will. For the umpteenth time, If you want to destroy a democracy, and create a despoti dictatorship, this is how you do it."
No two situations are ever identical, but history matters. Trump is inflaming and urging a large minority of the country to believe that the government constitutes a “deep state” conspiracy against him—and therefore them. He is feeding media outlets like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and Rick Wiles racist and conspiracist fuel. He is convincing a large minority that the election is rigged against them. He is purging officials that might offer government oversight and replacing the justice department and judiciary with radical loyalists. He is encouraging armed vigilantes to consider themselves members of a special “Trump Army” to defeat the threat of the enemy at home. Most critically, he is suppressing our ability to vote through the mail at a time of national pandemic.
A president pushing fascist rhetoric with authoritarian tendencies is running America, and putting our democratic safeguards at risk.
We've seen this before, and we know how it ends.
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Conservatives like referring to liberals as communists, when in reality it's nothing more than pure projection. Conservatism is practically in lock step with communism.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
Conservatives have even taken a page right out the communist playbook. Controlling the reproductive rights of women is an old and well document communist tradition.
Because if a government can prevent you from having anAbortion, it can also force you to have one. That's what happens when the choice has been taken away from you. It doesn't get more communist than that.
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Trump is far worse than Nixon was ever capable of being. Nixon was corrupt for sure, but even still, there were limits to how far he would go. Trump on the other hand, is a complete sociopath, without limits or boundaries. Trump has proven that he will cross any line, and violate any and all ethical standards..
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Just days before Trump was sworn in, Dean stated that he believed Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean to be "unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
John Dean's words could not have been more prophetic.
The Founding Fathers' understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founding Fathers placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Adam Schiff has been the MVP of the trial so far. Trump's defense team has no answer or real defense for anything that Schiff has laid out before the American people. And this isn't Adam Schiff's first rodeo. He has a history of prosecuting traitors to this country. In the late 80s and early 90s as a District Attorney in Cali, Adam Schiff successfully prosecuted the case of a Russian spy named Svetlana Ogorodonikov, and an FBI agent named Richard W. Miller, who was seduced by Svetlana Ogorodnikov, and agreed to sell classified information to the Soviet government. Eventually, this man—Richard W. Miller, a 47-year-old Los Angeles-based counterintelligence agent on the Bureau’s Soviet squad—would become the first FBI agent ever convicted of espionage.
Agent Miller would eventually agree to turnover highly classified information to the Russians for large sums of money. It took Schiff 3 trails, and 6 years, but he eventually won the conviction against Agent Miller and the Russian spy, and they were both sent to prison.
During those years, Schiff stated that he learned a lot about Russian tradecraft, and how the Russians operate, who they target, and the vulnerabilities they look for. During his work on the case, Schiff was also in frequent contact with FBI agents investigating Miller—giving the future congressman an intimate look at, and respect for, the Bureau’s counterintelligence mission against threats from from Russia, and it's mission of protecting the national security of this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes in nothing, honors nothing, and respects nothing. As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, our Constitution, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, these betrayals are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
Semper Fi.
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We either have laws, or we don't.
Documents unsealed by the Federal Judge Magistrate showed that FBI agents had discovered and removed four sets of top-secret documents and seven other sets of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago. One group of documents was described as “classified TS/SCI documents,” an acronym for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information”—one of the highest levels of secrecy that exists in the U.S. government.
The search warrant unsealed by the judge sought “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” in violation of three criminal statutes, including the Espionage Act, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting, or losing” information relating to the national defense, and carries a penalty of up to ten years in prison. All three of the potential offenses cited in the warrant are felony crimes.
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Nepotism on full display.
“Nepotism is the lowest and least imaginative form of corruption..”
― Daniel Alarcón
"It was clear to me that the White House's solemn atmosphere would not civilize Trump. But the merciless nepotism with which he conducts politics, in which he places himself and his family above the law, I wouldn't have considered that possible. And on top of that there is this reduction of complex political decisions to 140 characters. When it comes to a U.S. president, I consider the reduction of politics to a tweet to be truly dangerous. Trump is a risk to his country and the entire world."
--Martin Schulz
“At the root of every form of ungodliness, injustice, nepotism, selfishness, every rivalry and competitive jealousy, is the monster called greed.”
― Sunday Adelaja, The Mountain of Ignorance
“Despotism favors the despot, nepotism favors the despot's genes.”
― Danielle Tremblay
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Recently on March 31, Trump said that he knew all along that the coronavirus was very serious, and that thousands of Americans could die from it.
Trump: “I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, I knew it could be maybe good." 😲
I'm sorry, but what does that even mean?!?!
In January, Trump said that the virus wouldn’t spread in the US (because of his faith in magic) even while experts were warning otherwise.
In February, Trump said — without zero evidence — that the virus would just go away in April without any measures taken. Apparently this was a hunch from his tremendous bowels.
And in March, he downplayed how bad the virus itself was for people who contracted it, comparing it to the flu and suggesting that strict social distancing measures were unnecessary.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine,” Trump said in an interview.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April,” Trump said at a White House event.
Feb. 19: “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said in an interview.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” Trump tweeted.
Feb. 26: “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” Trump White House news conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” Trump White House news conference.
Feb. 28: “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. This is their new hoax,” Trump said at a campaign rally.
March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Trump tweeted.
March 24: “We’ve never closed down the country for the flu. So you say to yourself, ‘What is this all about?’ ” Trump said at the Fox News town hall, again wrongly comparing COVID-19 to the flu.
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Let's be very clear, the GOP isn't trying to stop mass voter fraud, because mass voter fraud doesn't exist. Republicans are trying to stop mass voting.
DJT openly admitted on fox that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.
DJT: “The things they had in there were krazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox.
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves freedom loving"patriots."
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The people who signed up for Trump University feel the same way.
Trump bragged that he hand-picked only the best people to "teach" at Trump University. But dozens of those he picked had checkered pasts, including serious financial problems and even convictions for cocaine trafficking and child mol.... The lawsuit against Trump found that he and his fake real-estate seminars were a massive fraud, designed to "upsell" students into buying course packages costing as much as $35,000. Many of those hired to teach did not have college degrees and were not licensed to broker real estate. At least four had felony convictions.
Ron P. Broussard Jr. was hired to the Trump University staff in 2007, even though he was never licensed as a real estate agent or broker, Broussard was listed as "staff" or "coordinator" for at least five Trump seminars titled "Fast Track to Foreclosure." Records show the former Army sergeant was convicted at court-martial in 1994 for indecent acts with a child. The child was an eight year old daughter of a fellow soldier. He served five years in the military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. He's currently a registered 5ex offender.
Timothy C. Gorsline taught at least eight Trump University seminars in 2008 He pleaded no contest a decade earlier to felony cocaine possession, according to an electronic database of Florida court records. Copies of Gorsline's resume at Trump University showed that when asked if he had been convicted of a felony, Gorsline marked an X indicating "Yes."
Damian D. Pell, who helped teach at least 23 Trump University seminars from 2008 to 2010, pleaded guilty in Florida to a felony charge of trafficking cocaine. Court and arrest records show that Pell's car was pulled over by Sheriff's deputies in June 1999. Authorities recovered 62 grams of powder cocaine from his car, and 1,200 grams in a subsequent search of his home — a haul with a street value in excess of $154,000.
Spencer J. Raffel, who staffed a Trump University event in 2008, had a felony conviction in FL for grand theft, according to court records. He was sentenced to serve three years of probation in 1989. Court records also showed that Raffel, 52, had a multi-decade history of failing to pay debts, including defaulting on real estate loans, during the same period he was helping teach students how to profit from properties in foreclosure.😲
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump in 2013, alleging that the university was a "fraud from beginning to end," geared toward pressuring students into buying ever more expensive seminars, course materials and mentoring services of little educational value. Regulators say Trump University staff often targeted senior citizens or those already in dire financial straits, encouraging them to max out their credit cards to pay for classes they couldn't afford.
In his 2005 video, Trump said his hand-picked instructors would give his students a better education than top-level university business schools.
"Honestly, if you don't learn from them, you don't learn from me. If you don't learn from the people we're going to be putting forward — these are all people that are hand-picked by me — then you're not going to make it in terms of the world of success," Trump said.
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The Trump followers who've been out protesting are truly the dregs of humanity. Like Trump, they are indifferent to the harm, stress, and potential devastation they are placing on our medical infrastructure by spreading this virus.
It's like their minds have been infected with some sort of mental virus that blocks out logic, reasoning and critical thinking, and inevitably turns them into horrible and selfish human beings.
Do they really believe that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 30 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders, who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should consider growing the fk up.
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One America "News" Network. This propaganda machine is actually more craven than Fox. In other words, if fox is Al qaeda, then One America Network is ISIS.
One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.” 😂
In all of Rouz’s OAN segments, he is introduced as a “One America correspondent,” with no disclosure of his work for Russia’s state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.
“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”
Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putin’s election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.
One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.
Over time, the network became increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda. When Rouz joined, the network had recently shed a number of anchors and other staffers who’d bristled at the change.
Though it’s available in only a handful of cable markets, OAN’s viewership includes some influential figures, including Traitor Trump himself. Trump has already fallen for at least two fake stories after seeing them on OAN.
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Make no mistake, if Trump thought he could get away with it, he would deal with Acosta the same way his muse, Putin deals with journalists in Russia.
September 2016 Trump praises Putin's 'strong control' over Russia and said he was 'far more' of a leader than Obama, during a commander in chief forum on NBC.
"I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing' -- the man has very strong control over a country. I think when he calls me brilliant I'll take the compliment, okay?' If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.'
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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Trump: "When I said, 'Go to the church,' I didn't know protesters or not. Nobody tells me that. No one tells me anything around here. Like during that solar eclipse, no one told me not to stare directly at it. So they say, 'Yes my Lord, we'll go to the church.'"
"When I went, I didn't say, 'Oh, move them out'—I didn't know who was there. I simply told them to dominate the streets. I figured I was just going to take a leisurely stroll over to the church, very nearby, and in the spirt of Caligula, casually dominate everything along the way."
"So we walked over to the church - It was a very fast walk, but not too fast. It could've been faster, but Bill "lunchbox" Barr kept slowing me down. I think it was very symbolic. Yes, I did hold up a Bible, but not for too long, because that Bible got really really hot. It started to burn my hands. It must have been one of those deep state Bibles or something."
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In 1994, a Democrat led Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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"From the start, authoritarians stand out from other kinds of politicians by appealing to negative experiences and emotions. They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation’s saviors. Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears, they present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety from racial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies."
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present
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A perfect example of why Trump is a pathological liar.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything..
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CPAC or, Conservative People Acting Cultish.
CPAC is an annual pilgrimage for Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, mongerers of fear and hatred, xenophobes, wealthy welfare queens, tax cheats, hypocrites, fake Christians, fake patriots, and real traitors. It's truly a diabolical and unholy mix of deplorables. So much so that I bet that room will still smell like sulfur and rotting flesh for weeks.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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Meanwhile, Trump has at least 24 cases of 5exual assault against him.
In the past, AMI has helped Trump by purchasing damaging stories about Trump in order to keep them from going public. AMI admitted that in 2016, it made a $150,000 payment "in concert" with Trump's election campaign to former model McDougal, who had an affair with Trump a decade earlier. The publisher made the pact with McDougal to ensure that the she did not publicize damaging allegations about Trump before the election, the U.S. Attorney's Office said..
The lawsuit filed against Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election were claims that Trump £aped a teenager when she was 13 years old in 1994. The anonymous plaintiff's initial legal filing that was dismissed in California, and "Jane Doe" in two subsequent legal filings in NY—said that she was £aped by Trump during a party hosted by J. Epstein at his NYC apartment. In the third and final lawsuit, Doe alleged she had numerous 5exual encounters with Trump and Epstein at the latter's parties.
Jane Doe alleged Trump tied her to a bed, "forcibly £aped her and threatened her and her family with physical harm, if not d€ath, if she told anyone about the assault. "I understood that Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old," Jane Doe wrote in an affidavit.
After the suit was filed in September 2016, the Enquirer editor and Trump lawyer Cohen were in contact frequently. But there was no opportunity for them to buy this story and stop it from going public. AMI chief, Trump's longtime friend, only found out about the lawsuit after it was filed.
In November 2016, just days before the election, Doe's attorney Lisa Bloom, suddenly announced in a press conference that Jane Doe had been canceled, saying Doe had become frightened after receiving d€ath threats. Two days later, Doe's lead attorney, Thomas Meager, filed to dismiss the case. "After we received numerous d€ath threats and my law firm's website and emails were hacked, she did not want to go forward," Bloom added. Jane Doe has not been heard from since.
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November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
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A raw and jaw-dropping example of what a pathological liar sounds like.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders, the top top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in a 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At a rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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It's crucial that every American is fully aware of the type of pathological liar and narcissistic sociopath we're dealing with when it comes to Trump..
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal"
In 1989, Trump raised $365 million to purchase the Eastern Shuttle, which provided business travelers with quick flights between NY, Boston, and DC. Within 18 months, the airline lost over $125 million.
In August 1989, just two months after Trump launched his Trump Shuttle Airline, one of his Boeing 727s made a crash landing at Boston’s Airport. The passenger jet had malfunctioning nose gear that failed to deploy. The nose and underbelly of the plane scraped and dragged along the entire length of the runaway upon landing with sparks flying. The pilots had to perform an emergency dumping of fuel to avoid a greater catastrophe. It's all on video.
One of the passengers on that flight — who recalls sliding out the aircraft and into a pile of foam — was Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist.
“Afterward,” Murphy said, “all I got was a form letter and a drink coupon.”
And when Trump was asked by reporters about the crash landing in Boston, he said, and I quote: “It was the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen." 😲
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Lauren, who ran on a "law-and-order" platform, has had several dust-ups with police. This jailbird has a rap sheet unusually long for a member of Congress.
And her track record of thumbing her nose at the law continued after she tussled with Capitol Police officers over her refusal to walk through newly installed House metal detectors.
Back in June 2015, Boebert was cuffed for disorderly conduct at a country music festival near Grand Junction, Colo., after police said she attempted to interfere in the arrest of minors busted for underage drinking and encouraged the accused to run off.
While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies’ reports. She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
“Lauren continued yelling and causing the underage drinkers to become unruly,” an arresting officer said in a statement at the time.
Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015.
A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs.
In September 2010, Boebert was arrested after a neighbor accused Boebert’s two pit bulls of attackingHer dog. Boebert pleaded guilty to a single count of “dog at large."
Boebert’s future husband, Jayson, also had brushes with law enforcement. In January 2004, he was arrested after exposing his himself to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 ) was also there. Jayson Boebert pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure, earning himself four days in jail and two years probation.
In February 2004, he was booked on a domestic violenceCharge, against Lauren. He “did unlawfully strike, shove or kick … and subjected her to physical contact,” a spokesman for the Garfield associate county court clerk stated.They had been dating at the time. Jayson Boebert ultimately served seven days in jail.
In May 2004. during an altercation with Jayson at his home, she scratched his face and chest and trashed his residence, according to a police report. She was slapped with third-degree assault, criminal mischief and underage drinking charges. A rep for the Garfield County Combined Court said they could not reveal any information about the case’s final disposition.
This is what "law & order" and conservative Christian values looks like. 🤣🤣
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MAGA: "One night I dreamed a dream. As I was walking along the beach with the one and only true WhiteLord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, One belonging to me, and another belonging to the one and only true WhiteLord, Trump.
After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints.
This really troubled me, so I asked the one and only true WhiteLord about it.
"WhiteLord, you said once I decided to follow you, You'd walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints. You also said that you would walk with me to the Capitol, but you were nowhere to be found that day. I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."
Trump whispered, "My precious uneducated child, I love you and will never leave you during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you, while wearing my never surrender gold sneakers." 🤣
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A perfect example of what happens when Don the Con is under oath.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
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The question every American should be asking is why do republicans continue to block election security bills? Senate Republicans blocked 3 election security bills just last week.
Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Oleg Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, allowed American corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money.
The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie, president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.
The Super PAC, Make America Number 1, is funded by Trump's largest donor, Robert Mercer. His Renaissance Technologies hedge fund donated $15.5 million to the PAC.
Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, assumed control of Make America Number 1 in September 2016 and is now tainted by her role in the communications between Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that Jared Kushner, hired for $5.9 million to handle the digital portion of the Trump campaign...
Citizens United must be overturned. It represents the biggest crime ever perpetrated on the American people. It was created by republicans and powerful corporations, for the sole purpose of finally controlling our government for their own financial gains, all while undermining the will of the people..
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Its been said that "the fish rots from the head" and this is true, and so does a nation. And the insidious rot that has gripped this nation, can be traced directly to the occupant in the Oval Office..
"I think my rhetoric brings people together," Donald said that last year, just four days after a 21-year-old MAGA supporter posted an anti-immigrant message online and then opened.fire at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, taking the lives of 22 people, and injuring dozens of others.
A nationwide review conducted has identified at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
After a La.tino gas station attendant in Gainesville, Florida, was suddenly pu.nched in the head by a MAGA supporter, the victim could be heard on surveillance camera recounting the attacker’s own words: “He said, ‘This is for Trump.'"
When police questioned a Washington state man about his threats to mu.rder a local immigrant, the suspect told police he wanted the victim to "get out of my country," adding, "That’s why I like Trump."
Reviewing police reports and court records, the review found that in at least 12 cases perpetrators hailed DJT in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting innocent victims. In another 18 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant's violent or threatening behavior.
The review could not find a single criminal case filed in federal or state court where an act of violence or threat was made in the name of Obama or Bush.
The 54 cases identified are remarkable in that a link to DJT is captured in court documents and police statements, under the penalty of perjury or contempt. These links are not speculative – they are documented in official records. And in the majority of cases, it was the perpetrators themselves who invoked DJT's name in connection with their case, not anyone else..
Trump is the chaos and disorder president. He is the cloven hoofed purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. He is a provocateur of mayhem & upheaval. He is a merchant of lies & deception. And he is trying to create an America in his own image: vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, malignant, grotesque, ignorant, selfish, indecent, malicious, debased, indifferent, and malevolent.
Trump and his followers are exactly what Voltaire was talking about when he said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
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A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake..
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. And over the last 3 years, he fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire.
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure within White House national security council, and in typical Trump fashion, he got rid of it simply because he didn't understand it, and didn't care enough to even try to understand it
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The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults like Trumpism.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
"TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“SharedPsychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“MadnessForMillions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology.
When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusionsParanoia and a propensity forViolence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbookonViolence, I emphasize the symbolic nature ofViolence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat.
ViolenceHelps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
--Bandy Lee
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying in the Senate trial, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then surely these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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Anything China said is irrelevant, when you consider the FACT that our intelligence agencies tried to warn Trump about what was going on in Wuhan dating back to November. And Trump did what he always does, he completely ignored them. So even if China tried to hide what was happening, Trump was presented with the truth, and he did nothing.
Trump did the exact same thing when our intelligence agencies warned him about Russian cryber espionage and interference in our elections. He completely ignored them, and sided with Putin the perpetrator instead. Make no mistake, Trump is directly responsible for the needless loss of thousands of American lives.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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There are 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, and hostility.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
Trump and hisMAGAs will never make it to stage 5, because they will forever be stuck in an endless loop of stages 1 through 4.
Trump reminds me of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either after losing his "precious." 😄
Trump: "He stole it from us!! Trixie Bidenses!!!"😭😭
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More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters that year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974..
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to DT, McConnell, McCarthy, Cruz, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Hawley, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
DT is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fasc.ism, wild conspiracy theories, rac.ism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. DT is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Make no mistake about it, your civil liberties are on the ballot in the midterms.
If you value your right to vote, then vote blue.💙
If you believe every vote should be counted, then vote blue.💙
If you believe that no politician should be able to make decisions for you in your private life, then vote blue. 💙
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
A GOP precinct chair in Utah wrote on Facebook that he thinks giving voting rights to women was a “grave mistake.”
“The more I study history, the more I think giving voting rights to others not head of household has been a grave mistake,” Casey Fisher, a Davis County precinct chair who oversees Republican caucuses in his district.
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"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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"Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could to defy the will of the people, and bring an end to 245 years of American democracy. I'm sorry, nothing worked."
-- GymJordan's January 7th text message to Mark Meadows.
In The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, editor Ben Larkin published a scathing op-ed on Jim Jordan.
Larkin asserts Jordan owes his House seat to bipartisan gerrymandering and has since become “the second most contemptible human being in the entire U.S. government,” next only to Trump.
'Of all the regions in all the states in all the country, Jim Jordan got dragged into ours. There was no good reason to punish Greater Cleveland by making the person who’s now the second most contemptible human being in the entire U.S. government part of the region’s delegation to Congress. Worse yet, the betrayal was bipartisan."
“When Jordan slithers out from under his rock each morning, dons a shirt and tie -- sans the jacket, lest he be mistaken for Joe McCarthy -- his life’s work is to besmirch everything America stands for in service of Donald Trump,” Larkin writes. “And now it’s fitting that Republicans have given this seven-term sycophant a starring role in the televised House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump.”
'If it takes changing the Trump defense strategy on an almost daily basis because facts keep getting in the way, Jordan is the idealBootlicker. Trump’s support is all that seems to matter to the man former House Speaker John Boehner regularly referred to as "a legislativeTerrorist” – along with a whole bunch of other descriptions unfit for print."
'Why would Jordan so readily ruin what little was left of his reputation? One theory holds he hopes to inherit Trump’s base for a presidential run of his own in 2024. The swamp will be a crowded place in four years, overrun with loathsome folks angling to continue theDastardly business of shredding the Constitution."
'Everything about Jordan reeks of a man willing to cast aside common decency and fairness in service of a corrupt and cruel president."
'He may be the most unfit man to ever represent part of Greater Cleveland in Congress."
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow...
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Trump has repeatedly said he slowed the spread of the virus into the US by acting decisively to bar travelers from China on Jan. 31. But as with everything that comes out of that lie factory he calls a mouth, that also turned out to be categorically false.
Trump and his administration took a month from the time it learned of the outbreak in late December to impose the initial travel restrictions amid furious infighting. The NSC staff ultimately proposed aggressive travel restrictions to high-level administration officials - but it took at least a week more for Trump to adopt them.
Matthew Pottinger, deputy national security adviser and a China expert, met opposition from Steven Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow, said two former NSC officials involved in the meetings. Mnuchin and Kudlow were more concerned about economic fallout from barring travelers from China. Pottinger was “pleading with Mnuchin and others” to stop travelers from coming, one former NSC official said.
By then, the first known patient in the U.S - a man in his 30s who had traveled from Wuhan to Seattle on Jan. 15 – tested positive for COVID-19.
Each day that Trump and his insane clown posse debated the travel measures, roughly 14,000 travelers arrived in the US from China, according to figures cited by the Trump administration. Among them was a traveler who came from Wuhan to Seattle in mid-January, who turned out to be the first confirmed case in the U.S
On Jan. 22, Trump downplayed the threat posed by the virus, telling CNBC from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “We have it totally under control.”
With more than 1 million confirmed cases, and more than 67 thousand deaths, America now has more deaths and cases of infections than any other country in the world.
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The more I read and hear about Republicans conspiring with agents of Russia, the more I'm convinced, that the GOP has sold out America to the Russians in order to try and stay in power.
I believe that Republicans came to an agreement with Russia, that if it funneled money into their campaigns, and launched a disinformation campaign on the American people, that would help them stay in power, then in return, Republicans would lift the crippling economic sanctions that President Obama placed on Russia. There are simply too many connections between Republicans and Russians for it to be a coincidence. And I don't believe in coincidences.
IN 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement." It's the same tired excuse Sen Rand Paul routinely provides to justify his own shadowy meetings with our enemies.
The group met with a number of key Russians, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two jackals who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigating Russian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit to Moscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the “gloating” Russians.
Sen Ron Johnson has been the most outspoken when defending Trump. So much so that during an interview on Meet the Press in October 2019, he announced that he doesn’t trust the FBI or the CIA—a clear admission that he does however trust the GRU and his Russian comrades. Today, the eight republicans that came back from Russia, show all the signs of a Russian GRU sleeper cell. It would explain why they're all regurgitating Russian GRU propaganda to the American people
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon..
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end..
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The insurrection on January 6 proved that phony patriotism poses a threat to America, and to our democracy.
Samuel Johnson, the 18th century English writer said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Gore Vidal wrote, “When tyranny comes to the United States, she will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible.” How stunningly appropriate those quotes are in describing Trump. A phony patriot and a phony Christian.
Trump and his followers seem to think that wrapping themselves in the American flag, screaming FREEDOM, or even standing for the anthem makes them super patriots. It no more makes them patriots than me standing in the middle of my garage makes me a Ford F-150.
As a Marine veteran, I have never seen patriotism reduced to such hollow and irrelevant stupidity. To them, patriotism is all about empty childish gestures that show a misunderstanding of America, rather than honoring it. Real Patriotism is caring about what happens to your fellow American citizens. It's about sacrifice and service to others, it's about our shared humanity, while the best of America is about kindness, hospitality, and benevolence.
A true American patriot would use our flag, and everything it's suppose to represent, to unite our country, not to divide it, and not as a weapon against those who have different views or different skin colors.
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.
Lev Parnas" lawyer sent a letter to Moscow Mitch stating that he is ready to give testimony, as well as provide documents, that will prove that GOP Super PAC America One, Rudy, Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mulvaney, Bill Barr, Nunes, Pence, and Desperate Housewife of Capitol Hill 👉Lindsey Graham, were all part of Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Is it any wonder why Republicans were so vehemently against introducing witnesses and evidence into the Senate trial. They were covering up their own crimes. But it will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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Konstantin Rykov is a propagandist for the Putin government machine. “Rykov is considered to be one of the leading pro-Kremlin bloggers in Russia,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia .
Konstantin Rykov is the Russian who created Putin's troll farm, and has boasted online that he helped get Trump elected. His claims of involvement with the Trump team can't be dismissed for 2 reasons: first, he is very close to Putin, and had a long history of involvement with top levels of the Russian government; and, second, his description of how Trump’s campaign put together an effective internet strategy for information warfare is very close to the evidence revealed in the Mueller Report.
At about 11:14pm on November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election. At 11:29pm, Trump blasted out the following defiant tweet:
Trump: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
11:29 PM - Nov 6, 2012
Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.
Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Konstantin Rykov tells what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. In the first post, Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:
"Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him a reply, “I’m ready. What should I do?”
Trump replied with a picture. In the picture he was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully giving the thumbs-up sign.
Rykov explaines how things went from there:
"For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the US, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order.
Our idea was insane, but realizable.
In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man.
Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.”
British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.
Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others.
At the very beginning there was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.
The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it.
Keep in mind, Konstantin Rykov revealed all of this on Facebook just four days after Trump was elected. It was before people started asking questions about Cambridge Analytica or targeted social media ads. Rykov might have been boasting as he spiked the football in the end zone. What he didn’t think at that point, however, is that he had any reason to hide what he’d done.
His comments were also made well before details of Russian meddling in the presidential election were reported in the mainstream media. If Rykov wasn’t involved, then how on earth would he know as much as he confessed?
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "patriots."
We WILL be ready next time.
Semper Fi..
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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Real democracies rest upon an egalitarian distribution of power in the economy and society writ large, as well as strong protections for minority groups and individuals. Yet even if we narrowly define democracy as the ability of ordinary people to select representatives who make policy on their behalf, it’s clear that the modern, mainstream conservative movement is openly hostile to democracy. And it has been since the very beginning..
Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
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So far, everyone who has been indicted by Mueller, is either in jail, been to jail already, on their way to jail, or they have cut a plea deal, and they are now working for Mueller. Robert Mueller is batting a 1000 so far. Now the latest witch to be caught, Roger Stone, has a a big decision to make. Because there is no possible way, that Mueller would have ever indicted Roger Stone, if he didn't already have proof of Stone's guilt. He's got Stone dead to rights, and if he's got Stone, then he's got Trump too.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency..
There were multiple warnings throughout December for the NSC and the White House. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House, but they went unheeded. The first case of COVID-19 reached the U.S. on Jan15. The WHO declared it a pandemic on March 11. Trump declared the U.S. outbreak a national emergency on March 13.
On Jan. 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first briefed Trump on the threat of the virus in a phone call. Trump made his first public comments about the virus on Jan. 22, saying he was not concerned about a pandemic and that "we have it totally under control."
On Jan. 27, White House aides met with then-acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney to try to get senior officials to take the virus threat more seriously. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, warned it could cost Trump his re-election.
On Jan. 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House in a memo addressed to the National Security Council that COVID-19 could take more than half a million American lives and cause nearly $6 trillion in economic damage.
On Jan. 30, Azar warned Trump in a call that the virus could become a pandemic and that China should be criticized for its lack of transparency. Trump dismissed Azar as alarmist and rejected the idea of criticizing China. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency.
On Feb. 5, senators urged Trump in a briefing to take the virus more seriously and asked if additional funds were necessary. The administration made no requests at the time for emergency funding.
On Feb. 14, a memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with the National Security Council that recommended the targeted use of quarantine and isolation measures. Officials planned to present Trump with the memo when he returned from India on Feb. 25, but the meeting was canceled.
On Feb. 21, the White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives.
On Feb. 23, Navarro doubled down on his warnings in another memo, this time addressed to the president, stating that up to 2 million Americans could die of the virus.
On Feb. 25, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Nancy Messonnier publicly warned of the virus threat and said "we need to be preparing for significant disruption in our lives.” Trump reportedly called Azar fuming that Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily and caused the stock market to plummet.
On Jan 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal negligence of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. So far, more than 23 thousand American lives have been lost, and many of them needlessly, as a direct consequence of Trump's moral ineptitude, sociopathic behavior, and criminal negligence, and for that, he must be held accountable.
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Because of Trump and DeJoy, 300k Amercan citizens had their constitutional rights violated, and for that, there must be consequences, justice demands it!!!
As an American citizen, and a Marine veteran, I didn't shed blood sweat and tears, just so that my fellow Americans,, whom I served, could have their most basic constitutional right violated.
Semper Fidelis -- Always Faithful
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The anatomy of Trump's bribery, by the numbers.
APRIL 21
Zelensky is elected president of Ukraine. Soon after, allies of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani relay a message that Giuliani wants to meet with him. Mr. Zelensky puts him off, noting that he has not yet taken office.
MAY 6
The State Department announces that Marie Yovanovitch, the American ambassador to Ukraine, has been recalled to Washington months ahead of schedule after Giuliani and his allies spread unfounded allegations that she was disloyal to Trump. About the same time, Bolton, the White House national security adviser, warns a deputy: “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”
MAY 10
Giuliani tells Fox News that Mr. Zelensky seems surrounded by operatives allied with the Democratic Party and “enemies of the president, and, in some cases, enemies of the United States.” A few days later, an associate of Giuliani’s warns the Ukrainians that American aid could be withheld, according to the associate’s lawyer, although others dispute that timing.
MAY 23
In an Oval Office meeting with Trump, Kurt D. Volker, then the special envoy to Ukraine; Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union; and Rick Perry, the energy secretary, all describe Mr. Zelensky as a committed reformer who deserves American support. All three attended Mr. Zelensky’s swearing-in in Kiev three days earlier.
Trump replies that Ukraine is full of “terrible” and corrupt people who had “tried to take me down.” He orders the officials to coordinate future Ukraine matters with Mr. Giuliani.
Later, Giuliani tells Sondland that the Ukrainians should publicly announce investigations into Burisma and the 2016 election...
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
JULY 18
In a secure conference call with national security officials, an Office of Management and Budget staff member announces that Trump was freezing $391 million in security aid to Ukraine until further notice, citing a presidential order to the budget office..
JULY 25
During a phone call with Mr. Zelensky, Trump raises the favors he is seeking, including a Biden-related inquiry. Afterward, Mr. Vindman, one of the note-takers, reports the call to Mr. Eisenberg.
July 26
Ambassador Bill Taylor said, one of his aides was in a restaurant with Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union. Sondland called Trump, and the president could be heard asking about “the investigations,” to which Sondland replied that “the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.” After the call, the aide asked Sondland what the president thought of Ukraine, Mr. Taylor testified. Sondland responded that “President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden.”
AUG. 9
The Ukrainians have learned by this date that military aid is frozen and they should speak with Mr. Mulvaney.
“I think POTUS really wants the deliverable,” Mr. Sondland texts Mr. Volker.
Mr. Sondland and Mr. Volker are working on draft language for Mr. Zelensky’s announcement of the investigations. Mr. Yermak says the White House should nail down Mr. Zelensky’s Oval Office invite first.
AUG. 12
A C.I.A. officer detailed to the White House files a whistle-blower complaint about the July 25 call and other concerns. It begins a slow trek to Congress.
AUG. 16
In a memo prepared for Bolton, Colonel Vindman states that the National Security Council, the State Department and the Defense Department all agree that military assistance to Ukraine should be released. But in a meeting, Trump rejects the recommendation. An aide later says the “president doesn’t want to provide any assistance at all.”
SEPT. 1
In Warsaw, Mr. Zelensky asks VP Pence about the military aid, but Pence says only that he will speak to Trump. Sondland tells Mr. Yermak not to expect the money unless Mr. Zelensky publicly announces a Burisma investigation.
Mr. Zelensky later prepares an announcement for a Sept. 13 CNN appearance, which the Ukrainians hope will satisfy Mr. Trump.
SEPT. 7
Mr. Sondland calls Trump, asking specifically what he wants from Ukraine. Trump replies “nothing” and insists that there is “no quid pro quo, ” Mr. Sondland later says.
SEPT. 11
Two days after a House committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, the White House reverses course and releases its hold on the military aid. Plans for Mr. Zelensky’s CNN interview are scuttled...
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Make no mistake, Trump is a sociopath.
Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blamed Dems for his government shutdown, even after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown.
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing.
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1988 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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In 2005, Timothy O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, had published a book called “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.” In the book, O’Brien cited people who questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people who estimated that the figure was between $150 million and $250 million.
Trump sued. He later told The Post that he intended to hurt O’Brien, whom he called a “lowlifeSleazebag.”
By filing suit, Trump hadn’t just opened himself up to questioning — he had opened a door into the opaque and secretive company he ran.
The lawsuit had given O’Brien's attorneys the power to request that Trump turn over internal company documents, and they used it. They arrived at the deposition having already identified where Trump’s public statements hadn’t matched the private truth.
Trump may not have realized it yet, but he had walked into a trap. 🤣
Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.
For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.
The lawyers confronted Trump with his own past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been patently false or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump was vulnerable — cornered, sweating, unprepared, and UNDER OATH!!
Thirty times, they caught him.
Trump had lied about sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.
That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s lies were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind.
“A very clear and visible side effect of my lawyers’ questioning of Trump is that he was revealed as a routine and habitual fabulist,” said Timothy O’Brien.
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And not only must Trump be voted out, but every republican that continues to defend him must be voted out as well.
In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
Trump's own sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't)
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Trump is running the country the exact same way he ran his failed businesses, including his failed casinos. In the end Trump couldn't care less about what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation, and his fake university.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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So when Donald got sick, where did he go? He went to the doctors, the medical experts at Walter Reed. When you get sick, or need an operation, where do you go? Do you go to the medical experts, or do you go to Trump? When someone is diagnosed with a disease like cancer, should they listen to Trump, or should they listen to the medical experts? If you're having a baby, do you go to the medical experts, or do you go to Trump? When your child gets sick, do you take them to Trump, or do you take them to the medical experts?
But now Trump is trying to convince us that we should listen to him, instead of listening to the medical experts. Why that would make sense to anyone is beyond comprehension.
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If Trump's own sister and niece won't vote for him, why on earth should anyone else.
In the newly released audio, Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry is critical about Donald, saying she did his homework for him and that he is, among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His gawd@mned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s*t. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." 😂 “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said.
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. We have this under control. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance, lies, and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, or flag waving. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. Currently there is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. I recognize no one's authority. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I've had success in other countries, but America is making me great again."
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NEVER FORGET...that it didn't have to be this way.
Trump's presidency has been far worse than the tragedy of 9/11. 200 thousand American lives lost equates to about 66 9/11s.
And the worst part of It all, is that it was preventable, not just in hindsight, but in foresight as well.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Everyone wants freedom, and so conservatism has no choice but to promise freedom to its subjects. In reality conservatism has meant complicated things by "freedom", and the reality of conservatism in practice, has scarcely corresponded even to the contorted definitions in conservative texts.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of state terror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
For thousands of years, conservatism was universally understood as being in opposition to democracy. Having lost much of its ability to attack democracy openly, conservatism has tried in recent years to redefine the word "democracy" while engaging in deception to make the substance of democracy unthinkable.
Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.
Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.
Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.
The main idea of public relations is the distinction between "messages" and "facts". Messages are the things you want people to believe. A message should be vague enough that it is difficult to refute by rational means.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact trying to take it from you. January 6 ring a bell? Trump tried to steal an election, by falsely claiming it was being stolen from him.
knowledge is best produced in a liberal culture. This is why the most prosperous and innovative regions of the United States are also the most politically liberal, and why the most conservative regions of the country are also the greatest beneficiaries of transfer payments. Liberals create wealth and government redistributes it to conservatives. This is, of course, the opposite of the received conservative opinion in the media, but it is true. The republican party's greatest fear, is that America will one day live up to it's promise.
Conservatism is almost gone. People no longer worship the pharaohs. To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general.
B: It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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It's becoming abundantly clear, that Trump and republicans are now owned by Russians. They receive their funding for Russians, and then they receive their marching orders from Russians. That's how it works whenever you've been fully bought, and fully compromised..
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy, received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, even though they have attended events at his properties, and they have posed in multiple photos with Trump.
Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot disclose to the government.
Lev Parnas paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy. Along with their work with Rudy, Parnas and Fruman are accused of meeting at Trump’s Washington hotel to discuss a Ukraine gas deal linked to Yovanovitch’s removal.
Parnas was throwing Russian money at Republicans like beads at Mardi Gras to any republican that was willing to expose themselves to him.
In October, Repub. McCarthy said he plans to donate the $111,000 that was given to the House Republicans' main fundraising committee by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas.
A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman..
Prosecutors say that they “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
In 2018, Parnas and Fruman donated directly to Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions. Fruman also gave to SC. GOP Rep. Joe Wilson and to a joint fundraising committee tied to Florida Gov. Rick Scott in his successful bid for Senate. Both Sessions and Wilson have acknowledged meeting with both men.
Fruman and Parnas also gave to other joint fundraising committees, which drew more GOP lawmakers. FEC records show that 22 other Republicans who were lawmakers at the time received contributions from Fruman, who misspelled his last name as “Furman” in filings in “a further effort to hide the source of the funds and to evade federal reporting requirements,” according to the indictment.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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Saudi Prince Mohammed bragged to confidants and to the Emirati Crown Prince, that he has Jared Kushner in his pocket.
Jared Kushner made an unannounced trip to Riyad in October of last year, catching some intelligence officials off guard. Kushner and Saudi Royal Prince Mohammed are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy.
After the meeting, Crown Prince Mohammed told confidants that he has Kushner in jis pockets, and that Kushner had discussed the names of Saudis disloyal to the crown prince, according to three sources who have been in contact with members of the Saudi and Emirati royal families since crackdown ordered by the Prince Mohammed.
Kushner had access to Trump's daily security briefing, a highly sensitive intellig(ence update meant to be seen by only the president and his top advisers, before being stripped of his top-secret security clearance.
Before losing that access, Kushner was particularly interested in information about the Middle East, citing several former White House and US government officials.
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"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people or ter rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past last March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much they love and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. Trump showed his bravery again when he insulted the memory of recently deceased Congressman John Dingell, a WW2 veteran, by suggesting that Dingell was now looking up from he//.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment. No one will ever truly know how much courage and bravery it took for Trump to insult these veterans. 😔
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that medal from a veteran.
Semper Fi..
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Recent books by Timothy Snyder, Masha Gessen, and Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig have traced Trump’s growing pattern of lies and lawlessness. Yes, nearly all presidents have occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 20,000+ lies can; one governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully executive the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama.
In May of 2018, When China's President Xi Jinping, who is the leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump praised him for it. Just let that sink in for a moment.
In remarks at Mar-a-Lago, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un, the dictator who continues to threaten America with nuclear war, for his authoritarian control over his people.
Trump: "He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018:
At a rally, Trump confesses to the love he has for Kim Jung Un, the most brutal dictator in modern history.
Trump: "I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said. “And then we fell in love, okay. No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
These are the inexplicable and indefensible words of a sitting US President. And no amount of lies, spin, or deflections will ever justify them, or erase them.
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"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people or ter rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Trump business relationships with China are among the main examples plaintiffs in multiple court cases have cited that Trump is violating the Constitution’s “emoluments clause” by accepting payments from foreign governments.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party (Trump) is always right."
-- George Orwell, 1984
In George Orwell's novel 1984, a Thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding beliefs that opposes or questions the Party. A Thoughtcrime is thinking of anything that the Thought Police and the Party deems is illegal, or doubting the party line, or thinking anything contrary to the Party's message..
Within Trump's cult, he has a name for those who commit "Thoughtcrimes" against him, like questioning his actions, and exposing his lies by fact checking him. Trump refers to these people as "Never Trumpers."
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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As a Marine veteran, it warms my heart to know that there are still some true American patriots out there who are still willing to resist, still willing to stand-up and speak truth to power. Patriots who still believe in putting country first. Patriots who still believe in serving a cause greater than themselves. Patriots like Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Lt.Col. Vindman, David Holmes, Jennifer Williams, and others. To all of these patriots, and others out there like them, I salute you.
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In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
General John Kelly voted for Trump, and eventually became his White House Chief of Staff. And THEN, he got to know him.
“The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathet0ic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,”
--- Marine General Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff.
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When it comes to Trump and the GOP, all roads lead to Russia.
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy, and Devin Nunes, received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, even though they have attended events at his properties, and they have posed in multiple photos with Trump.
Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot disclose to the government.
GOP Sens. Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn, AKA Moscow Marsha, are tied to Russian money and Trump conspiracy theories. Going back to her 2007 meeting with Russian diplomat Igor Matveev, Marsha Blackburn has a more than decade-long history of meeting with Russian nationals on Tennessee soil.
At least a dozen Republican congressional campaigns used materials stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. Several other Republican campaigns received millions in contributions from an oligarch with close ties to Putin. In 2018, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called on the National Republican Congressional Committee to make a bipartisan pledge not to utilize stolen or hacked information in House elections. After months of negotiations, in September of 2018, House Republicans backed out and refused to sign the pledge. Now we know why Republicans have been hesitant to criticize Trump’s willingness to accept “dirt” on an opposing candidate from a foreign government.
Republican lawmakers also spent the 4th of July in Russia seeking "better relations" with a country that interfered in the U.S. presidential election and continues to deny it.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) led the eight-member delegation on a multiday tour of St. Petersburg and Moscow, a trip that included meetings with Russia’s foreign minister and parliamentarians.
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
Vote 💙 all the way through. 🇺🇸💪
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Trump is leaving a trail of broken careers and lives behind him in his wake.
Manafort - in prison, Cohen - in prison, Papadopoulos - convicted/ time served, Mike Flynn - convicted and awaiting sentence, Robert Gates - convicted, Roger Stone - convicted and awaiting sentence. Many other people associated with Trump have had their careers and reputations ruined. Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mulvaney, Kirstjen Nielsen, Sean Spicer,
Ryan Zinke, Scaramucci -- and the list goes on and on. Rudy and Pompeo will be joining this list in the near future. Trump's white house is where the truth, careers, and reputations go to die.
Trump is like the Typhoid Mary of Presidents.
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In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “SuckersAndLosers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier, and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure ManBaby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
By staying home on Dec 25 of 2018, Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn't visit military personnel on or before Christmas.
President Obama visited troops at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, in Kaneohe Bay, every Christmas he was in office, from 2009 to 2016.
President Obama traveled to Iraq in April 2009, just a few months after taking office.
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"From the start, authoritarians stand out from other kinds of politicians by appealing to negative experiences and emotions. They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation’s saviors. Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears, they present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety from racial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies."
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present
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Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent expressed his disgust over rioters who stormed the Capitol, and Trump's rhetoric that sparked the insurrection.
"He's committed a mortal crime against the republic," Dent said. "He should have resigned over this, but he won't, of course."
In an interview, Dent conveyed his anger with a pro-Trump rioter carrying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol building, calling it a "desecration."
"I always proudly took my constituents to a plaque right by the east-front Capitol, right by the front door. It's a plaque dedicated to the honorary first defenders from Allentown, Pennsylvania, in Redding, Pennsylvania ... who went to the Capitol, at the call of Abraham Lincoln, to defend the Capitol during the Civil War. ... The confederates never got there. They were there to protect against the rebellion. And here we are, watching Confederate flags running through the Capitol. To see this desecration to me, it's so upsetting as an American, as a Republican. How could this happen?"
"The voters, the courts, the states – they've all spoken. They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever. This election was actually not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000 and 2004 were all closer."
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter aDeath spiral. We’d never see the whole nation accept an election again. Every four years would bring a scramble for power at any cost."
--Mitch McConnell, Jan 6.
A Texas man charged in the Capitol insurrection threatened to ki// hisChildren if they told the FBI he had taken part in the riot, according to court documents.
Guy Reffitt, who the FBI says is part of a far-rightExtremist group called "Texas Freedom Force," (hilarious) was arrested and charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and obstruction of justice.
The FBI said in a charging affidavit that Reffitt, a 48-year-old oil worker from Wylie, Texas, first bragged about his trip to Washington, DC, to his family, saying he had filmed the riot on a GoPro-style camera.
Upon learning of the FBI's investigation into the insurrection, Reffitt threatened toShootHisChildren if they turned him in to authorities, the affidavit said.
His wife told the FBI that Reffitt told his son andDaughter: "If you turn me in, you're a traitor and you know what happens to traitors … traitors getShot."
He separately told his daughter he'd "put a bulletThrough her phone if she posted about him on social media, according to the affidavit.
But Reffitt's family did end up speaking to the FBI, the affidavit said, and days later, agents arrived at Reffitt's door with a search warrant.
This guy loves Trump more than his own family.
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Romney stayed true to his oath of office, and for that, he should be applauded. No Senator or Congressman swears an oath to the president. They swear an oath to the Constitution, and to the people of this country. However Trump, being the megalomaniac that he is, believes that everyone should swear an oath to him. And anyone who doesn't, should be called a "never Trumper." As if being a never Trumper comes with some sort of negative connotation. Being called a never Trumper is like having a badge honor bestowed upon you. It simply means that you put your country, and the Constitution before an undeserving and illegitimate con-man. Being a never Trumper is something we should all aspire to be. For there is nothing more righteous, than being a never Trumper. I salute Romney, Schiff, and all of his colleagues, for having the courage and the integrity to remain true to their oaths, and for standing up for our Constitution, the country, and the American people.
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment..
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It's almost as if the Founding Fathers were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants. The articles of impeachment were tailor made for a wannabe dictator like Trump..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
With great power, comes great responsibility.
"If you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-- Abraham Lincoln
The abuse of power is the basis for the impeachment of any president. Any crime or violation of the Constitution, committed by a president, is by definition, an abuse of power.
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@michaelhapgood782
Our Constitution vs Project 2025. Pick a side..
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived..
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
The creation of the U.S. Constitution depended upon the knowledge, experience, and dedication of its framers, just as its endurance depends upon the knowledge and experience of each succeeding generation of Americans. For this reason, it is important for us to learn and understand the governing principles of our nation, set forth in the Constitution.
I love the fact that the first 3 words of our Constitution are "we the people." This affirms that the government of the United States, exists to serve its citizens.
Honor our Constitution, and protect it at all cost, the same way it exists to protect us.
Semper Fi...🇺🇸.
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Pete Strzok served four years in the Army, 101st Airborne, and then joined the FBI, where he spent 22 years working to protect this country’s national security. His skill and commitment led him to be picked as one of the lead agents in the Russian spy ring “illegals” case.
Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley had been living for two decades
in Canada and then in Europe before they ever set foot in the U.S. to start spying for Russia here. We now know that the FBI was on to them as spies as soon as they got here. In the 80s, these two Russian spies stole their new names and identities from deceased Canadian kids from the 1960s, and under those identities, they started a fake life in Toronto.
Although their spy life started in Canada, ultimately, the goal of this spy operation, the reason they were deployed by Russian intelligence pin the first place was not to spy on Canada but, instead, to spy on the United States.
The couple lived in Toronto through the ’80s and ’90s. In the ’90s, Donald
Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley, had two sons. The spy couple spoke both French and English at home with their boys. They didn’t speak Russian at home with their boys even though they were from Russia and were native Russian speakers. Their sons had no idea that their parents were Russian at all.
In 2010, when a federal indictment against these spies was unsealed, the details of what this spy couple was assigned to do here in the U.S. by their handlers in Russia was revealed. The FBI’s investigation has revealed that a network of illegals is now living and operating in the U.S. in the service of one primary long-term goal, to become sufficiently Americanized such that they can gather information about the U.S. for Russia, and can successfully recruit sources
who are in or are able to infiltrate U.S. policy making circles.
They were getting information out of specific individuals in America, and reporting back to Moscow, individuals like a person who had worked in Congress as a legislative counsel, an economics professor who had contacts in Congress and with Washington policymakers. Donald Heathfield reported to Moscow that he had established contact with a former high ranking U.S. government national security official. Heathfield also made contact with a U.S. official working on nuclear weapons at a U.S. government research facility.
The FBI was watching them and collecting intel on their operations for that whole 10 year period. The FBI during that time had also put microphones inside the spy’s house. They had no clue how much the FBI was on to them, and that their house was bugged. The FBI had secretly gone inside their house on multiple occasions. They had photographed their notes and letters. The FBI also got into a safe deposit box they used to send encrypted messages.
The lead case agent for Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley at the FBI, the FBI agent who led this covert FBI operation that monitored those two Russian spies for years, all the surveillance these trained Russian spies were unable to detect, all the intelligence collected on them from right under their noses, and breaking their codes, was an FBI agent named Peter Strzok.
He actually won a medal for his work on that case. But he also worked on other Russian spy rings in the U.S. and Chinese spy rings in the U.S. Over more than 20 years at the FBI, he rose to become the senior agent on all espionage cases at the Washington field office at the FBI. Ultimately, he rose from there to become the head of the counterintelligence division for the whole FBI.
Peter Strzok is a man who has served and protected America faithfully and honorably. Now I see why a traitor like Trump attacks him. Let's place Peter Strzok's service to this country on a balance scale, up against Trump's service to this country, and let's see which individual comes up wanting.
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During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like many of our Governors, and especially the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump and these protesters, who will categorically fail during a crisis. Their selfishness will prevent them from thinking of anyone other than themselves. They will not rise to the occasion, Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. Not only will they fail, but like Trump, they will seek to blame others for their failures.
These protesters are the type of people that America could never count on during a crisis. If America were invaded by a foreign country, these are the type of people that would betray America in a heartbeat, and side with the enemy.
In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people orTer rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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I'm sure we all remember the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil incident in the Gulf of Mexico. I still remember watching the 24hr live video stream of thousands of gallons of oil being dumped into the gulf. Well days before the Trump administration unveiled its plans for a massive expansion of offshore drilling, it moved to gut the Production Safety Systems Rule, a set of safety regulations the Obama administration created pertaining to maintenance of offshore platforms. The changes, finalized last month and slated to take effect on Dec. 27, loosen notification and certification rules for oil companies and toss out a requirement that offshore equipment be designed to withstand the most extreme weather and pressure conditions.
In May, the Trump took aim at the Well Control Rule, a safety monitoring regulation meant to prevent the kind of Deepwater Horizon incident that killed 11 workers and resulted in some 200 million gallons of crude oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. The rule requires additional inspection and maintenance of blowout preventers, a device designed to automatically seal a well, and stop an uncontrolled release of oil and gas. Stripping the Obama era regulations would loosen the inspection and oversight requirements for this equipment.
Trump's reckless, irresponsible, and controversial drilling plan called “energy dominance” would make available for oil and gas leasing, roughly 90 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, including large swaths of the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Interior Department, led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, who's currently under multiple ethics investigations is leading the charge for Trump's plan.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement estimates that rolling back these safety regulations would save oil companies just shy of $1 billion over a 10-year period. I mean sure, it could lead to another Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It could result in the loss of lives again. It could cost fishermen their entire livelihoods again. But who cares, just as long as billion dollar oil companies can save millions of dollars, that's on top of the millions they're already saving from the massive tax cuts Trump gifted them. Now that's what I call MAGA!!! 😔
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“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
A GOP precinct chair in Utah wrote on Facebook this week that he thinks giving voting rights to women was a “grave mistake.”
“The more I study history, the more I think giving voting rights to others not head of household has been a grave mistake,” Casey Fisher, a Davis County precinct chair who oversees Republican caucuses in his district.
Fisher deleted both the post and his Facebook account when he began receiving angry messages,(too late!🤣)
according to Davis County GOP chairwoman Teena Horlacher, who defended Fisher in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune.
And there you have it folks. If the Republican party gets it's way, people will start to lose their right to vote in the future.
Vote 💙 like your very right to vote, and our democratic republic depends on it. Because it literally does.
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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“Another way to control thoughts is through the use of loaded language, which, as Lifton pointed out, is purposely designed to invoke an emotional response. When I look at the list of thought-controlling techniques—reducing complex thoughts into clichés and platitudinous buzz words; forbidding critical questions about the leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate or evil—it is astounding how many Trump exploits.”
“Cult members learn a new vocabulary that is designed to constrict their thinking into absolute, black-and-white, thought-stopping clichés that conform to group ideology. (“Lock her up” and “Build the Wall” are Trumpian examples. Even his put-downs and nicknames—Crooked Hillary, Pocahontas for Elizabeth Warren—function to block other thoughts. Terms like “deep state” and “globalist” also act as triggers. They rouse emotion and direct attention.)”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How Trump Uses Mind Control On His Followers
“A lie once told remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."
-Joseph Goebbels infamously proclaimed.
Donald's followers were led down a dark rabbit hole, chasing the BIG LIE that was fed to them morning noon and night, lies from the mouth of a well established con-man. What happened to them is similar to what happened to members of the Donner party.
In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly 90 emigrants left Springfield, Illinois, and headed west, led by brothers Jacob and George Donner. The Donner party decided to leave the well established trail and take a new and supposedly shorter route to California. They were instructed to get off of the main trail, and take a so called shorter route by an unscrupulous huckster named Lansford Hastings.
They soon encountered rough terrain and numerous delays, and they eventually became trapped by heavy snowfall high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They were soon reduced to mur.der and cann.ibalism to survive through the winter, only half of the original group reached California the following year.
The moral of this story is simple, stay on the main roads that are well marked, and well lit. And never listen to con-men, who lead you down dark roads and rabbit holes.
As Virginia Reed, a survivor of the Donner party, said in a letter of advice to a relative traveling to California a year later:
"…Remember, never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can."
This summary statement contains good life lessons for all of us.
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If Trump really cared about America, why did he wait until he was in his 70s to run for president? He's never ran for any political office, or served America in any way in his entire long and fraudulent life. He nor his kids have ever served in the military, he has never promoted or championed any worthy causes, and he ran a fake charity foundation that is now defuncted and under investigation, because he used it for his own financial gain.
In the 73 years Trump has been on this earth, his only claims to fame, are being a 5 time draft dodger, a crook, money launderer, illiterate, megalomaniac, sexual predator, twitter troll, demagogue, racist, traitor, failed business owner, tax cheat, welfare queen, con-man, malignant narcissist, a deadbeat who doesn't repay his debts, and a loudmouth bloviating pathological liar.
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles.
"Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing, because Republicans aren't interested in governing, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Deep down, republicans don't actually believe in democracy, or our Constitution. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about.
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The more I read and hear about Republicans conspiring with agents of Russia, the more I'm convinced, that the GOP has sold out America to the Russians in order to try and stay in power...
I believe that Republicans came to an agreement with Russia, that if it funneled money into their campaigns, and launched a disinformation campaign on the American people, that would help them stay in power, then in return, Republicans would lift the crippling economic sanctions that President Obama placed on Russia. There are simply too many connections between Republicans and Russians for it to be a coincidence. And I don't believe in coincidences.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement." It's the same tired excuse Sen Rand Paul routinely provides to justify his own shadowy meetings with our enemies.
The group met with a number of key Russians, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two jackals who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigating Russian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit to Moscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the “gloating” Russians.
Sen Ron Johnson has been the most outspoken when defending Trump. So much so that during an interview on Meet the Press in October 2019, he announced that he doesn’t trust the FBI or the CIA—a clear admission that he does however trust the GRU and his Russian comrades. Today, the eight republicans that came back from Russia, show all the signs of a Russian GRU sleeper cell. It would explain why they're all regurgitating Russian GRU propaganda to the American people.
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much theylove and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. That was pretty low even for Trump.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
Semper Fi..
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Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
NEVER FORGET.....it didn't have to be this way.
Trump's presidency has been far worse than the tragedy of 9/11. 200 thousand American lives lost equates to about 66 9/11s.
The most egregious part of It all, is that it was preventable, not just in hindsight, but in foresight as well.
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been lying to the American people from the very beginning, and with lethal consequences.
Trump’s lies and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history..
We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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CPAC is an annual pilgrimage for Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, mongerers of fear and hatred, xenophobes, wealthy welfare queens, tax cheats, hypocrites, fake Christians, fake patriots, and real traitors. It's truly a diabolical and unholy mix of deplorables. So much so, I'm sure that CPAC smells like sulfur and rotting flesh.
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Kushner has let it be known that based on his understanding of American history, the Republican party platform should be drastically reduced from 58 convoluted pages in 2016 to “a mission statement” that can fit on a wallet-sized card, along the lines of the platform of 1856."
Jared, who is the de facto campaign manager, and now a self-designated expert in American history, is attempting to echo the party’s first platform. It is an effort to smooth over Trump's offensive and lethal incompetence, and to justify it all by reference to the origins of the Republican party. Jarrd is abusing the past to distort the present.
If there is any resemblance of the Trump mutation of the Republican party to any actual party in the election of 1856 it is not to the Republicans. Nor is it to the Democrats. Rather, it is to the third party in that campaign, the American Party, also known as the Know Nothings, who also had a concise platform.
The original American Party sought to protect the purity of white native-born Protestants from the first great wave of immigration to the US, which consisted mostly of the Irish and Germans, and to stigmatize the Catholic religion.
"Americans must rule America,” its platform proclaimed. Only native-born citizens should be allowed to hold any public office, federal, state or municipal." The Know Nothings emerged from the breakup of the Whig party over the issue of the extension of slavery in the territories.
Abraham Lincoln, a lifelong Whig, forged the Illinois Repub party in 1856 out of a mixture of contending factions, including radical abolitionists, Whigs, dissident antislavery Democrats and liberal German immigrants. Lincoln despised Know Nothingism, which is identical to Trumpism today.
In 1855, Lincoln wrote that if the movement ever won power it would rewrite the Declaration of Independence: “When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
The 1856 Republican platform may provide another piece of symmetry to the modern day. Its longest plank listed the trampling of constitutional rights of the antislavery forces in the Kansas territory, including voter suppression, attacks on freedom of the press, instigation of violence, and violence by armed militias.
The Republicans promised to restore the rule of law after the election by bringing members of the current administration before the bar of justice for their crimes: “That all these things have been done with the knowledge, sanction, and procurement of the present National Administration; and that for this high crime against the Constitution, the Union, and humanity, we arraign that Administration, the President, his advisers, agents, supporters, apologists, and accessories, either before or after the fact, before the country and before the world; and that it is our fixed purpose to bring the actual perpetrators of these atrocious outrages and their accomplices to a sure and condign punishment thereafter.”
But the Republicans lost the election of 1856. There were no prosecutions. The early platform stood as a warning of greater danger to come. After Lincoln’s election in 1860, many of those identified in the first Republican platform as the enemies of democracy, presidential advisers among them, would not accept the result and helped precipitate the civil war.
If Trump loses the election of 2020, will “his advisers, agents, supporters, apologists, and accomplices, including, first and foremost, Kushner, Barr, Chad Wolf and others – accept the result and its consequences?
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Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality comes to us from North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the despotic little dictator that Trump admires so much, and who he proudly declared his love for.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right..
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life,” he added.
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Cheating and lying are his only tools for survival. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man..
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This goes much deeper than Trump's ego. According to Trump, every life lost will be worth it if he can win reelection. The thing we must all remember, is that Trump is a narcissist, and a sociopath.
A sociopathic narcissist like Trump is a person on a quest for power and control, who uses the love and admiration of others as a tool to dominate and manipulate, and who goes about all of this thinking that it is his right and that he is justified. There will be no guilt, no apologies, and no remorse coming from the narcissistic sociopath.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a sociopathic narcissist.
Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are 10 warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
• There are records, books, news articles, or broadcast reports that document the abuses of the group/leader.
• Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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From day one most Americans knew that Trump's presidency was going to be one of the worst in modern history, but I don't think any one ever imagined it would be an unmitigated catastrophe of this magnitude.
The crux of Trump's total and complete failure as a leader and president, is not so much that he refuses to do his job as president, Trump's problem is that he was never capable of doing his job to begin with. He is not equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. He was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failure on someone or something.
Trump's complete and utter failure as a president, and as a leader, was inevitable
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The feeble atrophied minds of Trump's cultists have been gaslit to oblivion by his lies. He told them that the coronavirus wasn't serious, and it would just disappear like magic, and they believed him.
America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 15k deaths.
Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world. I sh"t thee nay.
Trump: "The World Health Organization got it wrong. In many many ways they were wrong. They minimized the threat of the coronavirus very strongly...not good. I on the other hand, was tremendously strong in my warnings about the coronavirus.
I knew this was a pandemic from the very beginning, but no one believed me. No one even knew what a pandemic was until I used the word. Meanwhile, you had some people calling it a hoax. Some people even said it would just disappear like magic, and we should end social distancing by Easter. I think it was Obama who said that. Then we had some people comparing COVID-19 to the flu, which is like comparing apples to origins. The oranges of the coronavirus virus are totally different from the flu. Even I know that.
Now many people are saying that I was the first person to warn the world about the seriousness of the coronavirus. I correctly predicted everything that has happened so far. In many ways, I'm sort of like a modern day Nachodamus."
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In the video of a December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin's propaganda network RT at a Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who would later become Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's campaign when he was being paid $45,000 to speak at the gala.
"It is not coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin," said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Flynn's Moscow jaunt, like his oddly timed phone chats with the Russian ambassador, has been well reported. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 dinner, was attended by a healthy serving of ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs.
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin.
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats. Like Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
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There has been speculation as to how Rudy Giuliani “America’s Mayor,” the widely admired civic leader who presided over NYC during 9/11, could have been siphoned into Trump’s underworld. We can thank a compliant, sensationalist media apparatus that breathed life into Trump's phony self-made billionaire myth, just as we owe them for Rudy, who they cast as a post-9/11 American hero.
Overnight, the media turned Giuliani into a larger than life heroic figure. But the people that were most intimately familiar with the city’s pre-9/11 counter-terrorism preparations knew that it was Giuliani’s failures as Mayor which contributed directly to the horrific body count for the FDNY that day.
On Feb. 26, 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked with a 1,200-pound bomb concealed in a rental truck that exploded in the basement. The blast killed six, injured 1,000 people, and forced 50,000 to evacuate.
In a detailed after-action report published in 1994 by the FDNY, the inability of firefighters and their officers to communicate over their analog radios that day was flagged as a vital issue that needed to be addressed with urgency. In 2008 — when Giuliani was running for president — FDNY Lt. James Wood recounted his experiences during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in an informational video produced by the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF).
While the bombing had taken place during Mayor Dinkins tenure as Mayor, Giuliani was sworn in on Jan. 2 1994. As the IAFF recalls it, the critical report about the defective fire radios gathered dust for several years.
It took until March of 2001 for new digital radios to be deployed, but they were withdrawn weeks later after they were deemed responsible for a near life-ending miscue when a firefighter isolated in a basement fire in Queens radioed a “May Day” call for assistance that none of his co-workers heard over their radios. It was only picked up by another fire company miles away. The new radios were shelved, and the old dysfunctional analogs were put back in service.
The contract for the new radios was a no bid, non-competitive contract that was, as it turned out, just an extension of an existing contract with Motorola, which has a near-monopoly on emergency communications.
According to a report issued by the NYC Comptroller the next month, Giuliani had “willfully” violated “city contracting rules…. endangering firefighters in a reckless bid to buy a new type of hand-held radio that it later had to pull from service,” The Times reported that “the new digital radios were never properly tested before being distributed to firefighters.” As City Comptroller Alan Hevesi documented, “they were purchased through what he described as an improper process that did not allow competing companies to bid for the contract.” At the time, Michael Wolf, who represented Com-Net Ericsson, a Motorola competitor, told the Times he was stymied in his efforts to even get the city to consider his company’s products.
Just six months later, FDNY’s bravest faced the doomsday scenario as they sized up the rescue operation in the Twin Towers on 9/11 that would take so many of their lives. They were equipped with the same analog radios that had failed them so badly when the WTC was bombed back in 1993. As the IAFF video documents and as the 9/11 timeline confirms, at 9:32 am. on 9/11, an FDNY Chief ordered all members in the North Tower down to the lobby. Even though he repeated the order, not a single company responded.
At 9:59 the WTC South Tower collapsed; and at 10 am the order to abandon the North Tower was repeated. Inside the North Tower were 121 firefighters who never heard that order. They perished when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am.
“On 9/11 firefighters went into the North Tower and started ascending the tower, yet they were being called back and they kept going,” said Richard Salem, an attorney who has been representing several of the firefighters’ families who lost loved ones when the North Tower collapsed. “Not one other uniformed officer from any other department, who had functioning radios, perished in that tower other than the FDNY.”
Despicably, Giuliani tried to cover up his own malfeasance by telling the 9/11 Commission that the North Tower firefighters had ignored the radio orders because of “their willingness, the way I describe it to stand their ground.”
Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, who lost his son Jimmy in the North Tower, will tell this tragic story to anyone who will listen. He and other surviving family members shadowed Giuliani during the 2008 primary and carried on a media campaign that was picked up by outlets like the Guardian.
“These radios did not work in the WTC in 1993 and they did not work in 2001." Jim Riches stated. "We got the story out there but when the media christened him ‘America’s Mayor,’ it all went away.”
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Rand Paul isn't even qualified to speak to Dr. Fauci without permission. Especially when you realize that Rand Paul isn't even a real doctor himself.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done..
Now, who is this Randy Paul again?
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.
Lev Parnas" lawyer sent a letter to Moscow Mitch stating that he is ready to give testimony, as well as provide documents, that will prove that GOP Super PAC America One, Rudy, Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mulvaney, Bill Barr, Nunes, Pence, and Desperate Housewife of Capitol Hill 👉Lindsey Graham, were all part of Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine...
Is it any wonder why Republicans were so vehemently against introducing witnesses and evidence into the Senate trial. They were covering up their own crimes. But it will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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America makes up 4% of the world's population, but thanks to Trump and fox, America leads the world with 24% of coronavirus deaths worldwide. "It is what it is."
Trump sealed the fate of the country the moment he said the virus was a hoax. From that moment forward, the catastrophic failed response to the coronavirus was set in stone. It should go without saying, that it is impossible to effectively deal with any problem, whenever you refuse to acknowledge that the problem even exists.
Now Trump wants America to reelect him as a reward for the more than170K American lives lost due to his indifference and criminal negligence. He also wants the American people to reward him for lining his pockets with millions in taxpayer dollars while he's been in office. He actually wants you to reward him, and even praise him, for his craven and abominable behavior.
Mary Trump:
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred Trump could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes.
"His monster had been set free."
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," Mary Trump writes in her new book.
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Trump admitted to being a Russian asset as he stood next to Putin in Helsinki, and Putin confirmed it when he was asked by a reporter if Russia helped in getting Trump elected.
June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime adviser and partner in crime was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The verdict makes Stone only the latest among a growing list of people once in Trump's inner circle of goons who have been convicted on federal charges. Here is a list of others in Trump’s inner swamp circle convicted of federal crimes.
Michael Cohen
Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Cohen pleaded guilty to bank fraud, tax fraud, and campaign violations involving hush-money payouts (for Trump) to two women – the adult film star Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison.
Paul Manafort
The lobbyist who worked as Trump’s campaign chairman was convicted in August 2018 of bank fraud, tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. The next month, Manafort admitted to conspiracy, such as money laundering and unregistered lobbying, as well as a second conspiracy count involving witness tampering. Manafort, who will spend about seven and a half years in prison for the federal cases, also faces state criminal charges in NY for fraud and conspiracy.
While working as Trump's campaign chairman, Manafort shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies, according to special counsel Mueller.
Michael Flynn
Trump’s former national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over his communication with Russia amid the presidential transition in 2016. Flynn lied about his contact with Russia’s ambassador, such as urging Russia not to react to sanctions placed by Barack Obama.
Rick Gates
Manafort’s business partner pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiring to defraud the US and lying to the FBI. He also admitted to helping Manafort manipulate financial documents, conceal foreign income, cheat tax authorities and mislead banks for credit. Gates, who was also a Trump campaign official, cut a deal with Mueller – serving as a star witness against Manafort and Stone.
George Papadopoulos
In 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the schedules of meetings with purported Russian intermediaries. Papadopoulos in March 2016 met with a Maltese professor in London, who claimed that the Russians had incriminating information on Trump’s then rival, Clinton – “thousands of emails”. Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison.
Alex van der Zwaan
A Dutch lawyer who worked with Manafort, Van der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Gates and a person potentially linked to Russian intelligence. Van der Zwaan worked on a Manafort-commissioned report to defend ex-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych from international scrutiny. He was incarcerated for 12 days.
Richard Pinedo
The online fraudster pleaded guilty after it was revealed that his business setting up US bank accounts, and then illegally peddling them over the internet, had enabled a Russian operation that utilized social media to meddle with the election. His cooperation enabled Mueller’s pursuit of Russian troll farms.
Konstantin Kilimnik
The Russian political operative and Manafort associate is charged with obstructing justice. He was swept up in Manafort’s plan to leverage his relationship with Trump to settle multimillion-dollar debts to an oligarch. Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the 2016 election. In the Mueller report, Kilimnik is described as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU” by Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign.
Sam Patten
Lobbyist Patten had ties to Kilimnik. He admitted to diverting $50,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch to Trump’s presidential inauguration committee. He pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller.
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Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union's Air Defense Forces, and his job was to monitor his country's satellite system, which was looking for any possible nuclear weapons launches by the United States.
He was on the overnight shift in the early morning hours of Sept. 26, 1983, when the computers sounded an alarm, indicating that the U.S. had launched five nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Petrov was in charge of a Soviet nuclear early warning center. Rather than retaliate, and instead of following orders, Stanislav followed his gut feeling and went against protocol, convincing the Soviet military that it was a false alarm. And it turned out to be exactly that, a false alarm. His decision saved the world from a potential devastating nuclear holocaust.
Arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis recalled Petrov's actions in an interview on NPR:
"Petrov just had this feeling in his gut that it wasn't right. It was five missiles. It didn't seem like enough. So even though by all of the protocols he had been trained to follow, he should absolutely have reported that up the chain of command and, you know, we should be talking about the great nuclear war of 1983 if any of us survived."
After several nervous minutes, Petrov didn't send the computer warning to his superiors. He checked to see if there had been a computer malfunction.
He had guessed correctly.
"Twenty-three minutes later I realized that nothing had happened," he said in 2013. "If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief."
Petrov received an official reprimand for breaking protocol and making mistakes in his logbook on Sept. 26, 1983.
He received a number of international awards during the final years of his life. In 2015, a docudrama about him featuring Kevin Costner was called "The Man Who Saved The World."
But he never considered himself a hero.
"That was my job," he said. "But they were lucky it was me on shift that night."
America and the rest of the world are lucky we had Gen. Mark Milley as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after Trump lost the election.
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How is it that every country was infected with the same coronavirus, but America had the worst national response to the outbreak, with more deaths and infection cases than any country in the world?
Perhaps If Trump had not been so incompetent and derelict in his duties as president, we would be in a better position to reopen the country and end social distancing sooner. If only he had read the multiple national security briefings that warned of the potential threat of a pandemic, many Americans would still be alive today. If only Trump had been a leader, and not a fraud, and a decent human being, instead of a failed human being, the country wouldn't have the highest number of infections, and the highest number lives lost, than any other country in the world.
And the Trump followers who protested in Michigan are truly the dregs of humanity. Do they think that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 30 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders, who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should consider growing the fk up.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
Vote 💙 all the the through way through. 🇺🇸
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On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit. Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the US. A major Brexit supporter, Steve Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign captured the interest of investigators in the UK and the US.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances. In Britain, revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’s annual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange a lunch for the UKIP leaders with the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize..
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Soooo....Trump said he fired Flynn for what again???
One of the key questions that congressional investigators have for Kushner is why he ignored the intelligence community’s warnings about Russia. “Once it became public that they were interfering in our election, which was in June, why did you continue to have contacts with them?”
In fact, Kushner never raised Russia’s meddling during his two post-election meetings with Russians, according to his own accounts. Kislyak contacted Kushner on November 16th, and they met on December 1st. Once again, the Russians seemed to have a level of access to the Trump campaign that other countries, including Western allies, could only dream of. In his testimony, Kushner confirmed that at this meeting, which took place in Trump Tower, he and Kislyak and Michael Flynn, the incoming national-security adviser, who also attended, discussed using communications equipment at the Russian Embassy.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very same people who were warning him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity, like his idol Pooopin.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of the mess that I've caused. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president and a real leader. They're acting as if I actually care. But that's not who I am. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who ignored all the signs of my sociopathy. Blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They were both fully aware of exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. Now Lindsey is practically my golf caddie. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man, grifter and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Almost every president has occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly, until now. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 25,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully execute the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama..
Trump has done considerable damage to America's democratic institutions, and brought the nation to the brink of civil catastrophe, and the Republican Party has protected him the entire way. Trump has left America grievously wounded, and now he's asking for another chance to finish her off..
No one should ever get a second chance to destroy our Constitution, and our 244 year old democratic republic..
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine.
Trump has never solved a problem in his life. Trump IS the problem. He has always been an agent of chaos and destruction.
In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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Unfortunately, some of us have already forgotten. They're the ones today who are hoping for a dictator to lead America.
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the U.S Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words—"We the People"—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers wisely separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments. Since 1789 the Constitution has evolved through amendments to meet the changing needs of a nation now profoundly different from the 18th-century world in which its creators lived.
More than two centuries after its ratification, the U.S. Constitution remains a vital and living document, strengthened by amendments, serving as both guide and protector of U.S. citizens and their elected officials. It has survived civil war, economic depressions, assassinations, and even terrorist attacks, to remain a source of wisdom and inspiration.
The creation of the U.S. Constitution depended upon the knowledge, experience, and dedication of its framers, just as its endurance depends upon the knowledge and experience of each succeeding generation of Americans. For this reason, it is important for us to learn and understand the governing principles of our nation, set forth in the Constitution.
Our Constitution vs Project 2025. Pick a side. 🇺🇸
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Trump: "With some people, no matter what you do, it's never enough. Take ventilators for example. Now some people think they need to breathe, when in reality, they don't really need to breathe at all. Breathing is a hoax."
Trump is simply a terrible human being, and an even worse president and leader. He should be sealed in a glass case that reads, BREAK ONLY IF YOU WANT TO: destroy a business, destroy your country, file for bankruptcy, launder Russian money, start a fake charity foundation, betray your country, exacerbate a national health emergency, or obliterate the pronunciation of a word.
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Trump is now bragging about the ratings of his daily live news conferences on the coronavirus, and suggested that the large viewer numbers — rather than the multiple lies he has told during them — are fueling discussions in the media about ending the practice of broadcasting them live and unfiltered.
Trump: “Because the ratings of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the NYT, the Lamestream Media is going crazy" Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. Apparently this is all a game to him.
What Trump's utterly oblivious, self-absorbed, Ineffectual pompous a$$ doesn't realize is that the American people aren't tuning in because of him, we are tuning in because we want to keep up-to-date on the coronavirus and the US’s policies on it. The American people are watching the press briefings to hear from the coronavirus task force, which includes top public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and others on the task force.
Trump has made dozens of false claims during the briefings, which have directly led to the loss of lives, including overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, to falsely saying that anyone who wants to be tested for coronavirus infections can be, to claiming that the coronavirus will magically disappear, to claiming that there are no shortages of coronavirus tests, to claiming that America has tested more people than any country in the world, to claiming that the coronavirus was no different than the flu.
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It's becoming abundantly clear, that Trump and republicans are now owned by Russians. They receive their funding for Russians, and then they receive their marching orders from Russians. That's how it works whenever you've been fully bought, and fully compromised.
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy, received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, even though they have attended events at his properties, and they have posed in multiple photos with Trump.
Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot disclose to the government.
Lev Parnas paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy. Along with their work with Rudy, Parnas and Fruman are accused of meeting at Trump’s Washington hotel to discuss a Ukraine gas deal linked to Yovanovitch’s removal.
Parnas was throwing Russian money at Republicans like beads at Mardi Gras to any republican that was willing to expose themselves to him.
In October, Repub. McCarthy said he plans to donate the $111,000 that was given to the House Republicans' main fundraising committee by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas.
A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman..
Prosecutors say that they “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
In 2018, Parnas and Fruman donated directly to Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions. Fruman also gave to SC. GOP Rep. Joe Wilson and to a joint fundraising committee tied to Florida Gov. Rick Scott in his successful bid for Senate. Both Sessions and Wilson have acknowledged meeting with both men.
Fruman and Parnas also gave to other joint fundraising committees, which drew more GOP lawmakers. FEC records show that 22 other Republicans who were lawmakers at the time received contributions from Fruman, who misspelled his last name as “Furman” in filings in “a further effort to hide the source of the funds and to evade federal reporting requirements,” according to the indictment.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests
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Trump and the Republican party have become an imminent threat to our Constitution, and to our democratic republic. It will up to the American people to save our country in 2020. Vote 💙
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.”
― Tiffany Madison
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Federal authorities are investigating whether Deutsche Bank failed to properly comply with anti-money-laundering regulations, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The report said federal prosecutors from multiple jurisdictions and the FBI are probing how Deutsche Bank dealt with internal suspicious-activity reports flagging possible money laundering, including transactions linked to the White House senior adviser Jared Kushner.
Last month, a whistleblower named Tammy McFadden who worked in the bank's anti-money-laundering division told The Times that she flagged a series of suspicious money transfers between Kushner Companies and Russians at the height of the 2016 US presidential election.
When McFadden discovered the transfers from Kushner Companies to the Russians, she concluded they should be reported to the US government.
Usually, a report like McFadden's would be reviewed by a team of anti-money-laundering experts who work separately from the private-banking division, McFadden and two other former Deutsche Bank managers told The Times.
But in this case, McFadden and her lawyer said the report went to managers in New York who were part of the private-banking division. They decided McFadden's concerns were unfounded and decided not to submit the report to the Treasury Department's financial-crimes unit.
The Times also reported that other former members of Deutsche Bank's anti-money-laundering division had prepared separate suspicious-activity reports in 2017 concerning transactions between the bank and Donald Trump's former charity that were not sent to the Treasury.
Trump's charity was shut down last year after the New York attorney general's office found it essentially functioned as a "slush fund" for the Trump crime family.
In April, the Trump crime family's trust, and the Trump Criminal Organization, sued Deutsche Bank and Capital One Bank to block a subpoena from the House Financial Services Committee, saying the subpoenas "have no legitimate or lawful purpose" and were issued to "harass" Trump and "rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his criminal businesses, and the private information of the President and his crime family."
A federal judge did not grant the Trump crime family's request to block the subpoena, a decision the Trump family trust, and Trump Criminal Organization are now appealing.
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In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.”
The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement.
Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
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Today Trump openly admitted that he wants to dominate over the American people. This is the dictator that most of us knew was waiting to show itself since the day Trump was sworn in.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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Lets face it, when Trump has to choose between America and Russia, America doesn't stand a chance. His track record has proven that he will choose Russia everytime.
So Putin invades the sovereign country of Ukraine, engages in nerve agent attacks in England, shoots down a commercial airliner over Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers, including 80 children, he interferes in our presidential elections, and now we've learned that he has placed a bounty on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. And after all of that, Trump wants to reward Putin's tyrannical behavior by lifting sanctions on Russia, and bringing it back into the G-7.
Let that marinate in your mind for a moment. Take your time....
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Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives.
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are 10 warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
• There are records, books, news articles, or broadcast reports that document the abuses of the group/leader.
• Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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Trump, 23 FEBRUARY 2016:
" I'd like to punch him in the face." Trump said this in front of a crowd of his cultists, after a protester was removed from one of his rallies.
Trump, 22 NOVEMBER 2015:
" Maybe he should have been roughed up." Trump said this on Fox & friends, in reference Mercutio Southall Jr. who was ejected from a Trump rally the day earlier. The video footage showed Trump supporters jostling, kicking, and punching Southall. It even prompted the Fox & Friends hosts to question the violence from Trump's cultists.
Trump, MARCH 2016:
" Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said " You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
Trump, FEBRUARY 2016:
" Knock the krap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees." Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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In the newly released audio, Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry is critical about Donald, saying she did his homework for him and that he is, among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His gawd@mned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s*t. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump wants to go to Kenosha for the same reason he marched through Lafayette Square, and used brute force against peaceful protesting American citizens and journalists. He wants to cause chaos and mayhem. He wants to create an obscene and grotesque spectacle. This is who he is.
Trump is naturally attracted to evil, and evil is naturally attracted to him. Trump and evil are drawn to each other like moths to a flame.
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Here are some examples of Trump's so called conservative Christian "values."
Trump’s history of creepy comments about the looks of his daughter Ivanka are well known. But his younger daughter, Tiffany, has largely stayed out of the spotlight—much like her father’s equally creepy comments about her anatomy..
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
Nixon was all but certain to be removed from office for far less than what Trump has done. So was Nixon's impeachment a coup as well?
Earlier on Capitol Hill, McCarthy said that Trump's impeachment was the weakest and thinnest impeachment in the history of America. Well that is just patently absurd. The weakest and thinnest impeachment in the history of America was when republicans impeached a sitting President for lying about a bj. If lying about a bj was the worst thing a president ever did, America would have no problems at all.
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it...
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power.. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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The GOP will never recover from Trump . it's pretty much a wrap, just like Trump University and his fake charity foundation. Because when moral courage, and intestinal fortitude really mattered, the GOP failed. Today's republican party has been weighed, and measured, and was found wanting. And republicans in Congress will not be able to blame Trump. He's simply doing what he's done his entire depraved life. The GOP will have no one but themselves to blame. It's very similar to the fable of "The Scorpion and the Frog." Republicans knew all along exactly who and what Trump was.
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a river. It's too treacherous to cross, so the scorpion nicely asks the frog to carry him across on its back. This makes the frog a little suspicious. It asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.” That sound reasoning relaxes the frog's nerves. So he allows the scorpion to climb aboard and they shove off across the flowing water.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little dance on the drowning frog's back.
"I could not help myself, said the scorpion, It is my nature."
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.
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Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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Remarks in the Capitol Rotunda at the Signing of the Voting Rights Act.
August 06, 1965
"This act flows from a clear and simple wrong. Its only purpose is to right that wrong. Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American, in his heart, can justify. The right is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny."
"In 1957, as the leader of the majority in the United States Senate, speaking in support of legislation to guarantee the right of all men to vote, I said, "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."
"If you do this, then you will find, as others have found before you, that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men."
-- President Lyndon B. Johnson
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Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Donald "I believe in magic not science" Trump, will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 14 thousand American lives.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
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The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Last week we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said.
The official said two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
Naturally Traitor Trump will accuse our troops of refusing to yield to his Russian comrades.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
Trump and his supporters believe in law and order, right up until the moment when law and order comes for them.
In other words, it's law and order for YOU, but not for THEM. Their actions on January 6 proves this.
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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"It is fear that makes people so willing to follow brash, strong-looking demagogues . . . capable of cleansing the world of the vague, the weak, the uncertain, the evil. Ah, to give oneself over to their direction—what calm, what relief."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mus solini to the Present
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
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With each passing day, and with each passing tyrannical tirade, Trump behaves more and more like the despotic dictator that he so longs to be.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift fromCommunism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia..
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes.
When it comes to Trump, I'll take the word of Trump's own sister, who has known him his entire life? She knows him better, and longer than anyone alive today. And if she wouldn't support him as president, why on earth should anyone else?
In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None."
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The Russian who created Putin's troll farm, and has boasted online that he helped get Trump elected, is named Konstantin Rykov. His claims of involvement with the Trump team can't be dismissed for 2 reasons: first, he is very close to Putin, and had a long history of involvement with top levels of the Russian government; and, second, his description of how Trump’s campaign put together an effective internet strategy for information warfare is very close to the evidence revealed in the Mueller Report.
Rewind back to November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election. At 11:29pm, Trump sent out the following defiant tweet: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.
Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Rykov explained what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:.
Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him (Trump) a reply, “I’m ready. What should I do?”
Trump replied with a picture. In the picture, Trump was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully giving the thumbs-up sign. Rykov would later explained how things went from there.
Konstantin Rykov is the founder of a number of lurid websites where he made a fortune posting pictures of scantily-clad women, telling dirty jokes and posting clickbait stories designed to titillate easily impressionable readers. In other words, a trashy online tabloid. Rykov is also a member of United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party, a former member of the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and a close confidante of Putin.
Here’s how Rykov described his involvement in a Facebook post he made on November 12, 2016, just after the election:
"For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the United States, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order.Our idea was insane, but realizable. In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man.Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.” British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others. At the very beginning of the brave and romantic [story] was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it."
Rykov’s comments were made only four days after the election, months before anyone was talking about Russian collusion in the 2016 election, months before the world knew about the company Cambridge Analytica, and months before Rykov would have known it wasn’t wise to discuss his alleged involvement in the campaign. his comments were also made well before details of Russian meddling in the presidential election were reported in the mainstream media. If Rykov wasn’t involved, how would he know as much as he confessed???
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The notion that Trump was actually concerned about corruption in Ukraine, or corruption in general, is laughable.
Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now. 😔
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing.
The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
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So even though America is still struggling with a global pandemic, that's taken the lives of 175k Americans, and wrecked the economy, Trump believes that he and the federal government have bigger problems today. They’ve got to save the world from mean tweets directed at the full grown baby hiding out in his bunker. That's right, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to give him the right to block his critics from seeing or interacting with his Tweets. That's what's on his mind right now, as thousands of Americans are dying every week, because of his TREMENDOUS incompetence and criminal negligence.
Back in July of 2017, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia sued on behalf of seven twitter users who’d been blocked by Trump. The SDNY said he couldn’t do that. The Second Circuit Court agreed. The court determined that when the President creates such a public forum, he violates the First Amendment when he excludes persons from the dialogue because they express views with which he disagrees.
So now, just this week, Trump has sent the DOJ groveling to Chief Justice Roberts with a 187-page cert petition, begging and pleading with him to preserve Trump’s god given right to rage tweet at the world, and everyone in it, without fear of having his legendary fragile ego bruised whenever people reply to his preposterous tweets.
You can't make this stuff up. I dare you to even try.
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"The scale of Trump’s delusion is quite startling. This is not merely an eccentric interpretation of the facts or an interesting foible, nor is it an irrelevant example of anguished post-presidency chatter. It is a rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government. There is no Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. He//, there is nothing even approximating a Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. The election has been certified, Joe Biden is the president, and, until 2024, that is all there is to it. It does not matter what one’s view of Trump is. It does not matter whether one voted for or against Trump. It does not matter whether one views Trump’s role within the Republican Party favorably or unfavorably. We are talking here about cold, hard, neutral facts that obtain irrespective of one’s preferences; it is not too much to ask that the former head of the executive branch should understand them."
-- Charles Cooke, National Review
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
Mary Trump, a 55-year-old psychologist, blames Trump's father for giving Donald his bad habits. Fred Trump Sr was a cold and forbidding patriarch who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps – demanding Trump to follow less-than-scrupulous real estate practices and eventually propping him up if his own initiatives failed.
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes. "His monster had been set free."
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mitch McConnell, "all whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred," recognized after the election that Donald Trump's personal history and personality flaws made him vulnerable to manipulation, Mary Trump writes.
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
"Fear – the equivalent of weakness in our family – is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old," she said.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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# 1 tip for staying safe during the coronavirus, is to NEVER watch or listen to fox or Trump.
This is a perfect example of why fox is the definition of fake news, and why it constitutes a national security threat to the country.
"I'm right on this, the coronavirus is the common cold folks. The hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the Andromeda strain, as OMG if you get it you're dead."
-- Rush Limbaugh, February 24
"The more I learn about coronavirus, the less concerned I am."
-- Pete Hegseth, Fox News, March 8
"The national left wing media, playing up fears of the coronavirus."
-- Lou Dobbs, Fox News, March 9
"The sky is falling because we have a few dozen cases of coronavirus on a cruise ship. I am far more concerned with stepping on a used heroin needle than I am of getting the coronavirus, but maybe that's just me."
-- Tomi Lahren, Fox News, March 10
"It's a virus, like the flu. All the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly, doesn’t reflect reality."
-- Jeanine Pirro, Fox News, March 7
"This virus should be compared to the flu, because at worst, at WORST, worst case scenario, it could be the flu."
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News, March 6
" You wanna know how I really feel about the coronavirus? If I get it, I'll beat it. I'm not afraid of the coronavirus!!! And no one else should be that afraid either."
-- Jesse Watters, Fox News, March 3
"It's milder than we thought, and the fatality rate is going to drop."
-- Dr. Drew Pinsky, Fox News, March 2
"It very very difficult to contract this virus."
-- Matt Schlapp, Fox News, March 11
"One of things that you can do is if you're healthy, you and your family, it's a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easily."
-- Devin Nunes, Fox News, March 15
"I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. I took it very seriously."
-- Trump, March 17
"By the way, this program has always taken the coronavirus seriously."
-- Hannity, Fox News, March 18
The American people should file a class action lawsuit against fox and Trump, for intentionally and deliberately misleading the public on the life threatening seriousness of the coronavirus during a national health crisis, that has now cost the lives of more than 6 thousand Americans.
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
Mary Trump, a 55-year-old psychologist, blames Trump's father for giving Donald his bad habits. Fred Trump Sr was a cold and forbidding patriarch who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps – demanding Trump to follow less-than-scrupulous real estate practices and eventually propping him up if his own initiatives failed.
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes. "His monster had been set free."
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mitch McConnell, "all whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred," recognized after the election that Donald Trump's personal history and personality flaws made him vulnerable to manipulation, Mary Trump writes.
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
"Fear – the equivalent of weakness in our family – is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old," she said.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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@Toekneepowers
Deflecting or changing the subject is called "what-aboutism" — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. It's an attractive tactic for Putin, Trump, and Russian trolls. Whataboutism allows them to be vague, but appear straight-talking at the same time. What-aboutism is essentially a schoolyard taunt, brought to a national and global level.
The idea behind what-aboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A's faults — "Yeah? Well WHAT ABOUT that bad thing you did?"
It's not a complicated tactic — any grade-schooler can master it. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia.
One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it's a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings..
Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a black-and-white worldview. But in this worldview, it's very difficult to be the good guy; idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be "unmasked" as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency. If nobody is perfect, then it means that Trump and Putin should get a pass for any wrongdoings.
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On Fox, Rudy said he's not worried about Trump throwing him under the bus, because he has "insurance." Well clearly that can only mean one thing, Rudy is admitting to having evidence of Trump's criminality.😂
And make no mistake, Trump's other longtime partner in crime, Roger Stone, will definitely try to cut a deal. Because there is absolutely no way a coward like him is going to go to prison if he can help it. His only chance of preventing that from happening is giving up Trump.
This is usually what happens with any criminal organization when the feds are closing in on them. Trump's den of thieves has quickly turned into Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. We are witnessing the treacherous behavior of criminals when they start hedging their bets. Nonstop chaos, upheaval, back-stabbing, unbridled buffoonery, cowardice, and betrayal is about to ensue. Welcome to Barter Town.😄
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Cautionary lessons from the past. The threat that Trump poses to our democracy is real and imminent..
“The German and Russian state apparatuses grew out of despotism. For this reason the subservient nature of the human character of masses of people in Germany and in Russia was exceptionally pronounced. Thus, in both cases, the revolution led to a new despotism with the certainty of irrational logic..
In contrast to the German and Russia state apparatuses, the American state apparatus was formed by groups of people who had evaded European and Asian despotism by fleeing to a virgin territory free of immediate and effective traditions. Only in this way can it be understood that, until the time of this writing, a totalitarian state apparatus was not able to develop in America, whereas in Europe every overthrow of the government carried out under the slogan of freedom inevitably led to despotism..
This holds true for Robespierre, as well as for Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. If we want to appraise the facts impartially, then we have to point out, whether we want to or not, and whether we like it or not, that Europe's dictators, who based their power on vast millions of people, always stemmed from the suppressed classes. I do not hesitate to assert that this fact, as tragic as it is, harbors more material for social research than the facts related to the despotism of a czar or of a Kaiser Wilhelm.
By comparison, the latter facts are easily understood. The founders of the American Revolution had to build their democracy from scratch on foreign soil. The men who accomplished this task had all been rebels against English despotism. The Russian Revolutionaries, on the other had, were forced to take over an already existing and very rigid government apparatus. Whereas the Americans were able to start from scratch, the Russians, as much as they fought against it, had to drag along the old...
This may also account for the fact that the Americans, the memory of their own flight from despotism still fresh in their minds, assumed an entirely different—more open and more accessible—attitude toward the new refugees of 1940, than Soviet Russia, which closed its doors to them. This may explain why the attempt to preserve the old democratic ideal and the effort to develop genuine self-administration was much more forceful in the United States than anywhere else.
We do not overlook the many failures and retardations caused by tradition, but in any event a revival of genuine democratic efforts took place in America and not in Russia. It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves. Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism.
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Michael Flynn has been widely condemned after calling for the establishment of “one religion” in the US.
Religious freedom is enshrined in the first amendment to the US constitution, which says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.
At a rally in San Antonio on Saturday by the Christian “nonprofit news media network” American Faith, Flynn said: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God and one religion under God.” YIKES!!
Mark Hertling, a retired general and media commentator, called Flynn “an embarrassment to the US army”.
“His words are disgusting,” Hertling said.
On Sunday, the veteran reporter Carl Bernstein told CNN that Flynn, as one of the “knaves and fools and dangerous authoritarian figures” with whom Trump surrounded himself in and out of office, was “saying out loud things that have never been said by an aide or close associates to the president of the United States”.
Sounds like Flynn ripped a page straight from the Taliban playbook.
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I would definitely call 170k American lives lost in 5 months a season of darkness.
Since Trump refuses to take responsibility, the American people will replace him with someone that will.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview..
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully.
—Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases, 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” —Trump at the White House.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting..
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine.
Trump has never solved a problem in his life. Trump IS the problem. He has always been an agent of chaos and destruction.
In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Gary Cohn's email describes what it was like to work in Trump's dumpster fire of a white house before he finally had enough, and resigned as Trump's chief economic advisor in 2018.
"It’s worse than you can imagine.
An idi0t surrounded by clowns.
Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing.
He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.
And his staff is no better.
Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing.
Bannon is an arrogant pr'ck who thinks he’s smarter than he is.
Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits.
No one will survive the first year but his family.
I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I’m the only person there with a clue what he’s doing.
The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day.
I am in a constant state of shock and horror."
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MAGA: "One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with the one and only true WhiteLord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, One belonging to me, and another belonging to the one and only true WhiteLord, Trump.
After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints.
This really troubled me, so I asked the one and only true WhiteLord about it.
"WhiteLord, you said once I decided to follow you, You'd walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints. You also said that you would walk with me to the Capitol on January 6th, but you were nowhere to be found that day. I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me.
Trump whispered, "My precious uneducated child, I love you and will never leave you during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you, while wearing my never surrender gold sneakers." 🤣
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The unchecked greed, grift, lawlessness, and nepotism of the Trump "Borgia" crime family has been on full display since day one of his presidency.
“Nepotism is the lowest and least imaginative form of corruption."
― Daniel Alarcón
"It was clear to me that the White House's solemn atmosphere would not civilize Trump. But the merciless nepotism with which he conducts politics, in which he places himself and his family above the law, I wouldn't have considered that possible. And on top of that there is this reduction of complex political decisions to 140 characters. When it comes to a U.S. president, I consider the reduction of politics to a tweet to be truly dangerous. Trump is a risk to his country and the entire world."
--Martin Schulz
“At the root of every form of ungodliness, injustice, nepotism, selfishness, every rivalry and competitive jealousy, is the monster called greed.”
― Sunday Adelaja, The Mountain of Ignorance
“Despotism favors the despot, nepotism favors the despot's genes.”
― Danielle Tremblay
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Trump doesn't even understand the concept of "fair and honest."
In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
Trump's sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life."
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has no other choice but to lie, cheat, and steal in order to achieve anything.
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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Trump will be remembered as the greatest most "tremendous" American traitor that ever lived. Move over Benedict Arnold.
Lets face it, when Trump has to choose between America and Russia, America doesn't stand a chance. His track record has proven that he will choose Russia everytime. Trump proved this to be true in Helsinki.
So Putin invades the sovereign country of Ukraine, engages in nerve agent attacks against our ally in England, shoots down a commercial airliner over Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers, including 80 children, he interferes in our presidential elections, and now we've learned that he has placed a bounty on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. In 2019, John Bolton told colleagues that he briefed Trump on the matter in March 2019.
Trump had access to the information earlier, in February. It appeared in the president’s daily brief on Feb. 27. The investigation has homed in on a car bombing in April 2019 that k!lled three Marines. That attack occurred the month after Bolton reportedly briefed Trump about the bounties..
Felicia Arculeo, whose son Cpl. Robert Hendriks, 25, died in the attack, told CNBC that she wanted an investigation into the claims that the victims were targeted by Taliban fighters who were offered bounties by Russian military intelligence agents. Sgt. Benjamin Hines, 31, and Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, were the other Marines k!lled in the attack, which came days before they were due to return home from Afghanistan.
And now after all of that, Trump wants to reward Putin's tyrannical and hostile behavior, by lifting sanctions on Russia, and bringing it back into the G-7. And since Trump received the first briefing about the Russain bounties in Feb, he has been laughing it up with Putin in multiple phone calls on Mar 30, April 9, 10, 12, 25, May 7, and June 1. And even NOW, Trump has never uttered one word of condemnation towards Putin. Not......one.
Let all of that sink in for a minute. Take your time.
Semper Fi...
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The seeds for corruption, incompetence, and the failure of Trump's presidency were planted before Trump was even sworn in, and he planted them himself. With his own hands, Trump sowed the seeds of ineptitude, indifference, and criminal incompetence, that have now defined his presidency...
From The Guardian:
Chris Christie volunteered himself for the job of running Trump's presidential transition team. But when he went to see Trump about it, Trump said he didn’t want a presidential transition team. Why did anyone need to plan anything before he actually became president? It’s legally required, said Christie. Trump asked where the money was going to come from to pay for the transition team. Christie explained that Trump could either pay for it himself or take it out of campaign funds. Trump didn’t want to pay for it himself. He didn’t want to take it out of campaign funds, either, but he agreed, grudgingly, that Christie should go ahead and raise a separate fund to pay for his transition team. “But not too much!” he said.
The transition team now moved into an office in downtown Washington DC, and went looking for people to occupy the top 500 jobs in the federal government. They needed to fill all the cabinet positions, of course, but also a whole bunch of others that no one in the Trump campaign even knew existed.
The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trump’s very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence, many floors above. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my phucking money! What the phuck is this?
Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my phucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain federal law to man-baby. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump, the now "law & order president " replied: "phuck the law. I don’t give a phuck about the law. I want my phucking money!!" Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn’t have both his money and a transition.
Shut it down, said Trump. Shut down the transition. Bannon was finally able to convince man-baby why he needed a transition team. So Christie went back to preparing for a Trump administration. He tried to stay out of the news, but that proved difficult. From time to time, Trump would see something in the paper about Christie’s fundraising and become upset all over again. The money that people donated to his campaign Trump considered, effectively, his own money.
Christie would eventually be fired by Jared Kushner. Kushner’s role in his sacking was confirmed to him by Steve Bannon. But it wasn’t just Christie who would be fired. It was the entire transition team – although no one ever told them so directly. As Nancy Cook reported in Politico, Bannon visited the transition headquarters a few days after he had given Christie the news, and made a show of tossing the work the people there had done for Trump into the bin. Trump was going to handle the transition more or less by himself. Not even Bannon thought this was a good idea. “I was phucking nervous as sh*t,” Bannon later told friends. “I go, ‘Holy phuck, this guy Trump doesn’t know anything. And he doesn’t give a sh*t.’”
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Trump's plan to deal with the coronavirus was simple.
First, pretend that the virus doesn't exist, and call the whole thing a hoax. And if that doesn't work, use magic to make the virus disappear. And if that doesn't work, try to trick the American people into injecting Lysol into their bodies. And if that doesn't work, tell your people to slow the testing down. And if that doesn't work, simply give up, and go back to playing golf and pretending that the virus doesn't exist. And when that fails to work again, just blame Dr. Fauci for your criminal negligence, abject failures, and your dereliction of duties.
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Mary Trump said that Trump’s post-election behavior “makes perfect sense,” given his personality, psychology, and lifelong disdain for losers.
“This is somebody who’s never won legitimately in his life,” she said. “But he’s never lost either. Because in his view, winning is so important and he always deserves to win that it’s OK to lie, cheat and steal.”
Mary Trump said that Trump’s inherited his acerbic behavior from his father, Fred Trump. She called her grandfather “a horrible human being who just reveled in other people's humiliation."
“It’s not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel, it’s that he’s been allowed to be,” she said. “Every transgression that’s gone on unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further. That’s partially why we’re going to see him smashing as much stuff on his way out the door as he can.”
Trump’s niece says her uncle is “criminal, cruel and traitorous” and belongs in prison after he leaves the White House.
Mary Trump, a psychologist, rejects the notion that putting a former president on trial would deepen the nation’s political divisions.
“It’s quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can handle it and that we just need to move on,” Mary Trump told The Associated Press in an interview.
“If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald," she added. "(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is.”
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The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.
Economic inequality, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, is best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them...
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
But isn't conservatism about freedom? Of course everyone wants freedom, and so conservatism has no choice but to promise freedom to its subjects. In reality conservatism has meant complicated things by "freedom", and the reality of conservatism in practice, has scarcely corresponded even to the contorted definitions in conservative texts.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of state terror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
For thousands of years, conservatism was universally understood as being in opposition to democracy. Having lost much of its ability to attack democracy openly, conservatism has tried in recent years to redefine the word "democracy" while engaging in deception to make the substance of democracy unthinkable.
Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.
Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.
Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.
The main idea of public relations is the distinction between "messages" and "facts". Messages are the things you want people to believe. A message should be vague enough that it is difficult to refute by rational means.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact trying to take it from you. January 6 ring a bell? Trump tried to steal an election, by falsely claiming it was being stolen from him.
Conservatism is almost gone. People no longer worship the pharaohs. To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general.
B: It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress is rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for American companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
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It's crucial that every American is fully aware of the type of pathological liar and narcissistic sociopath we're dealing with when it comes to Trump..
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal"
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
It's time that anyone who's still on the fence, finally accept the fact that Trump is simply a moral abomination, and a failed human being, who possesses every human flaw known to mankind. He is irredeemable and unsalvageable.
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In the late 80s and early 90s as a District Attorney in Cali, Adam Schiff successfully prosecuted the case of a Russian spy named Svetlana Ogorodonikov, and an FBI agent named Richard W. Miller, who was seduced by Svetlana Ogorodnikov, and agreed to sell classified information to the Soviet government. Eventually, this man—Richard W. Miller, a 47-year-old Los Angeles-based counterintelligence agent on the Bureau’s Soviet squad—would become the first FBI agent ever convicted of espionage.
and eventually agreed turnover highly classified information for larges sums of money. It took Schiff 3 trails, and 6 years, but he eventually won the conviction against them, and they were both sent to prison.
During that long 6 years, Schiff stated that learned a lot about Russian tradecraft: how the Russians operate, who they target, the vulnerabilities they look for. During his work on the case, Schiff was also in frequent contact with FBI agents investigating Miller—giving the future congressman an intimate look at, and respect for, the Bureau’s counterintelligence mission.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and his co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
Trump's failed coup on January 6, was very reminiscent of AdolfH's failed coup.
On January 6, Trump had only one card left, and that was theViolence Card, and he played it. His idol felt the same way back in 1923.
Germany November 9, 1923: AdolfBelieves the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, he stages the Beer Hall coup. It fails.
In the aftermath of the failed coup,
AdolfWas convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison.
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July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections..
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
5 hours later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
7/16/2018
Trump in Helsinki: "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia." What???😲😲
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikpiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump today: "I don't know anything about Wikileaks, that's not my deal in life."😲
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason..
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they wants, which is to be an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Today Trump openly admitted that he wants to dominate over the American people. This is the dictator that most of us knew was waiting to show itself since the day Trump was sworn in.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
Trump's own sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't)
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Duterte, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, MBS, Xi Jinping, and Al-Assad all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, loyalty, and dogmatic obedience to them and them alone. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Time and time again, Trump keeps telling us exactly who and what he is. But unfortunately some people still refuse to believe him, or even listen to what he's saying.
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Deep down, Trump has always despised America and our democratic republic. He has nothing but contempt for our Constitution, and the " idea" of America. Trump has always favored despotic dictatorships. That's why he speaks so highly of tyrants like Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi, Duterte, and MBS. And anyone who has been paying attention, knows that Trump has never hidden his true feelings about any of this. When someone repeatedly tells you, and shows you who they are, it would behoove you to believe them.
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What do you call a trial without witnesses and evidence? It's called a farce and a cover-up.
What do you call a country that would allow something like this to happen? You would call it a banana republic, and a failed State.
If this is allowed to happen, It will be yet another example of Trump and republicans giving a middle-finger to the American people, and the Constitution. 70% of Americans want to hear from the witnesses themselves. Republicans are essentially saying that what the American people want doesn't matter. The American people have spoken, and we will be watching.
The travesty that's taking place before our very eyes will go down as one of the biggest cover-ups in American history, second only to the JFK assassination. Just imagine if republicans had blocked witnesses like John Dean, Nixon's White House Counsel, from testifying against Nixon. Just imagine if Republicans had blocked the Nixon tapes from being released. Nixon would have never been held accountable for his crimes, and in all likelihood, he would have gone on to commit even more crimes. That same exact scenario of injustice, is what we are facing today. But this time, it's with a president who is far more corrupt and immoral, than Nixon ever dared to be.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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So when Donald got sick, where did he go? He went to the doctors, the medical experts at Walter Reed. When you get sick, or need an operation, where do you go? Do you go to the medical experts, or do you go to Trump? When someone is diagnosed with a disease like cancer, should they listen to Trump, or should they listen to the medical experts? If you're having a baby, do you go to the medical experts, or do you go to Trump? When your child gets sick, do you take them to Trump, or do you take them to the medical experts?
But now Trump is trying to convince us that we should listen to him, instead of listening to the medical experts. Why that would make sense to anyone is beyond comprehension.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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Well the virus didn't disappear, but thanks to Trump, 200 thousand Americans did.
NEVER FORGET...that it didn't have to be this way.
Trump's presidency has been far worse than the tragedy of 9/11. 200 thousand American lives lost equates to about 66 9/11s.
And the worst part about it, is that it was preventable, not just in hindsight, but in foresight as well.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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The republican party has come to the realization that they cannot hang on to power in a democratic society.
Since the 1930s, the modern conservative movement has tried to restrict majority rule at every turn — because they know a mass democratic movement poses an existential threat to their power.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."
-- David Frum
And that's exactly what we're seeing now.
Vote 💙 like your very right to vote, and our democratic republic depends on it. Because it literally does.
If the Republican party were to ever achieve their goal of turning America into an authoritarianDystopia, the very first thing they're going to do, is take away your right to bear arms. They won't have any other choice. Just look at every other AuthoritarianRegimes throughout history. They didn't allow their people to haveGuns. Because that would be an existential threat to their power over you. Just look atChina, NorthKorea, theSovietUnion, and evenRussia today. Your right to vote and your right to free speech will be the next thing they take. And don't make the mistake of thinking that you'll be spared simply because you vote republican.
I'm sure this is something that supporters of the attempted coup have never considered or even contemplated.
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be with his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence along the narrow path, leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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Twitter has shut down multiple accounts that it says were operated by a white supremacist group posing as liberal groups encouraging violence.
A white supremacist group created a fake Twitter account, posed as the Antifa movement and called for violence during the ongoing protests sweeping the nation, Twitter said.
“Tonight’s the night comrades," the group tweeted on Sunday. “Tonight we say ‘f--k the city’ and we move into residential areas... the white hoods... and we take what’s ours.”
Twitter said the white supremacist group Identity Evropa used one fake account, @Antifa_US, to call for violence in majority white suburbs, in the name of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"This account violated our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. We took action after the account sent a Tweet inciting violence and broke the Twitter Rules" the company said.
Twitter said it has also targeted other fake accounts run by Identity Evropa. The company said the accounts posted hateful tweets targeting race, religion and sexual orientation.
Twitter has seen a wave of fake accounts spreading false information about the ongoing protests in recent days.
Trump and his supporters have claimed, without evidence, that Antifa is behind the violence seen in some of the protests nationwide.
In an internal FBI situation report, the FBI’s Washington Field Office found no intel evidence indicating Antifa involvement or presence in the violence that occurred on May 31 during the D.C.-area protests. That same day, Trump announced on Twitter that he would designate “Antifa” a terrorist organization, even though antifa is not an organized group.
But not surprisingly, the report did warn that individuals from a far-right social media group had called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, and use automatic weapons against protesters. A Department of Homeland Security intelligence note warned law-enforcement officials that a white supremacist channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram encouraged its followers to incite violence to start a race war during the protests.
Antifa, short for anti-facist, poses a threat to a devout fascist like Trump, so it only makes sense that Trump would want to go after them. Adolf did the same thing to opponents of his fascist regime. It's only natural that a fascist would view any anti-facist group has his enemy.
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It's very important that we remember the comments made by moral cowards like Ted Cruz concerning President Obama's response to the Ebola outbreak.Trump and Republicans had a field day criticizing Obama’s response to the Ebola virus. Trump even tweeted that Obama should resign after only 11 reported Ebola cases and 2 deaths.
Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there.
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
After the Ebola virus outbreak, President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it in 2018.
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018. "And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump." Rhodes said.
"And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House."
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Experts have criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle the National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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I wish that there was a way we could somehow flatten the curve of Trump's lies, better known as Bull sht Mountain.
Trump is now bragging about the ratings of his daily live news conferences on the coronavirus, and suggested that the large viewer numbers — rather than the multiple lies he has told during them — are fueling discussions in the media about ending the practice of broadcasting them live and unfiltered.
Trump: “Because the ratings of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the NYT, the Lamestream Media is going crazy" Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. Apparently this is all a game to him.
What Trump's utterly oblivious, self-absorbed, Ineffectual pompous a$$ doesn't realize is that the American people aren't tuning in because of him, we are tuning in because we want to keep up-to-date on the coronavirus and the US’s policies on it. The American people are watching the press briefings to hear from the coronavirus task force, which includes top public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and others on the task force.
Trump has made dozens of false claims during the briefings, which have directly led to the loss of lives, including overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, to falsely saying that anyone who wants to be tested for coronavirus infections can be, to claiming that the coronavirus will magically disappear, to claiming that there are no shortages of coronavirus tests, to claiming that America has tested more people than any country in the world, to claiming that the coronavirus was no different than the flu.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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When it comes to Trump, I'll take the word of Trump's own sister, who has known him his entire life? She knows him better, and longer, than anyone alive today. And if she wouldn't support him as president, why on earth should anyone else?
In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His god-d tweets and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s***. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how ”She didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
Only a f○○l would ignore what Trump's own sister says about him.
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Trump: "You've got Guatemalans, Mexicans, ISIS, the Menendez Brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, decepticons, those flyingMonkeys from the Wizard of Oz, Hannibal Lecter, Thanos, and severalBabadooks, all crossing the border illegally. Its scary stuff."😂😂
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also killed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki// anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked.
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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If conservatives truly believed in liberty and freedom, they wouldn't be conservatives, they would be liberals.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years..
Since the 1930s, the modern conservative movement has tried to restrict majority rule at every turn — because they know a mass democratic movement poses an existential threat to their power.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, andAttacking civil liberties in the next.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society..
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of stateTerror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted toTerror when internalized domination has not worked.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly meansAttacking someone by falsely claiming that they areAttacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly.
Conservatives like referring to liberals as communists, when in reality it's nothing more than pure projection. Conservatism is practically in lock step with communism.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
Conservatives have even taken a page right out the communist playbook. Controlling the reproductive rights of women is an old and well document communist tradition.
Because if a government can prevent you from having anAbortion, it can also force you to have one. That's what happens when the choice has been taken away from you. It doesn't get more communist than that.
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In a 2016 lawsuit. National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard assured Trump's personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, "that they would track down the woman with ra. pe allegations against Trump and see what they could do about her."
In the past, AMI has helped Trump by purchasing damaging stories about Trump in order to keep them from going public. AMI admitted that in 2016, it made a $150,000 payment "in concert" with Trump's election campaign to former model McDougal, who had an affair with Trump a decade earlier. The publisher made the pact with McDougal to ensure that the she did not publicize damaging allegations about Trump before the election, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
The lawsuit filed against Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election were claims that Trump £aped a teenager when she was 13 years old in 1994. The anonymous plaintiff, identified as "Katie Johnson" in an initial legal filing that was dismissed in California, and "Jane Doe" in two subsequent legal filings in NY—said that she was £aped by Trump during a party hosted by J. Epstein at his NYC apartment. In the third and final lawsuit, Doe alleged she had numerous 5exual encounters with Trump and Epstein at the latter's parties..
Jane Doe alleged Trump tied her to a bed, "forcibly £aped her and threatened her and her family with physical harm, if not d€ath, if she told anyone about the assault. "I understood that Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old," Jane Doe wrote in an affidavit.
After the suit was filed in September 2016, the Enquirer editor and Trump lawyer Cohen were in contact frequently. But there was no opportunity for them to buy this story and stop it from going public. AMI chief, Trump's longtime friend, only found out about the lawsuit after it was filed.
In November 2016, just days before the election, Doe's attorney Lisa Bloom, suddenly announced in a press conference that Jane Doe had been canceled, saying Doe had become frightened after receiving d€ath threats. Two days later, Doe's lead attorney, Thomas Meager, filed to dismiss the case. "After we received numerous d€ath threats and my law firm's website and emails were hacked, she did not want to go forward," Bloom added. Jane Doe has not been heard from since..
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All 44 presidents before trump would have been impeached and removed from office for what Trump has done, and for what he is still doing.
A sociopath like Trump, with no impulse control, who doesn't know right from wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible. He is completely incapable of being corrected..
Trump is like a child who has never been told no, and has never been told that what he is doing is wrong. He doesn’t know right from wrong because he's never been punished for his wrong doings, instead, he is like a child who is rewarded for his bad behavior. This child will inevitably grow up to be an incorrigible monster without boundaries, and republicans are continuing to feed this monster.. The Republican party should be called "The League of Extraordinary Cowards."
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
This is the state of the GOP today.
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state..
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 100 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences.
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
May 6: Following a concerted push to reopen schools beginning in late April, Trump lied again when he suggested that children aren't susceptible to the coronavirus.
Trump: "We realize how strong children are, right? Their immune system is maybe a little bit different. Maybe it's just a little bit stronger, or maybe it's a lot stronger," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American was NOT true. And at least 100 thousand American citizens have died because of his lies.
Trump would be in a better shape politically if he had been honest with the American people from the beginning. Which just proves that even when telling the truth would be substantially better for Trump, he STILL chooses to lie. Smh.
That is the mark of a bonafide pathological liar.
Allan Lichtman, the historian known for accurately predicting presidential elections, said that Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear.
So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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American Media Inc. (AMI), the former publisher of the National Enquirer, helped DJT bury allegations he r-aped a teenager in 1994. AMI CEO David Pecker was in close contact with DJT when the £ape allegations were made public in a 2016 lawsuit. National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard assured Trump's personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, "that they would track down the woman with the £ape allegation and see what they could do about her."
In the past, AMI has helped DJT by purchasing damaging stories about DJT in order to keep them from going public. AMI admitted that in 2016, it made a $150,000 payment "in concert" with DJT election campaign to former model Karen McDougal, who had an affair with DJT a decade earlier. The publisher made the pact with McDougal to ensure that the she did not publicize damaging allegations about DJT before the election, the U.S. Attorney's Office said..
The lawsuit filed against DJT in the lead-up to the 2016 election were claims that DJT £aped a teenager when she was 13 years old in 1994. The anonymous plaintiff—identified as "Katie Johnson" in an initial legal filing that was dismissed in California, and "Jane Doe" in two subsequent legal filings in NY—said that she was £aped by DJT during a party hosted by J. Epstein at his NYC apartment. In the third and final lawsuit, Doe alleged she had numerous 5exual encounters with DJT and Epstein at the latter's parties.
Jane Doe alleged DJT tied her to a bed, "forcibly £aped her and threatened her and her family with physical harm, if not d€ath, if she told anyone about the assault. "I understood that Mr. DJT and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old," Jane Doe wrote in an affidavit.
After the suit was filed in September 2016, the Enquirer editor and DJT lawyer Cohen were in contact frequently. But there was no opportunity for them to buy this story and stop it from going public. AMI chief, DJT's longtime friend, only found out about the lawsuit after it was filed.
In November 2016, just days before the election, Doe's attorney Lisa Bloom, suddenly announced in a press conference that Jane Doe had been canceled, saying Doe had become frightened after receiving d€ath threats. Two days later, Doe's lead attorney, Thomas Meager, filed to dismiss the case. "After we received numerous d€ath threats and my law firm's website and emails were hacked, she did not want to go forward," Bloom added. Jane Doe has not been heard from since.
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The question every American should be asking is why do republicans continue to block election security bills? Senate Republicans blocked 3 election security bills just last week.
It's becoming abundantly clear, that Trump and republicans are now owned by Russians. They receive their funding from Russians, and then they receive their marching orders from Russians. That's how it works whenever you've been completely bought and paid for, and fully compromised.
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy, received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, even though they have attended events at his properties, and they have posed in multiple photos with Trump.
Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot disclose to the government.
Lev Parnas paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy. Along with their work with Rudy, Parnas and Fruman are accused of meeting at Trump’s Washington hotel to discuss a Ukraine gas deal linked to Yovanovitch’s removal.
Parnas was throwing Russian money at Republicans like beads at Mardi Gras to any republican that was willing to expose themselves to him. A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman..
Prosecutors say that they “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
In 2018, Parnas and Fruman donated directly to Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions. Fruman also gave to SC. GOP Rep. Joe Wilson and to a joint fundraising committee tied to Florida Gov. Rick Scott in his successful bid for Senate. Both Sessions and Wilson have acknowledged meeting with both men.
Fruman and Parnas also gave to other joint fundraising committees, which drew more GOP lawmakers. FEC records show that 22 other Republicans who were lawmakers at the time received contributions from Fruman, who misspelled his last name as “Furman” in filings in “a further effort to hide the source of the funds and to evade federal reporting requirements,” according to the indictment..
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The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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By staying home on Dec 25 of 2018, Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn't visit military personnel on or before Christmas.
President Obama visited troops at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, in Kaneohe Bay, every Christmas he was in office, from 2009 to 2016.
President Obama traveled to Iraq in April 2009, just a few months after taking office.
Trump was in office for more than 2 years before he visited our troops in a war zone.
Trump also referred to our troop as losersAndSuckers.
In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “SuckersAndLosers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier, and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure man-baby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
The decision prompted harsh criticism on Twitter, with Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill, saying that Trump was dishonoring U.S. servicemen.
"TheyDiedWith their face to the foe, and that pathetic-Inadequate DJT couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen", Soames stated.
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On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Trump was elected president, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial..
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Boris Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said..
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Not only has Trump betrayed the country, his oath of office, and all of his wives, he also violated Melania's privacy by taking his mistress on a tour of Melania's bedroom.
Karen McDougal, a former model who had an affair with Trump in 2006 said on one trip to New York, he took her to Trump Tower and showed her his wife Melania's separate bedroom.
Karen McDougal wrote that Trump took her on tours of his Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort and his Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan. When they got to Melania's separate bedroom, Trump reportedly said she "liked her space to read or be alone."
I was going to say that that was pretty low, even for Trump, but then I remembered that nothing is too low for Trump.
McDougal met Trump in 2006 during a taping of The Apprentice. This was less than two years after Trump married Melania and a few months after the birth of his son, Barron.
In Trump Tower, McDougal wrote, Trump pointed out wife Melania’s separate bedroom. He “said she liked her space,” McDougal wrote, “to read or be alone.”
McDougal’s account seems to confirm PEOPLE’s own reporting that, according to a source close to the Trump family, the couple keeps separate bedrooms at their Bedminster, New Jersey, home because Melania “wants her own privacy.”
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"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.”
― Tiffany Madison
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Duterte, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, MBS, Xi Jinping, and Al-Assad all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, loyalty, and dogmatic obedience to them and them alone. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Time and time again, Trump keeps telling us exactly who and what he is. But unfortunately some people still refuse to believe him, or even listen to what he's saying.
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Deep down, Trump has always despised America and our democratic republic. He has nothing but contempt for our Constitution, and the " idea" of America. Trump has always favored despotic dictatorships. That's why he speaks so highly of tyrants like Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi, Duterte, and MBS. And anyone who has been paying attention, knows that Trump has never hidden his true feelings about any of this. When someone repeatedly tells you, and shows you who they are, it would behoove you to believe them.
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The party of lawlessness and disorder.
"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
McConnell acknowledged Thursday that he was "WRONG" when he falsely claimed that President Obama didn't leave behind a plan for tackling a pandemic. The Obama administration had in FACT prepared a 69-page playbook for pandemic response — which Trump clearly did not read or follow. I understand that Trump is semi-literate, but that's no excuse for him not tasking someone to read the playbook to him. I'm sure Baron would have been happy to read the playbook to his absent and wayward father.
Moscow Mitch blamed the Obama administration for not taking steps to be ready for a potential pandemic.
"We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell told Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law. "
"I was wrong," Moscow Mitch said in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier. "They did leave behind a plan. So, I clearly made a mistake in that regard." 😂😁
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set you free.
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance, lies, and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, or flag waving. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. I can only be defeated with goodwill, unselfishness, science, facts, and common sense."
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Remember all the times that Trump falsely accused President Obama of doing exactly what he's doing now?
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran. I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic?”
--Trump, Nov 16, 2011
"Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!"
--Trump, Oct 22, 2012
"I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!"
--Trump, Sep 16, 2013
"Remember what I previously said--Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is."
--Trump, Sep 25, 2013
"Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"
--Trump, Nov 10, 2013
We now know that as usual, Trump was only fantasizing about what he would do if he were president.
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For the last two years, Trump has picked the very best bus, to throw the very best people underneath. Hope Hicks, Flynn, Michael Cohen, Reince Priebus, General Mattis, General McMaster, General John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, McGahn, Bannon, Jeff Sessions, WHEW😥.... Kirsten Nielsen, KT McFarland, Tom Price, Scott Pruitt, Scaramucci, Sean Spicer, Ryan Zinke, Ty Cobb, Gary Cohn, Rob Porter, Omarosa, Sebastian Gorka, Katie Walsh...... I'm exhausted.😓
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Here is what a swamp looks like folks.
Whitaker was waiting off-set at CNN in June 2017 when he and another guest struck up a conversation. The two men, both former Justice Department officials, talked about work and family. The fellow guest, St. John’s University law professor John Q. Barrett, recalls asking Whitaker what had prompted him to go on television to discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election meddling.
“I hope this will help me get noticed,” Barrett recalled Whitaker telling him. In comments around that time, Whitaker said Mueller’s probe had gone too far, and on one CNN appearance he suggested that cutting funding to the investigation could hobble Mueller. Barrett, in an interview and in remarks on Twitter, recalled Whitaker saying that he hoped his appearances would generate attention so that the President Trump would appoint him a federal judge in his home state of Iowa.
Whitaker is definitely a compromised Trump stooge, who has absolutely zero intentions of upholding the law with integrity. He does however have every intention of helping Trump obstruct justice.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
--Charles Darwin
"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about."
--Wayne Dyer
Like most Americans, Public health and national security experts shook their heads in disbelief when Trump said the coronavirus “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.”
Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump administration’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Obama to Trump in 2017.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed.
She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are clear. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump, democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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An immoral man like Trump, who clearly has no honor, is naturally drawn to other men like Gallagher, who has no honor.
On the flip side, Trump has nothing but contempt for men and women of honor, like General Mattis, John McCain, Lt.Col Vindman, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, and Dr. Fiona Hill..
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The Trump family's efforts to squash a highly anticipated tell-all book from Trump's niece Mary Trump, fell short in a Queens County court in New York on Thursday as the Judge dismissed their lawsuit.
The book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," is set to be released on July 28.
Trump has always been worried about anyone seeing into the dark catacombs of his past and that of his family's.
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.
Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.
A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.
Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.
-- Simon & Schuster
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The articles of impeachment against Traitor Trump..
ARTICLE I: ABUSE OF POWER
Using the powers of his high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage. President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official United States Government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of the investigations. President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit. In so doing, President Trump used the powers of the Presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process. He thus ignored and injured the interests of the Nation.
ARTICLE II: OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS
In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed—Donald J. Trump has directed the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its "sole Power of Impeachment". President Trump has abused the powers of the Presidency in a manner offensive to, and subversive of, the Constitution.
In the history of the Republic, no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate "high Crimes and Misdemeanors". This abuse of office served to cover up the President's own repeated misconduct and to seize and control the power of impeachment—and thus to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives.
In all of this, President Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
So shall it be written, so shall it be done..
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Real democracies rest upon an egalitarian distribution of power in the economy and society writ large, as well as strong protections for minority groups and individuals. Yet even if we narrowly define democracy as the ability of ordinary people to select representatives who make policy on their behalf, it’s clear that the modern, mainstream conservative movement is openly hostile to democracy. And it has been since the very beginning..
Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
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I wish that there was a way we could somehow flatten the curve of Trump's lies, better known as Bull sht Mountain.
Trump is now bragging about the ratings of his daily live news conferences on the coronavirus, and suggested that the large viewer numbers — rather than the multiple lies he has told during them — are fueling discussions in the media about ending the practice of broadcasting them live and unfiltered.
Trump: “Because the ratings of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the NYT, the Lamestream Media is going crazy" Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. Apparently this is all a game to him.
What Trump's utterly oblivious, self-absorbed, Ineffectual pompous a$$ doesn't realize is that the American people aren't tuning in because of him, we are tuning in because we want to keep up-to-date on the coronavirus and the US’s policies on it. The American people are watching the press briefings to hear from the coronavirus task force, which includes top public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and others on the task force.
Trump has made dozens of false claims during the briefings, which have directly led to the loss of lives, including overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, to falsely saying that anyone who wants to be tested for coronavirus infections can be, to claiming that the coronavirus will magically disappear, to claiming that there are no shortages of coronavirus tests, to claiming that America has tested more people than any country in the world, to claiming that the coronavirus was no different than the flu.
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP has been bought and paid for with Russian money. This is why repubicans fighting do hard to defend him instead of the Constitution.
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Trump said it was one person coming from China. He literally said that. He should be dragged out of the White House for that comment alone.
Trump Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Trump March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.”
Trump's indifference, sincere ignorance, and conscientious stupidity, are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And no amountof lies, spin, or deflections will ever change that.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable.
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable..
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Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019.
Countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and work he has done.
And Trump thinks he knows more about viruses and infectious diseases than this guy, simply because he had an Uncle who attended MIT. Let that sink in for a moment..
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Jim Jones convinced his cultists that they should give their kids cyanide laced punch, and then they should drink the same poisoned punch themselves, and they did. I am 100% certain that Trump could convince his cultists to do the exact same thing.
Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts,
pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, gaslighting, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon this past March 17th, an angry hostile woman took to the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official who will govern by the Constitution, on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
This is what happens when for the first time in American history, we have a president who openly admires dictators, and brags about how he has fallen in love with Kim Jung Un, the most despotic dictator in modern history.
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Deutsche Bank has launched an internal investigation into the longtime personal banker for Trump and Jared Kushner. The bank is looking into Rosemary Vrablic to determine if she had acted improperly when she and two colleagues bought an apartment for about $1.5 million in 2013 from Bergel 715 Associates.
In a financial disclosure report, Kushner and Ivanka said they had received $1 million to $5 million from Bergel 715 in 2019. The couple had not previously reported having an ownership stake in the company.
Kushner and Trump were clients of Vrablic at the time of the 2013 sale and had received about $190 million in loans from Deutsche Bank. Both were also granted hundreds of millions of dollars after that point, according to the Times. Banks usually prohibit employees from conducting personal business with clients out of concerns of conflicts of interest.
Even before Trump became president, his relationship with Deutsche Bank fell under scrutiny because of his TREMENDOUS debts to the bank, which at the time was being fined by US regulators over its provision of toxic mortgages that played a role in the 2008 housing crash. There were concerns that if elected, Trump could intervene in the Deutsche Bank case with a view to protecting his own companies.
One of the bank’s more troubling activities was laundering billions of Russian rubles (via sham transactions known as “mirror trades”) into U.S. dollars. Then there was client Trump. The smooth persuasions, the obsequious flatteries, the lying about his net worth to garner loans for office buildings, resorts, casinos. Just how disconnected and delusional the bank became can be seen in its ongoing relationship with Trump, whose multiple bankruptcies had made him a pariah in the banking world.
When Deutsche’s real estate team cut off Trump, private banking opened the spigot. When a loan came due, Trump had NO INTENTIONS of repaying, as if the rules for him were different. Deutsche’s brass was so in-thrall to Trump’s fake celebrity, and so eager to expand in America, one division lent $48 million to cancel the debt on a Chicago skyscraper — a debt Trump had defaulted on with another wing of the same bank. But the private banking division, which catered to the rich and famous, arranged the loan anyway — and then, when Trump stopped making payments, arranged another loan for Trump. 😲
Deutsche Bank bought Trump's con the same way American voters would. In what could serve as a requiem for the country’s lost innocence, the general counsel at Deutsche said, “What the he// are we doing lending money to a guy like this?” 😂
In the summer of 2016, Kushner’s real estate company (which received lavish financing from Deutsche) was moving money to various Russians. A bank compliance officer filed a “suspicious activity report,” but the report was quashed and she was fired. The suggestion is that maybe the money was payback for Russian campaign meddling. Management at Deutsche tended to look the other way when employees broke the rules, even when they did business with dictators like Putin and their friends.
Trump and Jared's relationship with the bank became a subject to the Mueller investigation. The special counsel specifically focused on a $285m loan that Deutsche Bank granted Kushner’s company only a month before Trump was elected – and just as the bank was settling with state prosecutors over charges it had aided in a Russian money-laundering scheme.
The bank is fighting off subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, in particular his tax returns. Trump sued to prevent his records from being turned over, but the Supreme Court ultimately ruled 7-2 that presidents are not immune from criminal investigation.
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November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing.
The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults like Trumpism.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon..
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end..
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The problem Trump is having is that everyone is not going to go along with his lies and schemes. Everyone isn't going to be willing to throw their careers and reputations away for him. Everyone isn't willing to be his shoeshine boy like Barr, Moscow Mitch, Graham, and Nunes. People like Lt.Col. Vindman, Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassadors Bill Taylor, and Marie Yovanovitch, are examples of Americans who serve a cause greater than themselves. The moral character, courage, and integrity of true patriots like these, will always be obstacles to traitors, cowards, and to the evil that men do....
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During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like Governor Cuomo, and the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Pay attention Scrubs!
The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!!
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Trump & Bob Woodward'svirus Conversation Transcript: Trump ‘Playing it down’
February 7, 2020
Trump:
"Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation."
Woodward:
"Indeed, it is."
Trump:
"It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?"
Woodward:
"I know. It’s much forgotten.:
Trump:
"It’s pretty amazing. And then I said, “Well, is that the same thing?”
Woodward:
"What are you able to do for-"
Trump:
"This is moreDeadly. This is 5% versus 1%, and less than 1%. So this isDeadly stuff.:
March 19, 2020
Trump:
"Now it’s starting out it’s not just all people, Bob. But just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older-:
Woodward:
"Yeah. Exactly."
Trump:
"Young people too. Plenty of young people. We’re looking at what’s going on in-"
Woodward:
"So, give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci, or somebody who kind of… It caused a pivot in your mind, because it’s clear just from what’s on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, “Oh my God. The gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.”
Trump:
"Well, I think Bob, really, to be honest with you-"
Woodward:
"Sure. I want you to be."
Trump:
"I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down."
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It's no secret that Trump has absolutely no respect for our men and women in uniform. Trump waited two whole years after being sworn in before he ever visited our Troops in Iraq. President Obama visited our troops in Iraq just 3 months after taking office. Trump did however find time to make Saudi Arabia his first overseas trip as president. But of course, that was for personal and financial business reasons.
An immoral man like Trump, who clearly has no honor, is naturally drawn to other men like Eddie Gallagher, who has no honor.
On the flip side, Trump has nothing but contempt for men and women of honor, like General Mattis, John McCain, Lt.Col. Vindman, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, and Dr. Fiona Hill.
Trump wants people around him who will throw their morals, principles, and integrity out the window whenever he demands it. Ultimately, Trump wants people around him who will always choose him, over the oaths that they have taken.
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Make no mistake, Trump wants to be a dictator just like his idols Putin and Kim Jung Un. He wants to control the country in the same tyrannical manner as his idols.
September 2016 Trump praises Putin's 'strong control' over Russia and said he was 'far more' of a leader than Obama, during a commander in chief forum on NBC.
"I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing' -- the man has very strong control over a country. I think when he calls me brilliant I'll take the compliment, okay?' If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.'
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
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@willtellall638
Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon..
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end..
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Trump lies a little bit more than waaaay too much.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
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On Monday TX Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made the jaw-dropping claim fox that “there are more important things than living” as part of his push to reopen the U.S. economy, despite warnings from public health experts.
“I don’t want to die, nobody wants to die, but we gotta take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running.”
"There are more important things than living." That's what Trump and his sycophants are trying to brainwash Americans into believing. That's basically what Jim Jones told his cult at Jonestown, just before he said "NOW DRINK UP!!!"
Trump's indifference, sincere ignorance, and conscientious stupidity, are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And no amount of lies, spin, or deflections will ever change that.
Two first responders in Detroit who lost their young daughter to the coronavirus on Sunday hope their grief can be used to warn others to take the pandemic seriously.
Skylar Herbert was only 5 years old. She is believed to be the youngest person in Michigan to have died after testing positive for the coronavirus. The 5 year old's diagnosis came as a surprise because she hadn't left the house in days. Neither of her parents have tested positive.
"This is something that has gotten out of hand, and we need to do something about it, and that's the reason why we're doing this interview," Her father said. "To let people know that it doesn't matter what age you are, it's coming for you."
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Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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Tucker Carlson: "I'm for getting along, I'm for color blindness, I'm for tolerance, 100 percent, but I also think that if things radically change in your country, it's okay for you to say, "what is this? And maybe I don't want to live in a country that looks nothing like the country that I grew up in. Is that bigoted?
John Oliver: "Uh yeah, yeah it is. That's like saying "I've got ten fingers and toes, a pointy face, with a little pink rosebud mouth, a cat sized body, a long weird tail, and I eat garbage. Does that make me a possum? YES, YES IT DOES!!!
That's the literal definition of the thing you just described." 😂😂
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COVID-19: "Trump's response to me has been a series of dreadful calamities. First he tried gaslighting me by accusing me of being nothing more than a hoax, and when that didn't work, he tried to threaten me with magic, of all things, and when magic didn't work, he resorted to calling me names like "Kung Flu." So when name calling didn't work, he decided he would just ignore me, like he does with his debts, and maybe I would just go away. So now that I have proven to be immune and impervious to Trump's lies, gaslighting, and magic spells, he has decided to create a distraction by unleashing his Gestapo on peaceful protesting American citizens, which I find highly offensive, because if anyone is going to harm the American people, it's going to be ME." 😆💪
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Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent expressed his disgust over rioters who stormed the Capitol, and Trump's rhetoric that sparked the insurrection.
"He's committed a mortal crime against the republic," Dent said. "He should have resigned over this, but he won't, of course."
In an interview, Dent conveyed his anger with a pro-Trump rioter carrying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol building, calling it a "desecration."
"I always proudly took my constituents to a plaque right by the east-front Capitol, right by the front door. It's a plaque dedicated to the honorary first defenders from Allentown, Pennsylvania, in Redding, Pennsylvania ... who went to the Capitol, at the call of Abraham Lincoln, to defend the Capitol during the Civil War. ... The confederates never got there. They were there to protect against the rebellion. And here we are, watching Confederate flags running through the Capitol. To see this desecration to me, it's so upsetting as an American, as a Republican. How could this happen?"
"The voters, the courts, the states – they've all spoken. They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever. This election was actually not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000 and 2004 were all closer."
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter aDeath spiral. We’d never see the whole nation accept an election again. Every four years would bring a scramble for power at any cost."
--Mitch McConnell, Jan 6.
A Texas man charged in the Capitol insurrection threatened to ki// hisChildren if they told the FBI he had taken part in the riot, according to court documents.
Guy Reffitt, who the FBI says is part of a far-rightExtremist group called "Texas Freedom Force," (hilarious) was arrested and charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and obstruction of justice.
The FBI said in a charging affidavit that Reffitt, a 48-year-old oil worker from Wylie, Texas, first bragged about his trip to Washington, DC, to his family, saying he had filmed the riot on a GoPro-style camera.
Upon learning of the FBI's investigation into the insurrection, Reffitt threatened toShootHisChildren if they turned him in to authorities, the affidavit said.
His wife told the FBI that Reffitt told his son andDaughter: "If you turn me in, you're a traitor and you know what happens to traitors … traitors getShot."
He separately told his daughter he'd "put a bulletThrough her phone if she posted about him on social media, according to the affidavit.
But Reffitt's family did end up speaking to the FBI, the affidavit said, and days later, agents arrived at Reffitt's door with a search warrant.
This guy loves Trump more than his own family.
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“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are simple. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump. Democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Government
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What part about Trump being a con-man don't some people understand?
In August 1989, just two months after Trump launched his Trump Shuttle Airline, one of his Boeing 727s made a crash landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The shuttle was to fly white-collar passengers between New York, Washington and Boston. The passenger jet had malfunctioning nose gear that failed to deploy. The nose and underbelly of the plane scraped and dragged along the runaway upon landing with sparks flying. The pilots had to perform an emergency dumping of fuel to avoid a greater catastrophe. It's all on video.
Trump purchased the airline for 365 million, and in 3 years, it never turned a profit.😄
And when Trump was asked by reporters about the crash landing in Boston, he said, and I quote: “It was the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen." 😲
Back in 1986 and likely for many years before, Trump colluded in tax evasion with Bulgari Jewelry Store in NY, a high-end posh location with tony clientele right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here's how the scam worked:
Trump would go into the store with his wife, his girlfriend, his...whatever (to use his vernacular). He would then buy her an expensive necklace or wristwatch. Normally, such a transaction would face the NY and state sales tax, which would be pretty high on luxury jewelry.
In an illegal attempt to evade the tax, Trump "asked" the store to instead ship the jewelry to an out of state location, where no NY sales tax could be collected. In fact, the store would merely send an empty jewelry box to the location, while Trump and his lady friends walked out the door with the jewelry that very day.
The state and city tax collectors eventually caught onto this scheme, and Trump promptly testified against his erstwhile tax evasion colluding partners at the jewelry store in order to save his own skin.😲
The empty box scam is just one example of Trump's history of illegal tax evasion. Another story can be told about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida by local reporter Frank Cerabino.
Trump bought the property from the estate of breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. He got it for a relative bargain at $7.5 million, something he bragged about in The Art of the Deal. Yet he refused for years to pay local property taxes on the actual value of the property, $11.5 million at the time he bought it. He tried to have it both ways--buy the property for a steep discount and also pay property taxes at that same under-valued price.
Try that with your town's property tax assessor sometime and see what he says.😲
This is who Trump is in a nutshell. He's always been a con-man, and that's all he will ever be.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
--The Lincoln Project
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For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump...
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News..
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In her book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House..
Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes.
When it comes to Trump, I'll take the word of Trump's own sister, who has known him his entire life? She knows him better, and longer than anyone alive today. And if she wouldn't support him as president, why on earth should anyone else?
In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None."
DJT's failure as a president was inevitable. He was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, malice, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Trump has not only encouraged his cult to commit acts of violence at his rallies, he also encouraged Cops to commit acts of violence against people within their custody.
Trump speech to Police Officers in July 2017, Long Island NY.
"When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, I said, please don't be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over, like, don't hit their head and they've just killed somebody. Don't hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay."
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The Trump family's efforts to squash a highly anticipated tell-all book from Trump's niece Mary Trump, fell short in a Queens County court in New York on Thursday as the Judge dismissed their lawsuit.
The book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," is set to be released on July 28.
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.
Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.
A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.
Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.
-- Simon & Schuster
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No one, and I mean no one, knows more about cheating than Trump.
In her book, Trump's niece describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
Trump's own sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him." She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
Last Dec, Trump was forced to wire $2 million to pay a court-ordered fine for misusing his illegitimate Trump Foundation to further his business interests and 2016 presidential run. The money will be distributed to eight charities.
"Charities are not a means to an end, which is why these damages speak to the president’s abuse of power and represent a victory for not-for-profits that follow the law." New York Attorney General said in a statement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the NY's attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political. interests.
Trump and his children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible..
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Trump's administration tried to bury a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places. The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day." Once again Trump is dismissive of scientific facts because they get in the way of the lies and misinformation he's been spreading since the beginning of the pandemic. Instead of sharing this vital information which can literally save lives, he hides it.
Trump's cult has bought into his commitment to willful ignorance. Trump feeds them lies and misinformation on a daily basis, and they accept it without questioning the validity of anything he says. And at the same time, they will say that they are protesting for their "freedom." What they don't realize is that no man or woman can ever truly be free without factual information....without the truth. Without the facts and the truth, they are nothing more than slavish little tools for the person feeding them lies.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
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Why should anyone believe anything Trump says, when he can't even tell the truth about whether or not he ever met Putin before the election.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
LOL..😂😄😂. Trump tells lies that only a 5 year old would tell. And what's worse, is that he expects you to believe him.
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Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
" TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
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In 2018, 8 republican lawmakers decided to celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas.
The group celebrated America's Day of independence in Moscow laughing it up with a number of key Russians, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two same two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press laughing it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Comey was fired.
What's worse is that we have no way of knowing what was said during their meetings with Russian agents and officials, because the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the gloating Russians.
It may be a coincidence that two of the eight republicans who went to Moscow for some vague reason on the Fourth of July are now mouthpieces for the Kremlin. But fortunately for me, I don't believe in coincidences.
These 8 republicans have all the signs of a GOP/GRU Russian sleeper cell. Consider: Eight Republican lawmakers—and, notably, not a single Democrat—journey halfway around the world to spend America's Independence Day with Putin’s coziest cronies. We don’t really know what happens once they get there, but we do know that the Russians are really good at both psy-ops and kompromat.
It would explain why republicans like Johnson, Kennedy and others have been regurgitating Russian propaganda almost word for word.
It’s like the tv series, "The Americans" but with actual Americans.
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Judge Salas is overseeing a lawsuit brought by investors against Deutsche Bank over its involvement in financial matters related to Trump's longtime friend Epstein. Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank has lasted longer than any of his marriages and is cloaked in more secrecy. Now the US Supreme Court is considering whether to shed light on the links between Trump and Germany’s largest bank. Manhattan prosecutors and Washington lawmakers want tax and financial records related to Trump and his crime family's business, which Trump has sued to block.
Win or lose in November, one thing won’t change for Trump: Over the next few years, his company must settle a series of TREMENDOUSLY large debts. Before the end of a theoretical second term, his company will have to refinance—or, in a far less likely scenario, pay off—nearly a half-billion dollars in loans linked to some of his most prized assets, including Trump Tower. These debts are maturing at the worst time for Trump, whose hotels and resorts have been plagued by declining revenues. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic pummeled the hospitality industry, forcing the full or partial closure of most of his hotel and resort properties.
On financial disclosure forms, Trump has reported holding 14 loans on 12 properties. At least six of those loans, representing about $479 million in debt, are due over the next four years. Some are guaranteed by Trump himself, meaning a creditor could come after his personal—not corporate—assets if he defaults. If he holds onto the White House, the refinancing of these debts could take his conflicts of interest to absurd new heights. How will the public know if these deals are on the up and up or whether Trump is receiving sweetheart terms from a bank that wants an in with the president? And what might a lender desire in return for helping Trump out of a financial jam?
Trump’s biggest creditor is Deutsche Bank, which in the late 1990s took a gamble on Trump whose history of corporate bankruptcies made him untouchable by most other lenders. Deutsche’s commercial lending division learned the hard way one reason why other banks considered Trump persona non grata: If pushed by his creditors on payments, Trump shoves back. In 2008, after he defaulted on a loan for his Chicago hotel and condo development, he filed a multibillion-dollar suit accusing Deutsche and others of contributing to the recent financial meltdown, which he blamed for his inability to repay the loan.
Nevertheless, Deutsche’s private banking division, which caters to wealthy clientele, continued to lend to Trump, giving him $125 million, spread over two loans, to finance the purchase and renovation of his Doral golf resort in 2012. Both are floating rate loans, meaning the interest rate fluctuates based on market conditions, which lending experts say usually indicates they are interest-only loans. If so, Trump probably hasn’t paid down much if any of the principal and will owe something close to the whole $125 million when the loans come due in 2023.
In 2014, Trump took out a separate floating loan from Deutsche’s private bank to bankroll the development of his luxury hotel in Washington, DC. The balance of this $170 million debt is payable in 2024. That year, Trump will also owe Deutsche between $25 million and $50 million in connection with his Chicago hotel and complex.
If the Supreme Court orders Deutsche to produce the vast array of documents demanded by Congress — from records of the bank’s credit and risk committees, to files on Trump “related to any domestic or international transfer of funds in the amount of $10,000 or more” — it would also provide more insight into Deutsche itself. What risks did it take on after years inmwhich there was reckless trading, allegations of false accounting and inept management.
Three years ago it accepted guilt over a “mirror trading” scheme, which allowed clients to move $10bn from Russia while circumventing anti-money laundering rules. It seemed an open-and-shut case for the US DoJ, which has levied swingeing fines on other foreign banks for illegal cross-border transactions. Investigators interviewed Deutsche staff in a criminal probe. Then: nothing.
A likely theory is that the DoJ, now under control of Trump's lackey Bill Barr, is unlikely to punish Trump's main creditor, especially over any Russian offences. In that view, Deutsche Bank’s unfathomable loyalty to ,Trump might just payoff.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power.
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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No one should be confused as to why republicans are launching a war on your right to vote. Especially when they're not even trying to hide the reason why.
Trump openly admitted on fox that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.
Trump: “The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends.
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
And there you have it folks.
It's going to be up to liberals/Dems to save America, and preserve our democratic Republic.
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
--The Crisis
by Thomas Paine
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Let's be perfectly clear, Trump does not believe in democracy, justice, or the rule of law, because those American ideals and institutions are his biggest enemies. Trump has spent his entire fraudulent life believing that he is above the law, and therefore he should be allowed to do whatever he pleases, without any criticism, or repercussions,,which is why he believes he can actually pardon himself. This mindset is one of the reasons he's been sued more than 4000 times.
Trump University is a perfect example. If it were not for justice and the rule of law, his fake University would still exist, and he would still be conning Americans out of thousands of dollars. The same goes for his fake charity foundation, which is now being sued by the state of NY. He and his kids were using it for their own personal gain. Trump took money from it to payoff lawsuits, and to purchase a 60k dollar portrait of himself. Once again, he was thwarted by his enemies, justice, and the rule of law. The best example of Trump's contempt for democracy, justice, and the rule of law, is his unconscionable admiration for dictators like Putin and Kim Jung Un. These two dictators are above the law in their own countries, and Trump clearly sees himself as one of them. How else would one explain Trump's shameless fawning over Kim Jung Un and Putin, or the way he seems to long for their approval of him, the way a child longs for the approval of their parents.
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1888 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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Greed over lives. Money over lives. Metal over lives.
Oh well, the only question now is, who's next? We can say this with confidence, because Trump, Moscow Mitch and republicans in Congress have made it abundantly clear, that greed, the NRA, and money, is more important than your life and even your kid's life. So....whose next? What will be the name of the next school I wonder. Whose kids will be next I wonder? Who will be the next parents to have to bury their child I wonder?
There is at least one Republican in Congress who finally gets it. He finally understands. That Republican is Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio. Mike Turner announced his support for a ban on sales of “military style weapons” following the deadly mass shooting in Dayton Ohio after he discovered his daughter came close to being one of the casualties.
“I believe these are necessary steps forward in protecting our country and a testament to American values, which include protecting human life,” Turner, said in a statement
Turner, a Dayton native, said he would also support legislation placing restrictions on high-capacity magazines as well as so-called red-flag laws, which allow police and family members to “quickly identify people who are dangerous and remove their ability to harm others.
Turner made this statement after he found out that his teenage daughter was across the street from the shooting that night and she had just missed being out on the street when the shooting started by just seconds.
So now all of a sudden he cares. It took his daughter nearly being one of the victims for him to finally get it. He should have gotten it after Vegas, Orlando, and after Parkland. He should have cared back in 2012 when 20 babies, 6 and 7 years of age, were cut down with an assault rifle.
So.....whose going to be next?
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July 23, 2019, Trump said this: "I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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The Trump followers who've been out protesting are truly the dregs of humanity. Like Trump, they are indifferent to the harm and potential devastation they are placing on our medical infrastructure by spreading this virus.
Do they really believe that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 30 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders, who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should consider growing the fk up.
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Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy, helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Devin Nunes in 2018, Parnas’ lawyer Ed MacMahon has stated.
Congressional records show Nunes traveled to Europe from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, 2018. Three of his aides—Harvey, Scott Glabe, and George Pappas—traveled with him, per the records. U.S. government funds paid for the group’s four-day trip, which cost just over $63,000.
Nunes, Trump's top Republican sycophant presiding over the impeachment hearings — in which Parnas has repeatedly been referenced — was central to Trump’s efforts to discredit the Mueller probe. Nunes infamously made a late-night trip to the White House after Congress launched a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and then announced he had magically discovered evidence of wrongdoing by officials inside the Intelligence Community. Because of his shameless skulduggery, Nunes was forced to step down from the Intelligence Committee’s investigation.
While Parnas helped Nunes arrange meetings, he also assisted Rudy in smearing Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch, who was fired by Trump because he believed she was interfering with his criminal scheme. Last month, the SDNY charged Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman with illegally moving money from foreign donors to American political campaigns, all of which were republican campaigns. Hmmmm😞
Parnas and Fruman both pleaded not guilty. Both men retained former Trump attorney John Dowd after their arrest, but Parnas later fired Dowd after the Trump claimed not to know him — even though they have met several times.
Since firing Trump's lawyers Dowd, Parnas told associates that Trump tasked him with a “secret mission” at a 2018 White House Hanukkah party to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens.
Parnas also met Trump at a small fundraising dinner at his Washington, D.C. hotel in April 2018 where he says he convinced Trump to fire Yovanovitch.
After Zelensky won the Ukrainian presidential election, Parnas told the new administration that aid would be withheld and VP Pence would not attend Zelensky's inauguration without a public announcement of the investigations, according to his attorney. Fruman acknowledges the meeting happened. And in fact, Pence did pulled out of the inauguration.
Lev Parnas' lawyer MacMahon said that Parnas is willing to tell Congress everything he knows because he is upset that Trump claimed not to know him.😂
( Don't feel bad Lev, Trump does that to everyone whenever he's in trouble.😄)
“President Trump’s recent and regrettable disavowal of Mr. Parnas has caused him to rethink his involvement and the true reasons for his having been recruited to participate in the President’s activities,” MacMahon said. “Mr. Parnas is prepared to testify completely and accurately about his involvement in the President and Rudy Giuliani’s quid pro quo demands of Ukraine.”
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According to Trump, every life lost will be worth it if he can win reelection.
Trump won't hesitate to sacrifice more American lives in his attempt to win reelection. The thing we must all remember, is that Trump is a narcissist, and a sociopath.
A sociopathic narcissist like Trump is a person on a quest for power and control, who uses the love and admiration of others as a tool to dominate and manipulate, and who goes about all of this thinking that it is his right and that he is justified. There will be no guilt, no apologies, and no remorse coming from the narcissistic sociopath.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a sociopathic narcissist.
Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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At this point, the GOP should simply be banned as a political party. It's not even a political party, it's nothing more than a lawyer, spokesperson, and sales representative for corporations, banks, and billion dollar industries. Republicans stopped representing actual citizens decades ago. Republicans proved it when they created Citizens United, which Ironically, has nothing to do with citizens at all. But republicans know that if they use words like freedom, liberty, citizens, patriots, etc, their naive base will eat that type of language up. The so called " Freedom Caucus" in a Congress is another perfect example.
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Everyone has that person in their life who "always plays the victim." When something goes wrong it's "never their fault."
They're the type of person who does something wrong then tries to paint you as being the real problem for calling them out. Because their bad deed was just them making things even.
These people can be impossible to deal with because they're never wrong. This mentality also stunts their developmental growth, because when you're never wrong, you don't have to change a thing.
According to research, the VictimMentality or, as they call it, "Tendency for InterpersonalVictimhood," or TIV, is a stable construct that people can carry with them throughout their lives.
It's defined as "an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships." That's why your friend with the VictimMentality always plays theVictim and everything that happens in the world is an affront to them.
"HI, my name is DJT, but you can call me Victim. Many big strong men with tears in their eyes are saying this." 🤣
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Mohamad bin Salman, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. What else do they have in common? They are all men that Trump admires and looks up to.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that Trump chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force on everyone else what he believes, and punish those who don’t.
Trump claims to support veterans after they return from service, but in the last two years he slashed funding for military housing assistance programs which help keep veterans off the street and gutted mental illness programs which help those dealing with PTSD and suicidal tendencies.
Trump cultists always brag about their love and support for our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
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In his final speech, the night before he died, he said: “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” What he said in Memphis on April 3, 1968 — riffing without notes to an audience of striking black sanitation workers — clearly resonates today. We all know his closing line (“I’ve been to the mountaintop … and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you”); less well known is the speech itself — and why he was in Memphis to deliver it.
“The world is messed up. The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around … We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying we are God’s children, and if we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live …
“All we say to America is to be true to what you said on paper. If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand … the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right"
“Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation … standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”
--Dr Martin Luther King.
As a Marine veteran,Vote 💙 all the way through. 🇺🇸
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A number of former senior Trump officials have sought to distance themselves from the Taliban peace deal that was signed in February 2020.
Biden said he had to follow through with the agreement or risk new conflicts with the Taliban in the spring, which might have required an additional troop surge into Afghanistan.
Trump's "deal" did nothing but embolden the Taliban and left the insurgency group in the strongest position militarily since 2001.
Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who resigned from the Trump administration before the agreement was finalized, tweeted Wednesday: "Negotiating with the Taliban is like dealing with the devil."
Former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller told Defense One this week that Trump's agreement was actually a "play" to mask his administration's true intentions, which were to broker a Taliban-led government that would allow a small number of U.S. troops to remain in the country to conduct counterterrorism missions.
Lisa Curtis, a former senior National Security Council official who sat alongside Afghanistan envoy Zalmay Khalilzad during the negotiations with the Taliban, told AP: "The Doha agreement was a very weak agreement, and the U.S. should have gained more concessions from the Taliban."
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was fired by Trump in November 2020, said he believed at the time the agreement was signed that it should have been "conditions-based," which is why he later objected to Trump's call for a Christmas homecoming for U.S. troops.
Esper told CNN that although Biden is responsible for the outcome in Afghanistan, Trump "undermined" the agreement and weakened U.S. leverage in negotiations by impatiently calling for troop reductions in the country.
H.R. McMaster, former Trump national security adviser known for his hawkish views, lambasted Trump for the withdrawal. McMaster has long been critical of the Taliban agreement.
"Our secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban," McMaster said on Bari Weiss' podcast. "This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves."
The main question everyone should be asking, is why did Trump make a deal with the Taliban, a designated terrorist organization, and why was the Afghan government left out of the negotiations?
It's almost as if Trump and the Taliban plotted against the Afghan government and the people.
Trump was negotiating with the Taliban about whether or not to remove our troops, and NOT with the Afghan government, which was hosting our troops.
The truth about what Trump and Stephen Miller did with Afghanistan is finally coming out. Because what's done in the dark, will eventually come to the light.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
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A perfect example of what happens when Don the Con testifies under oath.
I'm sure Trump never wants to see Tim O'Brien again after their last encounter.😂
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
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Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
The optimism was part of a larger embrace by Russia of Trump's "America First" outlook, which emphasizes U.S. business interests and national security over promoting freedom and democracy, said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a researcher who has worked with the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Initiative.
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said.
2 years later, the sanctions are still in place😂😂😂😄 and the thrill of Trump's election has faded amid an intensifying federal investigation of possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. Thanks Robert Mueller. America will forever be in your debt. Make Traitors Fear Again!!!!!😄
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Jack O’Donnell is author of the memoir "Trumped!" The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall. Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino..
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican" Trump said.
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke.
Trump: "Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife."
Jeb Bush’s wife is Mexican-American
During the campaign, Trump impugned the character of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a native-born American, hailing from Indiana, who was hearing a class action case against Trump's now-discredited fake Trump University..
"He's a Mexican," Trump said to CNN of Curiel. "We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can't even believe."
Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. And It's the type of comment that only a racist would applaud..
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Thousands of Americans have needlessly died due to Trump's indifference, selfishness, criminal negligence, and his commitment to willful ignorance. And no amount of lies, deflections, spin, or gaslighting will ever change that.
Trump's administration tried to bury a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places. The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day." Once again Trump is dismissive of scientific facts because they get in the way of the lies and misinformation he's been spreading since the beginning of the pandemic. Instead of sharing this vital information which can literally save lives, he hides it.
Trump's cult has bought into his commitment to willful ignorance. Trump feeds them lies and misinformation on a daily basis, and they accept it without questioning the validity of anything he says. And at the same time, they will say that they are protesting for their "freedom." What they don't realize is that no man or woman can ever truly be free without factual information....without the truth. Without the facts and the truth, they are nothing more than tools for the person feeding them lies.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
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Adam Schiff has been the MVP of the trial so far. Trump's defense team has no answer or real defense for anything that Schiff has laid out before the American people. And this isn't Adam Schiff's first rodeo. He has a history of prosecuting traitors to this country. In the late 80s and early 90s as a District Attorney in Cali, Adam Schiff successfully prosecuted the case of a Russian spy named Svetlana Ogorodonikov, and an FBI agent named Richard W. Miller, who was seduced by Svetlana Ogorodnikov, and agreed to sell classified information to the Soviet government. Eventually, this man—Richard W. Miller, a 47-year-old Los Angeles-based counterintelligence agent on the Bureau’s Soviet squad—would become the first FBI agent ever convicted of espionage.
Agent Miller would eventually agree to turnover highly classified information to the Russians for large sums of money. It took Schiff 3 trails, and 6 years, but he eventually won the conviction against Agent Miller and the Russian spy, and they were both sent to prison.
During those years, Schiff stated that he learned a lot about Russian tradecraft, and how the Russians operate, who they target, and the vulnerabilities they look for. During his work on the case, Schiff was also in frequent contact with FBI agents investigating Miller—giving the future congressman an intimate look at, and respect for, the Bureau’s counterintelligence mission against threats from from Russia, and it's mission of protecting the national security of this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.”
The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement.
Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment..
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his crime family had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, Trump used his charity foundation to pay-off a $158,000 lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
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Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with Russian crime bosses for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. Russian Oligarchs as well as the Russian mafya are both connected to Russian intelligence. It's virtually impossible to tell who is who. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that had to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafya and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Trump started laundering money for the Russian mob in 1984. In ‘92, the Russian mob had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mob.
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mob. Trump became close with Russian oligarchs and the Russian mob, who were in turn close to Putin. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin.
The Russians used Trump's apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s..
With Trump's constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. Public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all, Semion Mogilevich.
In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. Mogilevich’s greatest talent, the one that places him at the top of the Russian mob, is finding creative ways to cleanse dirty cash. According to the FBI, he has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world. In 1991, he made a move that led directly to Trump Tower. That year, the FBI says, Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring a fellow mob boss, Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. If Mogilevich was the brains, Ivankov was the enforcer..
The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. “He was like a ghost to the FBI,” one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years..
The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. “We were looking around, looking around, looking around,” James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section. “We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.”
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
Fun fact: The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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When it comes to Trump, all roads lead to Putin.
By spreading Russian propaganda, attacking the FBI and America's other intelligence agencies, Trump is doing Putin's dirty work for him. And make no mistake, it constitutes a threat to America's national security.
The FBI has always been the biggest threat to Russian agents attempting to operate on American soil..
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to.
Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. And they all got a big laugh out of it, at America's expense. Let that sink in for a moment.
On July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Trump threw America and the men and women in our intelligence agencies under the bus once again when he sided with Putin.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
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For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and the arrest of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for seven months, even after Interpol issued a red notice for Tokhtakhounov. And then, in April 2013, this fugitive from American justice, appeared seated near Trump in the VIP section of Trump's Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News.
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Confidence man: : a person who tricks other people in order to get their money : con artist.
A confidence man is a man who persuades people to give him their money or property by lying to them.
A confidence game, also known as a con, scam, grift, or flim flam, is an attempt to win the trust and confidence of a victim, known as the "mark," in order to defraud them. Although general expectation is that con artists are untrustworthy, their particular ability is actually to be able to gain the trust of their victims. They play on people's selfish desires, fears, and greed.
The term "confidence man" ( later shortened to con-man) first came into use in 1849, when the New York Herald published a story about the arrest of William Thompson, entitled, "Arrest of the Confidence Man." Thompson would approach strangers on the street, talk a while with them, and then ask if they had "confidence in him to trust him with their watch until to-morrow.” The victims would then give Thompson their expensive watches, believing him to be an acquaintance they didn't remember.
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Inspectors Generals serve as independent watchdogs. They are responsible for investigating wrongdoing within our government, which makes them an existential threat to a criminal and con-man like Trump. Trump is going after anyone and anything that poses a threat to him and his swamp.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and Republicans are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we the Amercan, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
So...will we keep are constitutional republic, or will we lose it, and see it replaced with a monarchy? Will we still have a democracy, or will we be ruled by a tyrant without boundaries? These are the questions that will be on the ballot box in 2020. This election will be the most important election in our nation's history..
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According to republicans, we have two different constitutions. There's the Constitution that was created by our Founding Fathers -- the one we're all familiar with, and then there's the "alternative" constitution, that was apparently created the day that Trump was sworn into office. According to republicans, this "alternative" constitution says that Trunp is above the law, and he can literally do whatever he wants, without consequences, and without ever being held accountable.
"I pledge allegiance, to Lord King Donald Trump, of the Dystopian States of America, and to the monarchy for which he stands, one ruler, the chosen God, with oppression and subjugation for all."
---The GOP MAGA
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior.
I began this book with the assumption that Trump is a malignant narcissist. Actually, watching him and listening to him reminded me of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the cult I joined in college, in that both have a kind of God complex where they’re the only one with the answers, the only one who can fix things. Moon was going to create a theocracy and Trump was going to “drain the swamp.” But the way they carry themselves is similar.
But what really made me think of Trump as a cult was the way the groups who supported him were behaving, especially religious groups who believed that God had chosen Trump or was using Trump. There are actual pro-Trump religious groups, like the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders were saying, “We’re of God. The rest of the world is of Satan, and we need to follow our chosen leaders who are connected to God.”
There was this blind-faith aspect to the whole thing and an unwillingness to look at any inconvenient facts. That’s all very cult-like.
The bottom line is that I see very sophisticated mind-control techniques being used through the media, through religious broadcasters and radio talk-show hosts. It’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil, authoritarian view of reality that is mostly fear-based. And there’s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the image of the leader."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when May 1 is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am not religious, but that won't stop me from going to places of worship.
I'm nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. There is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. No one wants Trump to prematurely open up the country, and end social distancing more than me. I don't recognize anyone's authority."
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Thousands of Americans have needlessly died because of Trump's selfishness, criminal negligence, and his commitment to willful ignorance. And no amount of lies, deflections, spin, or gaslighting will ever change that.
After the Ebola virus outbreak, President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed the directorate on to Trump in 2017 when he left office. So what happened to it?
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure that was set up and informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak. President Obama left Trump an office set up in the White House that was responsible for managing pandemics, and managing global health threats. The directorate was staffed with dedicated people who were responsible for ensuring that information was acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you would have had people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve.
The directorate that President Obama left Trump with was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of a fire — all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire. So....what happened to NSC directorate that President Obama left Trump with?
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing, because Republicans aren't interested in governing, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about...
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country...
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for with Russian money.
It's why repubicans are fighting so hard to defend him instead of the Constitution. It's also why Republicans have been repeating the exact same lies and propaganda of the Russian government and Russian security services like the GRU.
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Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality comes to us from North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the despotic little dictator that Trump admires so much, and who he proudly declared his love for.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right..
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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Trump is far more corrupt , and more dangerous to the country than Nixon ever was. Trump has displayed all the common traits and behavior of a sociopath. Unlike Nixon, there are no limits or boundaries that Trump won't cross, in order to achieve his self-serving goals.
Traits of a sociopath:
Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
Incapacity for Love
Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
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Make no mistake about it, your civil liberties are on the ballot in the midterms.
If you value your right to vote, then vote blue.💙
If you believe every vote should be counted, then vote blue.💙
If you believe that no politician should be able to make decisions for you in your private life, then vote blue. 💙
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
A GOP precinct chair in Utah wrote on Facebook that he thinks giving voting rights to women was a “grave mistake.”
“The more I study history, the more I think giving voting rights to others not head of household has been a grave mistake,” Casey Fisher, a Davis County precinct chair who oversees Republican caucuses in his district.
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Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
" TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.
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A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake. His criminal incompetence, along with his sociopathic indifference during this time is simply unforgivable, and will NEVER be forgotten.
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Obama to Trump in 2017.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like Governor Cuomo, and the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
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On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit. Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the US. A major Brexit supporter, Steve Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign captured the interest of investigators in the UK and the US.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances. In Britain, revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’s annual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange a lunch for the UKIP leaders with the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize..
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As Trump stood in front of that church holding a bible, the look on his face was the look of a madman. It was the look of a deranged lunatic, without boundaries.
Trump once said, “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do!” yet when he was pressed to name his favorite verse, he made one up that does not even exist. In an interview, Trump said that he's never asked God for forgiveness, because he's never done anything wrong. Trump has absolutely nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus Christ. He breaks every commandment daily, has proven he knows nothing of the Bible, and still gets over 87% of the Evangelical Christian vote. To say that evangelicals hold him to a lesser standard would be incorrect, since that would imply that they hold him to any standard at all..
Trump is simply an irredeemable human being. He seems to possess every human flaw known to mankind, as well as everyone of the $even deadly sins.
1. L.UST: a strong inordinate and inappropriate passion or longing, especially for Ivanka and for assaulting random women.
2. G.LUTT0NY: an excessive and ongoing eating of food or drink. An inordinate desire to consume way more than one requires.
3. G.REED: an excessive and insatiable pursuit of money and material goods by any means necessary.
Charity cures greed by putting the desire to help others above storing up treasure for one’s self. Trump created a fake charity foundation, and used it for his own financial gain.
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been gr.eedy, gr.eedy, gr.eedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so gr.eedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a gr.eedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
4. S.L0TH: an excessive laziness or the failure to act and utilize one’s talents.
5. W.RATH/ANGER: a strong anger and hatred towards others.
6. ENVY: the intense desire to have an item that someone else possesses. The desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
7. PRIDE: an excessive view of one's own self, and one's own abilities, without regard for others. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
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Trump now has a new favorite news outlet, *One America "News" Network. This propaganda machine is actually more craven than Fox.
If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.” 😂
In another report, Rouz cast Clinton’s criticism of Brexit as an extension of her “grievous insults and fake narratives against Russia”—an assertion that makes sense only in the context of Rouz’s multiple reports claiming Russia was framed for hacking Democrats.
In all of Rouz’s OAN segments, he is introduced as a “One America correspondent,” with no disclosure of his work for Russia’s state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.
“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”
Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putin’s election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.
One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.
Founded and helmed by 77-year-old circuit-board millionaire Robert Herring Sr., OAN launched in 2013 as an answer to the chatty, opinionated content of mainstream cable-news channels—and a place for viewers too conservative for Fox News.
Over time, the network became increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda. When Rouz joined, the network had recently shed a number of anchors and other staffers who’d bristled at the change.
Though it’s available in only a handful of cable markets, OAN’s viewership includes some influential figures, including Traitor Trump himself. Trump has already fallen for at least two fake stories after seeing them on OAN.
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Any deal that Trump makes is guaranteed to end badly.
The Trump White House agreed to a May 1 troop withdrawal. Biden had to decide whether to honor a deal that included the Taliban, but not the Afghan government.
The most disturbing thing about the agreement Trump made, was that the Afghan government was left out of it. Trump was negotiating with the Taliban about whether or not to remove our troops, and NOT with the Afghan government, which was hosting our troops.
The Republican National Committee has conveniently removed an inconvenient webpage from 2020 in which it praised Trump for signing a "historic peace agreement with the Taliban."
The page had been removed with the web address redirecting to a 404 error page featuring the quip: "It looks like you're as lost as Biden is."
Featured as part of a section titled "President Trump Is Bringing Peace In The Middle East," the page described how Trump had "continued to take the lead in peace talks."
In the now-deleted GOP webpage, it is stated that Trump negotiated a deal for the withdrawals by May 2021 "in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the organization's current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at the request of Trump.
Remember when Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David?
As recently as April, Trump was also voicing his support for withdrawal, stating that "getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do."
The UK's defense minister blamed the chaos in Afghanistan on Trump on Monday.
UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace has pointed the finger at Trump.
He told "BBC Breakfast" on Monday: "The die was cast when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation."
"President Biden inherited a momentum, a momentum that had been given to the Taliban because they felt they had now won. He'd also inherited a momentum of troop withdrawal from the international community, the US."
"So I think in that sense, the seeds of what we're seeing today were before President Biden took office. The seeds were a peace deal that was effectively rushed, that wasn't done in collaboration properly with the international community and then a dividend taken out incredibly quickly."
He had previously called Trump's deal "rotten" and said the international community would likely "pay the consequences."
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Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. But he wants you to believe that he actually cares about law & order. Trump is a career criminal, masquerading as a president.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
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Trump tweet:
"Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress!"
--Trump, Feb 12, 2020
If I were Robert Mueller, I would definitely sue Trump for defamation. Mr. Mueller never lied to Congress, and there's no way that Trump can prove that he did. This would be an easy and quick defamation lawsuit. Mueller could take millions from Trump, plus force Trump to admit for the public record, that he lied.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything..
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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The latest Trump Organization filings reporting a $4.6 million annual loss at Trump's two Scottish golf resorts boost the total red ink for the courses over eight years to an eye-popping $75 million.
The unprofitable properties have been hemorrhaging money for years. Trump International Golf Club Scotland Ltd., which operates Trump’s course in Aberdeenshire, reported a net loss of $1.5 million for 2019 after losing $1.4 million the previous year, according to a filing with Britain’s Companies House registry. The total debt for the club, which opened in 2012, is more than $16 million, the London Times has reported.
Accounting for Trump's Scottish resorts are unusual because Trump is the creditor for his own businesses, which means payment for many of the resorts’ costs flow to the Trump Organization.
The resort losses are so astronomical that some Scottish officials are suspicious about financing and taxes. Trump hasn’t paid a penny in tax on the properties.
Trump bought the Scotland properties with huge amounts of cash at a time when he was heavily indebted and having a difficult time finding a bank to loan him funds. Scottish Green Party co-leader and member of Parliament Patrick Harvie called on the government in November to file an “Unexplained Wealth Order” against Trump to compel him to reveal the source of that cash.
The circular flow of money in the Trump companies provides an opportunity for money laundering, The New Yorker business writer Adam Davidson has suggested. He called the resorts “money disappearing” operations.
Trump “owns the asset, lends the money, owes the money, is owed the money,” Davidson explained. “The overall picture is crystal clear: Every year, Trump lends millions to himself, spends all that money on something, and claims the asset is worth all the money he spent.”
But Trump couldn’t possibly have spent all the outlays he claims on his properties, Davidson said. “We have the planning docs. We know how much he spent — it’s far less than what he claims. The money truly disappears. It goes from one pocket to another pocket and then the pocket is opened to reveal nothing is there.”
The leader of the Scottish government, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, reported late last year that Trump will face “due accountability” if evidence is found linking the resorts to money laundering or any other financial fraud.
The thing everyone reports is the losses--the shareholder (Trump) has lost more than £7M. But the interesting stuff is the fixed asset value and the creditors--over one year. Trump is all of them: he owns the asset, lends the money, owes the money, is owed the money.
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Falwell needs a Michael Cohen. 😆
"You know a lot of people ask me "how do you become the best Christian in America?" REALLY? Have they not looked around lately? Trust me, it's not that hard!! I mean look at the competition. Franklin Graham? Gurl please!!! Jesus slaps his knee and vomits a little everytime I mention Franklin's name. Franklin has devoted his life to bearing false witness. To wit: out of the hundreds of millions of people in America, god handpicked the most vulgar lying adulterer he could find to run everything. And when Franklin's not filling YOUR ear with nonsense, he's filling HIS wallet with cash! Yes, Franklin skims over $800,000 off his "Christian" charities every single year. Who else? Jerry Falwell Jr? Yes, technically, there is no commandment: "Thou shall not have a 3 way with a hot poolboy."
Where's the most dangerous place in America to stand? Between a mega church pastor, and his collection plate. In fairness, evangelicals haven't had a lot of spare time to heal those not covered by insurance in America. They've been too busy insuring that they cover for the heel in the White House. And opening Liberty University. Ka-ching!!$$
Because poolboys ain't gonna pay themselves to keep quiet." 😆
But still, Jesus said to give everything you have to the poor. Jerry's running a billion dollar online diploma mill that makes the poor give everything to HIM. It's like Christianity, in reverse. No, it's not LIKE Christianity in reverse, it IS Christianity in reverse!! And speaking of the Bizarro Jesus, Donald Trump. Here's the thing: Right-wing Christianity supports the businessman, not because the businessman is a Christian, but because Christianity is a business! With all the adultery, divorces, covetousness, false witness, and lack of repentance. Donald has had no trouble becoming Evangelical America's favorite Christian."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian.
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"I think my rhetoric brings people together," Donald said that last year, just four days after Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old MAGA supporter posted an anti-immigrant message online and then opened.fire at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, taking the lives of 22 people, and injuring dozens of others.
A nationwide review conducted has identified at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
After a La.tino gas station attendant in Gainesville, Florida, was suddenly pu.nched in the head by a MAGA supporter, the victim could be heard on surveillance camera recounting the attacker’s own words: “He said, ‘This is for Trump.'" Charges were filed but the victim stopped pursuing them.
When police questioned a Washington state man about his threats to murder a local immigrant, the suspect told police he wanted the victim to "get out of my country," adding, "That’s why I like Trump."
Reviewing police reports and court records, the review found that in at least 12 cases perpetrators hailed DJT in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting innocent victims. In another 18 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant's violent or threatening behavior.
The review could not find a single criminal case filed in federal or state court where an act of violence or threat was made in the name of Obama or Bush.
The 54 cases identified are remarkable in that a link to DJT is captured in court documents and police statements, under the penalty of perjury or contempt. These links are not speculative – they are documented in official records. And in the majority of cases, it was the perpetrators themselves who invoked DJT's name in connection with their case, not anyone else.
Trump and his followers are exactly what Voltaire was talking about when he said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
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In the newly released audio, Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry is critical about Donald, saying she did his homework for him and that he is, among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His gawd@mned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s*t. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." 😂 “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said.
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
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Trump isn't draining the swamp, he's pardoning the swamp, for his own benefit.
After Blagojevich was pardoned by Trump and released from prison, he brought up Trump's so called passionate sense of justice for people of color. 😆 Really?
In June 2019, Trump said that he would not apologize for his harsh comments in 1989 about the Central Park Five, the five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted in NY.
More than a decade after the exoneration of the five teens, Trump indicated in an interview just last year, that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their executions.
The teenagers were exonerated by DNA evidence and a confession from the true perpetrator in 2002, 13 years after they were vilified by prosecutors and in the press after being charged and convicted.
On May 1, 1989, as the case was headed to trial, Trump spent $85,000 placing a full-page ad in four newspapers, calling for the young men accused of the crime to be executed.
“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” the ad proclaimed in enormous capital letters. Below, in smaller text, Trump ranted, “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
The Central Park Five have now been found innocent, after serving 7 to 13 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. But just last year, Trump stated that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their executions. So Trump doesn't feel that they were treated unfairly at all, even though they were innocent. Blagojevich however, is very much guilty as charged. But in Trump's diseased mind, Blagojevich is the victim, and was somehow treated unfairly, but the Central Park Five weren't. 😲
As Governor, Blagojevich tried to sell a seat in the Senate to the highest bidder, like hawking a stolen television off the back of a truck. Blagojevich was also convicted of extorting a children's hospital. Blagojevich tried to take back an $8 million contribution the state made to Children's Memorial Hospital, because the hospital's CEO would not make a campaign donation to the governor. Now let that sink in for a moment.
That sounds exactly like something that Trump would do. After all, Trump was caught operating a fake charity foundation for his own financial gain.
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I compare her to a common criminal.
Lauren, who ran on a "law-and-order" platform, has had several dust-ups with police. This jailbird has a rap sheet unusually long for a member of Congress.
And her track record of thumbing her nose at the law continued after she tussled with Capitol Police officers over her refusal to walk through newly installed House metal detectors.
Back in June 2015, Boebert was cuffed for disorderly conduct at a country music festival near Grand Junction, Colo., after police said she attempted to interfere in the arrest of minors busted for underage drinking and encouraged the accused to run off.
While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies’ reports. She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
“Lauren continued yelling and causing the underage drinkers to become unruly,” an arresting officer said in a statement at the time.
Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015.
A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs.
In September 2010, Boebert was arrested after a neighbor accused Boebert’s two pit bulls of attackingHer dog. Boebert pleaded guilty to a single count of “dog at large."
Boebert’s future husband, Jayson, also had brushes with law enforcement. In January 2004, he was arrested after exposing his himself to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 ) was also there. Jayson Boebert pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure, earning himself four days in jail and two years probation.
In February 2004, he was booked on a domestic violenceCharge, against Lauren. He “did unlawfully strike, shove or kick … and subjected her to physical contact,” a spokesman for the Garfield associate county court clerk stated.They had been dating at the time. Jayson Boebert ultimately served seven days in jail.
In May 2004. during an altercation with Jayson at his home, she scratched his face and chest and trashed his residence, according to a police report. She was slapped with third-degree assault, criminal mischief and underage drinking charges. A rep for the Garfield County Combined Court said they could not reveal any information about the case’s final disposition.
This is what "law & order" and conservative Christian values looks like. 🤣🤣
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Rand Paul isn't even qualified to speak to Dr. Fauci without permission. Especially when you discover that Rand Paul isn't even a real doctor himself.
Rand Paul earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. After that, he completed his general surgery internship at Atlanta-based Georgia Baptist Medical Center, followed by a residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center. Despite his medical training, Paul does not hold a bachelor's degree. He attended Waco, Texas-based Baylor University to study biology and English, but left a few courses short of a diploma after he was accepted into medical school.
Rand Paul is not even a board-certified ophthalmologist, as he reportedly claimed. Paul's certification comes from a board that he created HIMSELF. 😂 But he hasn't been certified by an organization recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties for years.
The now-defunct board he created was not recognized by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, so Randy was not certified by a board recognized by the state since 2005, and since Paul's board dissolved in 2011, he has had no certification from an active body.
Basically, Dr. Dre is more of a doctor than Randy.😄
Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and InfectiousDiseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectiousDiseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrhealDiseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emergingDiseases such as Ebola and Zika.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan forAIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectiousDiseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done..
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We either have laws, are we don't.
“Bullies, narcissists and sociopaths exist in every walk of life and in every town and city in every country, If encouraged by a pathological leader, this minority will enthusiastically step forward to act beyond the law, to target opponents, and violentlyAssert their pathological values. If this process has the support of a critical mass of the general population, as Trump has, history suggests that societies can find themselves powerless to stop further descent into darkness."
--Ian Hughes
"The lesson for democracy that I learned while researching Disordered Minds, is that, because of their tenacity and exaggerated self-belief, people with dangerous personalities often have a greater chance of gaining power than people with normal psychology. And when they do achieve office, they are compelled to dismantle democracy from within. Democracy, after all, places constraints on the power of leaders. Individuals with dangerous personality disorders are psychologically incapable of functioning within these constraints and duly set out to demolish them."
Once in power, they undermine the rule of law and make the law whatever they say it is. They discredit opponents and suppress dissent. They subvert the integrity and effectiveness of the electoral process. They violate the human rights of minorities and those they perceive to be acting against them. They discredit the very notion of truth and then navigate the narcissistic fog of confusion they create with much greater skill than their opponents."
Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities are Destroying Democracy by Ian Hughes
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President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it, because he doesn't believe in science or facts, so he didn't understand it..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018..
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump..
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing.
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Make no mistake, Trump is a sociopath.
Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims and accomplices, who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Stone, Sessions, Manafort, Flynn, etc) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Trump is outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blamed Dems for his government shutdown, even after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown. Trump threw the crowd at his rally under the bus for chanting "send her back" even though they were only repeating his own words and beliefs.
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"The buck stops with me."
-- President Biden, 08/20/2021
As president, Biden took responsibility for the chaos of the Afghan withdrawal.
'No, I don't take responsibility at all'."
--Trump 03/13/2020
Trump deflects blame for his coronavirus testing debacle, and the soaring number of infections.
Personally, I like presidents who don't dodge drafts or responsibility.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
Why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated more than 109,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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Gene Scheel
I don't believe capitalism is the problem. I believe that UNCHECKED capitalism is the problem. I've always said that capitalism has one fundamental flaw, and that flaw is greed. And greed can't check itself, because greed is insatiable. So the problem, in my opinion, comes from politicians and lawmakers who knowingly, and willfully, oppose any steps to put a check these powerful greed based institutions. And republicans are the main culprits. They have been hard at work stripping away Wallstreet regulations that were put into place after the economy collapsed.
Trump himself brought into his administration, more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
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Joe Biden speaks the truth.
Trump is essentially a 74 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He is basically a botched human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind. This is the crux of the problem when it comes to Trump's total and complete failure as a leader and president. Trump's problem is not so much that he refuses to do his job as president, Trump's problem is that he's not even capable of doing his job. He is not equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is simply incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to.
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The notion that Trump was actually concerned about corruption in Ukraine, or corruption in general, is laughable. He even had the audacity to call himself the "law & order" president.
Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now. 😔 Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, because Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible..
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
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“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it."
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham, May 3, 2016
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
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"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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For some strange reason, Kavanaugh and others seem to be under the impression that he is somehow entitled, or preordained to hold a seat on the Supreme Court. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kavanaugh is not entitled to a goddamn thing. However, the more than 320 million people in this country, are in fact entitled. We are entitled to have the very best people on the Supreme Court. That means that anyone, who's character, integrity, judgment, morals, and temperament is in question, has no business being a member of only 9 people who will hold sway and judgment over 320 million people. This whole thing is about us, and what we deserve. And we clearly deserve better than Kavanaugh. And we most definitely deserve better than Trump.
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On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia...
A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. We now know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers had or were at least aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself, Don Jr, Manafort, Flynn, Jared, Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone, just to name a few. But what's worse, is the fact that they all lied about these contacts. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover them up, every single one of them.
The question every American should be asking is why were there so many contacts(272) between Trump’s people and Russian officials and operatives, and why did Trump and his people lie about those contacts?
Helsinki July 16, 2018.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Make no mistake, Putin is America's enemy, and not because we want him to be, he's America's enemy because that's what he has chosen to be. Trump is a Russian asset, and not because that's what we want him to be, he's a Russian asset because that's what he has chosen to be. We should treat them both accordingly with the choices that they have made..
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card he had left, and he played it..
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
Donald literally tried to steal the election by falsely accusing others of trying to steal the election.
Right-wing propaganda from the phascist '30s was built on the idea that you accuse the other side of that which you are guilty of.
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As a Marine veteran, my heart goes out to you doctors and nurses on the front lines of this virus. America will forever owe you all a debt of gratitude. There's no shame in having a breakdown due to fear or exhaustion. The only shame is in not getting up from it, and letting it control you. Hold the line!!!
Semper Fi..
"If you're going through he//, keep going."
--Winston Churchill
During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like many of our Governors, and especially the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. Not only will they fail, but like Trump, they will seek to blame others for their failures.
In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did they do the right thing? So far, Trump has failed. And Trump has never failed to fail, because failing has always been the easiest thing for him to do..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Obama to Trump in 2017.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed..
She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said it was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Trump is currently working on giving it a shot as we speak.
● Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
● Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
● Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trump's family proliferating like Borgias—and the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to his apologist Mark Meadows.
● Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
● Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-nazi5 while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
● Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
● Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 200,000 Americans so far.
● Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
● Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
● Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate (the free press) as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
● Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
● Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
● Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
● Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
● Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
● Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? "It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is brazen and deviant despotism.
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Since Trump refuses to take responsibility, the American people will replace him with someone that will.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview..
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully.
—Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases, 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” —Trump at the White House.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting..
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Why anyone would choose to listen to Trump instead of medical experts is beyond me. Call me Krazy, but if I want to know how to effectively deal with a pandemic outbreak, I'm calling Dr. Fauci and other medical experts. If I want to know how to bankrupt multiple casinos, or set up a fake university and charity foundation, or lie like it's my job, or launder money with the Russians, then I'm calling Trump, and nobody but Trump...
Trump supporters who would rather listen to Trump instead of medical experts, should not be allowed to receive any medical treatment from doctors or nurses of any kind. If they need a surgical operation, SORRY, they'll have to call the White House and request an appointment with Trump to perform it. If they're about to give birth, SORRY, they have to call the White House and request an appointment with Trump to deliver their child. And If their child gets sick, SORRY, Trump will now be the baby's new pediatrician. If they need a root canal, SORRY, Trump will perform it in the Oval Office. If they need a new pair of prescription glasses, SORRY, Trump will perform their eye examinations from now on. If they've been in an accident, and are seriously injured, SO SORRY, you can no longer be rushed to the E.R. they have to be rushed to the Oval Office where Trump will attend to their injuries.
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The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
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Now that Trump and republicans are declaring that we no longer have a Constitution, and Trump is now our dictator, does that mean we have to adopt a new Pledge of Allegiance?
"I pledge allegiance to King Donald Trump, of the Dystopian States of America, and to the monarchy for which he stands, one ruler, the chosen god, with oppression and subjugation for all."
This is about whether or not a president can be impeached. If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy and our republic. It will be as if we never fought and won the revolutionary war against a King.
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when May 1 is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am not religious, but that won't stop me from going to places of worship.
I'm nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. There is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. No one wants Trump to prematurely open up the country, and end social distancing more than me. I don't recognize anyone's authority."
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Trump should just stop talking all together, because he doesn't help, he only hurts, and has never solved a single problem in his entire life. He doesn't solve problems, he only creates problems, or he exacerbates them. Trump himself is a systemic problem for the country, on multiple levels. He portrayed the pandemic as a hoax, and believes he knows more than medical experts in their own fields. To put it mildly, he is a walking talking, living breathing fk up.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview..
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us, that I can assure you.” —Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting.
This is what you get when you have an illegitimate president who doesn't believe in facts or science, but instead immerses himself in buffoonery like magic and sorcery.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham,
Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have
either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption,
paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Today Trump openly admitted that he wants to dominate over the American people. This is the dictator that most of us knew was waiting to show itself since the day Trump was sworn in.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Not only has Trump encouraged and incited his cult to commit acts of violence at his rallies, he also encouraged Cops to commit acts of violence against people within their custody.
Trump speech to Police Officers in July 2017, Long Island NY.
"When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, I said, please don't be too nice."
23 February 2016:
"I'd like to punch him in the face." Trump said this in front of a crowd of his cultists, after a protester was removed from one of his rallies.
22 November 2015:
" Maybe he should have been roughed up." Trump said this in reference Mercutio Southall Jr. who was ejected from a Trump rally. The video footage showed Trump supporters jostling, kicking, and punching Southall. It even prompted Fox & Friends hosts to question the violence from Trump's cultists.
March 2016:
" Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said "You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
February 2016:
" Knock the krap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees."
Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever—and possibly get away with it..
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he could possibly get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads."
As America was expanding in the 1780s, the founding fathers realized that open access to secure and private communication among its dispersed citizens was critical to forming political groups and holding free elections without fear of retribution. The U.S. Constitution empowered Congress “to establish post offices and post roads." The founding fathers provided the necessary infrastructure to “bind” the growing nation together through communication and commerce. Thereby, the Post Office Department (now the U. S. Postal Service) was born.
Trump: "They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
This was Trump, the sitting US President, openly admitting to blocking additional funding for the United States Postal Service in order to make it more difficult for American citizens to vote.
Let's face it, Trump doesn't believe you should have the right to vote unless you're voting for him. And that's not an exaggeration, he actually believes that. We have never seen anything like this from a sitting president.
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The problem Trump is having is that everyone is not going to go along with his lies and schemes. Everyone isn't going to be willing to throw their careers and reputations away for him. Everyone isn't willing to be his shoeshine boy like Barr, Moscow Mitch, Graham, and Nunes. People like Lt.Col. Vindman, Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassadors Bill Taylor, and Marie Yovanovitch, are examples of Americans who serve a cause greater than themselves. The moral character, courage, and integrity of true patriots like these, will always be obstacles to traitors, cowards, and to the evil that men do....
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NEVER FORGET, Last year during a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Trump has told outrageous lies about helping first responders on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
NEVER FORGET, that on 9/11, just hours after the towers fell, Trump bragged to local TV station WWOR, that his building 40 Wall Steet, was now the tallest building in downtown Manhattan. On a day of such unimaginable loss and tragedy, Trump seemed to be more focused on the bragging rights of now having the tallest building in Manhattan. In his diseased narcissistic mind, that day was all about him But in true Trump fashion, his boast about having the tallest building in Manhattan after the towers fell was a big lie. The nearby 70 Pine Street building is 25 ft, taller than Trump's.
Trump also lied about losing 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend he lost on 9/11.
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Trump serves at the pleasure of Putin. He's not interested in protecting our troops, he's only interested in slavishly serving and protecting Putin. And if that means selling out our troops, then so be it. As far as Trump is concerned, their lives are a small price to pay, just as long as he gets what he wants.
The motivating factors that drives a person to betray their own country, and become a willing agent of another hostile country are broken down into the acronym MICE.
M oney
I deology
C ompromise/Coercion
E go
Trump clearly has no ideology, because he believes in nothing. But he is clearly susceptible to the other 3. Money, Ego and being Compromised. There's no doubt that Putin, being a KGB agent, recognized those weaknesses in Trump from a mile away. People like Manafort, Kushner, Don Jr, Moscow Mitch, and many other Trump associates fell prey to at least 3 of those factors as well. Trump and his inner circle presented a target rich environment for Russan agents. I have no doubt that Putin was both dumbfounded, and elated at how many of Trump's people were so eager to betray America..
On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. The report states that there were a total of 272 secret contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. All of Trump's people initially lied about these contacts when questioned.
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Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and they went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable.
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable..
Trump: "Only I can phuck it up."
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In 2018, Johnson and a group of Republicans wanted to show their patriotism by spending the 4th of July celebrating America's independence in Moscow.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
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Let's be clear, when Trump said "stop the steal" it was code word for his followers to "start the steal."
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution. It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
Some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Two of these people have detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turnedViolent.
Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is the first account detailing their role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence.
The two sources, both of whom have been granted anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, describe participating in “dozens” of planning briefings ahead of that day when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol as his election loss to President Joe Biden was being certified.
“I rememberMarjorie T.G. specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”
Rolling Stone has confirmed that both sources were involved in organizing the main event aimed at objecting to the electoral certification.
These two sources also helped plan a series of demonstrations that took place in multiple states around the country in the weeks between the election and the storming of the Capitol. According to these sources, multiple people associated with the March for Trump and Stop the Steal events that took place during this period communicated with members of Congress throughout this process.
Along with Greene, the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).
“We would talk to Boebert’s team, Cawthorn’s team, Gosar’s team like back to back to back to back,” says the organizer.
And Gosar, who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters, allegedly took things a step further. Both sources say he dangled the possibility of a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.
“Our impression was that it was a done deal,” the organizer says, “that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval … in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House "Freedom" Caucus to sign on as a show of support.”
The organizer claims the pair received “several assurances” about the “blanket pardon” from Gosar.
“I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing,” Gosar said, according to the organizer.
In another indication members of Congress may have been involved in planning the protests against the election, Ali Alexander, who helped organize the “WildProtest,” declared in a since-deleted livestream broadcast that Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs helped him formulate the strategy for that event.
“I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said at the time. “We four schemed up on putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that — who we couldn’t lobby — we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside.”
The rally planner, who accused Alexander of ratchetingUP the potential forViolence that day while taking advantage of funds from donors and others who helped finance the events, confirmed that he was in contact with those three members of Congress.
“He just couldn’t help himself but go on his live and just talk about everything that he did and who he talked to,” the planner says of Alexander. “So, he, like, really told on himself.”
The sources plan to share that information with congressional investigators right away. While both sources say their communications with the House’s Jan. 6 committee thus far have been informal, they are expecting to testify publicly.
“I have no problem openly testifying,” the planner says.
--Rolling Stone
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Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Donald "I believe in magic not science" Trump, will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 6 thousand American lives.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives.
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
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Trump lives by the rules of the coward's playbook.
Rule 1. Take credit for everything, but responsibility for nothing. Always blame others for acts that you have clearly committed, and take credit for positive things that you had absolutely nothing to do with.
Rule 2. Never tell the truth, when a lie will do just fine. Lie about all things, great and small.
Rule 3. Take advantage of any crisis, and use them as an excuse to unleash your true authoritarian nature.
Rule 4. Become the victim, and the " strongman." You must master the art of playing the poor victim, juxtaposed with playing the "strongman" that always wins.
Rule 5. Never put anyone or anything before yourself, unless you're using that person or thing as a shield.
Rule 6. Betrayal is a good thing.
Rule 7. Loyalty is a one way street that runs from everyone else straight to you.
Rule 8. When in doubt, blame Obama.
Rule 9. In any situation, always ask yourself "what would Jesus do?" And then do the exact opposite.
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A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake..
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. And over the last 3 years, he fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire.
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure within White House national security council, and in typical Trump fashion, he got rid of it simply because he didn't understand it, and didn't care enough to even try to understand it
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Trump tricks his kool-aid guzzling cult into believing that he's going to be tough on China, he then turns around and drops to his knees at President Xi's feet, sobbing, blubbering, groveling, and pleading with him to do whatever he can to help him get reelected. 😂
This is the same so called tuff guy that used brute force on peaceful protesting American citizens just so he could have a 5 minute photo op. Utterly disgusting
Make no mistake, most republicans on Capitol Hill are fully aware of exactly who and what Trump is. They know that Trump is an existential threat to America, to our Constitution, and to our democratic institutions. Trump is a criminal minded, narcissistic sociopath who never puts anyone or anything before himself, unless he's physically using that person or thing as a shield. What most of us would call treason or betrayal, Trump calls it " looking out for the only thing that matters" himself.
Trump has always been a self-absorbed extreme narcissist. Every decision Trump has ever made in his entire life, before and and since he became president, has been based solely on his own best interests. Ego rules supremely in a narcissist’s life. And What motivates Trump is whatever fuels his ego, things like power, control, adulations, praises, cruelty to others, and personal monetary gain.
Another way that an extreme narcissist like Trump energizes his ego is through playing the role of the victim. The goal of Trump's deception is to make you believe that he suffers more than you, or anyone for that matter.
Trump is incredibly adept at the game of manipulation, especially when it comes to his gullible and cultish base. So instead of taking responsibility for his actions, and the consequences that results from them, he tries to make others feel responsible for his plight. Because In the eyes of an extreme narcissist like Trump, their actions and behavior are always right and totally justified.
Trump and republicans continue to rage against the Constitution in their ongoing war with our democratic republic. They have made it abundantly clear that we must vote them out of office in order for our democracy to survive.
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JimJones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"He was a master of manipulation, but you saw him with this dark hair, the sunglasses, and the way that he spoke -- he was a great orator -- and it moved you, it inspired you because he was so passionate. And so I was just enthralled," said former Peoples Temple member Leslie Wagner-Wilson.
As time went on, former members said Jones became more extreme.
In 1974, Jones leased more than 3,800 acres of isolated land in the jungle from the Guyanese government. By 1978, nearly 1,000 followers had moved to the Guyana compound. Having been forced to give up their passports and money upon arrival, some former members said they were cut off from the outside world.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
A cult environment like "Qanon" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing." The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
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When it comes to Trump, I'll take the word of Trump's own sister, who has known him his entire life? She knows him better, and longer, than anyone alive today. And if she wouldn't support him as president, why on earth should anyone else?
In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His god-d tweets and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s***. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how ”She didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
Only a f○○l would ignore what Trump's own sister says about him.
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@debrasvaleson3768
Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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The lawyer for Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy said his client is prepared to testify under oath that aides to Devin Nunes, scrapped a trip to Ukraine this year when they realized it would mean notifying Dem Chairman Adam Schiff.
Lev Parnas would tell Congress that the purpose of the planned trip was to interview two Ukrainian prosecutors who claim to have evidence that could help Trump’s reelection campaign, said Parnas’ attorney, Joseph Bondy.
When Nunes’ staff realized that going to Ukraine themselves would mean alerting Schiff to their treachery, they instead asked Parnas to set up the meetings for them over phone and Skype, which he did, according to Bondy.
The Nunes team’s scrapped trip to Ukraine has not been previously reported, nor have the meetings that Bondy said his client arranged in place of the overseas trip. The meetings took place in late March, and Derek Harvey, a senior investigator for Nunes, represented the congressman, according to Bondy.
Parnas says he began working with Harvey after Nunes and his staff traveled to Vienna in late November to meet with another potential source of political dirt on Dems: former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
Parnas wanted to testify before the House Intel Committee about the Vienna trip. Since then, Nunes has threatened to sue both CNN and The Daily Beast, which also reported on Parnas’ story.
The revelations about the planned trip to Ukraine this spring, suggest that Nunes’ efforts to dig up dirt on Biden and Dems did not end with the Vienna trip. They also implicate Nunes and his staff in the very same events the committee is currently investigating. Specifically, the monthslong effort by Trump, Rudy and others to get Ukrainian officials to help them dig up dirt on Biden, and to validate debunked far-right conspiracies, about Ukraine and the 2016 election.
During the public hearings of the impeachment inquiry, Nunes used all of his allotted time to attack Dems, the media, churlish cows,😆 and to repeat the same unfounded claims about Dems and Biden. At no point did Nunes EVER mention that he or his staffers met with the three Ukrainian officials, some of whom were mentioned by name during testimony.
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state..
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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Jonathan Karl, the ABC News chief Washington correspondent broke down some details he learned while writing his new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
That includes what he has heard about Paul Gosar. Anderson Cooper asked Karl if Republicans have privately expressed embarrassment, shame and concern to him about the future of the party, Karl said, “Oh, yes.”
He expanded on that in reference to Gosar, after multiple Republicans stood up for him on Wednesday. But Karl said it’s a different story behind closed doors.
“The way Republicans would talk about Gosar privately, is entirely different than the spectacle today of effectively defending him,” Karl said. “I mean, they say he's lost it.
Gosar, whose own siblings have spoken out against him on multiple occasions, responded to the censure by retweeting the same video that got him in trouble in the first place, and Karl was not surprised.
“I've had top Republicans tell me about Gosar specifically, before this episode. ‘He's not all there,’” Karl said.
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For the last four years straight, Trump, along with his surrogates, have adopted and used the most fiendish propaganda tactics on his followers. They have told so many lies, that Trump’s cultists can no longer distinguish truth from fiction.
Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
-- Joseph Goebbels
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels
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Brand Gadfly
September 2016 Trump praises Putin's 'strong control' over Russia and said he was 'far more' of a leader than Obama, during a commander in chief forum on NBC.
"I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing' -- the man has very strong control over a country. I think when he calls me brilliant I'll take the compliment, okay?' If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.'
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
So all of that sounds sarcastic to you? 😄 It sounds like the pattern of someone who admires dictators, and has aspirations of being one himself.
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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Trumps presidency has been a world-wind of lies, obfuscation, unbridled buffoonery, thievery, treason, chaos, nepotism, cronyism, narcissism, criminal negligence, skullduggery, moral turpitude, death, and sanctioned lawlessness. Simply put, it's been a menagerie of endless horrors.
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"The buck stops with me."
-- President Biden, 08/20/2021
As president, Biden took responsibility for the chaos of the Afghan withdrawal.
'No, I don't take responsibility at all'."
--Trump 03/13/2020
Trump deflects blame for his coronavirus testing debacle, and the soaring number of infections.
Personally, I like presidents who don't dodge drafts or responsibility.
Why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 105,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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Imprisoning and eliminating your political rivals is a page right out of Putin's playbook. It's a tactic of every current and past dictator.
Trump clearly has the mind of a criminal dictator. And his supporters are flirting with authoritarianism.
"Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one."
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't)
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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A narcissistic sociopath like Trump is a person that only cares about power, control, and self-adulation. There will be no guilt, no apologies, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a sociopathic narcissist.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises..
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way...
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities..
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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DJT does not care about anyone or anything other than himself, and his own desires.
A Trump quote from 2004, in response to a Larry King Live caller asking him how he handles stress during a crisis.
Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. And Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily, and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, Rudy) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all the boxes.
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Trump: "I knew it was a pandemic before anyone knew what a pandemic was. Nobody knew what a pandemic was until I started using the word. Doctors were saying "wow Mr. President, you know more about this stuff than we do!!"
We're currently looking at a new experimental drug to fight the coronavirus called Icy-Hot. I believe it's a cream that's applied to the infected area. This new vaccine was created and tested extensively at (TUMC) Trump University Medical Center. Now some people say it feels icy, and some people say it feels hot, I believe there are fine people on both sides of this debate. So I said, why don't we just call it "Icy-hot" My gut tells me that my new Icy-Hot cream will work, and my bowels have never let me down. I have tremendous bowels by the way. So maybe it will work , maybe it won't. Nobody really knows. So we'll see what happens.. President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
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“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Obama to Trump in 2017.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like Governor Cuomo, and the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
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Senior Legislative Counsel Paul Gordon, contrasted the patriotism of congressional Republicans during Watergate with the betrayal of democracy by today’s Republicans:.
“Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike recognized that Nixon’s misdeeds to get himself re-elected threatened the Constitution that they all took an oath to protect. When his fellow Republicans made clear that they would put our democracy first, Nixon knew he would be impeached, and he resigned in disgrace …
“The senators who vote to acquit Trump will be voting to eliminate the most important component of checks and balances against dictatorial executive power … And then, they will have to go back home and look their constituents—and their constituents’ children—in the eye and tell them why they cast this vote."
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and Republicans are now telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people, the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we the Amercan, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
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The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did they do the right thing? So far, Trump has failed. And Trump has never failed to fail, because failing has always been the easiest thing for him to do..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama
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During our darkest hour, our so called president, went on national tv, and told the American people that he's not responsible for anything, and that many of them are going to die. Let that sink in for a moment.
Trump has failed as a president, as a leader, and as a human being, in every way, on every level, and at every turn imaginable.
Trump: "There will be lots and lots of deaths, but that's okay, because I'm a complete sociopath, so it's not so bad."
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This MLK quote should be read by every republican in public office every morning whenever they wake up.
"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
This quote aptly describes Mike Johnson.
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In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction. Placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into any position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act. Nothing good has ever resulted from anything that Trump has ever touched or been involved with. He is void of any and all goodwill or human decency. He is a purely toxic, insidious and malevolent being, who constitutes a malignant affliction on this country.
The safety and national security of America should have never been placed into the hands of a mentally impaired and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored.
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Saudi Prince Mohammed bragged to confidants and to the Emirati Crown Prince, that he has Jared Kushner in his pocket.
Jared Kushner made an unannounced trip to Riyad in October of last year, catching some intelligence officials off guard. Kushner and Saudi Royal Prince Mohammed are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy.
After the meeting, Crown Prince Mohammed told confidants that he has Kushner in jis pockets, and that Kushner had discussed the names of Saudis disloyal to the crown prince, according to three sources who have been in contact with members of the Saudi and Emirati royal families since crackdown ordered by the Prince Mohammed.
Kushner had access to Trump's daily security briefing, a highly sensitive intellig(ence update meant to be seen by only the president and his top advisers, before being stripped of his top-secret security clearance.
Before losing that access, Kushner was particularly interested in information about the Middle East, citing several former White House and US government officials.
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Isn't it funny how Parnas was working for Trump alongside Rudy, now all of a sudden Trump doesn't know him, and republicans are attacking him? Their attacks against Parnas become even more dubious whenever we see all the pictures of him hanging out at Mar-a-Lago and Trump's hotel with Rudy, Trump, McCarthy, Meadows, Graham, Pence, Eric and Don Jr, Kellyanne, Sarah Sanders, and the list goes on and on. Parnas was a permanent fixture at Trump's properties.
On top of all of that, Parnas has been indicted for funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a secret account into Trump's campaign, and into the campaigns of multiple Republicans. But Trump and his republican sycophants are acting as if Parnas was hanging out with Dems, and funneling money into Dem campaigns. You can't make this stuff up.
Parnas received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
Parnas' consulting firm, Fraud Guarantee, paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy.
In October, McCarthy said he plans to donate the $111,000 that was given to the House Republicans' main fundraising committee by Fruman and Parnas. 😲
A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman.
Prosecutors say that Parnas and Fruman “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
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Trump & Bob Woodward's virus Conversation Transcript: Trump ‘Playing it down’
February 7, 2020
Trump:
"Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation."
Woodward:
"Indeed, it is."
Trump:
"It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?"
Woodward:
"I know. It’s much forgotten.:
Trump:
"It’s pretty amazing. And then I said, “Well, is that the same thing?”
Woodward:
"What are you able to do for-"
Trump:
"This is moreDeadly. This is 5% versus 1%, and less than 1%. So this isDeadly stuff.:
March 19, 2020
Trump:
"Now it’s starting out it’s not just all people, Bob. But just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older-:
Woodward:
"Yeah. Exactly."
Trump:
"Young people too. Plenty of young people. We’re looking at what’s going on in-"
Woodward:
"So, give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci, or somebody who kind of… It caused a pivot in your mind, because it’s clear just from what’s on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, “Oh my God. The gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.”
Trump:
"Well, I think Bob, really, to be honest with you-"
Woodward:
"Sure. I want you to be."
Trump:
"I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down."
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General John Kelly voted for Trump, and eventually became his White House Chief of Staff. And THEN, he got to know him.
“The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathet0ic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,”
--- Marine General Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff.
In 1996, the Association to Benefit Children, a charity, held a ribbon-cutting at a nursery school serving children with AIDS in Manhattan. Bigwigs who had donated a lot of money, like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former mayor David Dinkins, and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were in attendance. But there was another dude who showed up—despite not being a donor at all. Guess who?7
"Nobody knew he was coming," another donor in attendance told the Washington Post. "There's this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don't know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down."
According to the charity's executive director, Trump had never given a single dollar to the charity or the nursery school. But you know who did? The dude whose seat was stolen by Trump.
Steven Fisher, a developer, had given a lot to the charity to build the nursery school. While the people sitting around Trump were concerned about him just showing up and jacking the Fisher's seat, the ceremony had already started and there wasn't much they could do by that point.
As photographers took pictures, a children's choir sang "This Little Light of Mine," all while Trump sat nearby, looking like he was actually an honored donor. Trump even did the Macarena with some of the children and stars onstage.
After the event though, Trump left without explaining his uninvited attendance—and he exited without even donating anything either.
The next day, the charity's executive director had to email Fisher to apologize. "I immediately said 'no,' but Rudy Giuliani said 'yes' and I felt I had to accede to him," the executive director explained. "I am just heartsick. I hope you can forgive me," the executive director pleaded.
Trump never apologized.
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Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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Today, Trump may have told his biggest lie to date since the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump at today's briefing: “We tested far more than anybody else,” he said. “We have now tested — with the best test— far more than anybody else,” he added. “And when I say anybody else, I’m talking about other countries. No country is even close.” 😲
Trump's remarks, interviews, tweets, blatant LIES, and incoherent ramblings, from Jan. 22 to March 9th.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview.
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us, that I can assure you.” —Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases, 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” —Trump at the White House.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 26: “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” — Trump when asked if “schools should be preparing for a coronavirus spreading.”
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting.
March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” — Trump
tweet.
Two days later, on March 11, the WHO declared the global outbreak a pandemic.
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Romney stayed true to his oath of office, and for that, he should be applauded. No Senator or Congressman swears an oath to the president. They swear an oath to the Constitution, and to the people of this country. However Trump, being the megalomaniac that he is, believes that everyone should swear an oath to him. And anyone who doesn't, should be called a "never Trumper." As if being a never Trumper comes with some sort of negative connotation. Being called a never Trumper is like having a badge honor bestowed upon you. It simply means that you put your country, and the Constitution before an undeserving and illegitimate con-man.
Being a never Trumper is something we should all aspire to be. For there is nothing more righteous, than being a never Trumper. I salute Romney, Schiff, and all of his colleagues, for having the courage and the integrity to remain true to their oaths, and for standing up for our Constitution, the country, and the American people.
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
This pretty much sums up the loathsome state of the Republican party today
We are currently facing a Constitution crisis, and our democracy as we know it, is on the line.
The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did he do the right thing? So far, republicans have failed..
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants. The articles of impeachment were tailor made for a wannabe dictator like Trump..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. We will be back to where we were before the Declaration of Independence was signed. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King..
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Donald is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fasc.ism, wild conspiracy theories, rac.ism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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It will not be a legitimate trial without witnesses and evidence. Republicans refusal to allow witnesses and evidence is what's known as a COVER-UP.
Trump and republicans in the Senate wouldn't have a problem with Bolton, Rudy, Mulvaney, or John Eisenberg testifying if Trump was actually innocent. The problem is he's not innocent. He's guilty as charged, and they know it.
The American people demand to hear from Rudy, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Bolton, and the White House lawyer John Eisenberg, who hid the full transcript of Trump's phone call on the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Eisenberg hid the full transcript after Lt.Col. Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid.
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Trump, being the moral abomination that he is, has the absolute worst judgment of character. He always picks the absolute worst people. Just look at the people he has surrounded himself with. Many of them are either in jail, have been convicted of crimes, under indictment, or will soon be in jail. His aide Rob Porter was forced out of the white house for beating up his wife and giving her a black eye, which Trump definitely knew about. And how could we forget the corruption surrounding Pruitt,, Zinke, and Devos. Trump has a lot in common with these people in that he's just as unethical as they are....more so even.
Trump also identifies with rapists and sexual predators, that's why he picked Kavanaugh. Trump sees himself in him.
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The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did they do the right thing? So far, Trump has failed. And Trump has never failed to fail, because failing has always been the easiest thing for him to do.
When this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Donald "I believe in magic not science" Trump, will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 8 thousand American lives. And many of these Americans did not have to die.
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another.
So to bring order and harmony to the chaos, he create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront. Building on the Ebola experience, President Obama set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council, and another in the Department of Homeland Security—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health, and the CDC, and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.
But that’s all gone now. In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down. This was the directorate charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of shock. Because experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
In the spring of 2018, Trump pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated..
America would never survive another four years of Trump, and his criminally incompetent administration. Unfortunately, many Americans did not, and will not survive the first 3 years of his administration. May they rest in peace...
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From the 1930s to today, the modern conservative movement has tried to restrict majority rule at every turn — because they know a mass democratic movement poses an existential threat to their power.
Throughout the 2016 election cycle, and immediately after, commentators repeatedly warned America that Trump represented a fa scist threat to democracy, one so completely anomalous to the American experience that he was best compared to the fa scist dictators of 1930s Europe, or perhaps Latin American caudillos and African strongmen. Between his attacks on the free press, his
bigotedRhetoric, and his weak understanding of checks and balances, the argument went, Trump rejected the American ideal of democracy itself.
Trump’s time in office has also revealed a more mundane truth: Trump, for all his illiberalism and contempt for democracy, is a product of the mainstream American conservative movement.
The broader story, eclipsed by Trump’s scandalous behavior, is that for decades, the US right has beenFighting to roll back the progress won by the great social movements of the twentieth century. To do so, they have proven time and again that they are willing to go after democracy itself in a bid to preserve the oligarchs’ stranglehold on power and wealth — aided in no small part by deft exploitation of the various counter-majoritarian institutions embedded in the American political system.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Today,, our constitution, and our democracy won, and an insecure, thin skinned wannabe dictator lost. Congratulations America!!!😄
And as for Trump, take this "L" and wear it around your neck. It looks good on you.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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Make no mistake, Trump supporters are just like him. They don't believe in democracy or our Constitution. They hate everything America is suppose to represent and stand for. Trump supporters are NOT patriots by any stretch of the imagination.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
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So basically the usual suspects. I'm not psychic, but even I knew who those names would be.
Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
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So nearly everyone in Trump's inner circle and campaign, were in some way, in contact with, or secretly meeting with the Russians, and they ALL lied about it. Enough said.
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
What Kushner tried to do is exactly what American traitors have done in the past when they've decided to start working for the Russian government. It's basically what Aldrich Ames did in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Union Embassy in DC, and turned over highly classified information to the Russians.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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One America "News" Network. This propaganda machine is actually more craven than Fox. In other words, if fox is Al qaeda, then One America Network is ISIS.
One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.” 😂
In all of Rouz’s OAN segments, he is introduced as a “One America correspondent,” with no disclosure of his work for Russia’s state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.
“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”
Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putin’s election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.
One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.
Over time, the network became increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda. When Rouz joined, the network had recently shed a number of anchors and other staffers who’d bristled at the change.
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
"Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have but one sentiment now: that is, we have a government, and laws, and a flag, and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter."
---Ulysses S. Grant
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For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts were unknown for seven months, even after Interpol issued a red notice for Tokhtakhounov. And then, in April 2013, this fugitive from American justice, appeared seated near Trump in the VIP section of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News.
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Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
March 24: On Twitter, Trump Lied again when he claimed that only seniors need to be protected from the coronavirus.
Trump: "Our people want to return to work. They will practice Social Distancing and all else, and Seniors will be watched over protectively & lovingly. We can do two things together," he wrote.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American people was NOT true. And at least 100k Americans have needlessly died because of his lies.
Trump would be in better shape politically if he had been honest with the American people from the beginning. Which just proves that even when telling the truth would be substantially better for Trump, he STILL chooses to lie. Smh.
That is the mark of a bonafide pathological liar.
Allan Lichtman, the historian known for accurately predicting presidential elections, said that Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history.
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I wish that there was a way we could somehow flatten the curve of Trump's lies, better known as Bull💩Mountain.
Trump is now bragging about the ratings of his daily live news conferences on the coronavirus, and suggested that the large viewer numbers — rather than the multiple lies he has told during them — are fueling discussions in the media about ending the practice of broadcasting them live and unfiltered.
Trump: “Because the ratings of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the NYT, the Lamestream Media is going crazy" Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. Apparently this is all a game to him.
What Trump's utterly oblivious, self-absorbed, Ineffectual pompous a$$ doesn't realize is that the American people aren't tuning in because of him, we are tuning in because we want to keep up-to-date on the coronavirus and the US’s policies on it. The American people are watching the press briefings to hear from the coronavirus task force, which includes top public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and others on the task force.
Trump has made dozens of false claims during the briefings, which have directly led to the loss of lives, including overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, to falsely saying that anyone who wants to be tested for coronavirus infections can be, to claiming that the coronavirus will magically disappear, to claiming that there are no shortages of coronavirus tests, to claiming that America has tested more people than any country in the world, to claiming that the coronavirus was no different than the flu.
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February 26, 2020, Trump's comments on the coronavirus:
"When you have 15 infected people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero....that's a pretty good job we've done."
Trump’s March 17 press conference:
“This is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like Governor Cuomo, and the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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We all know what Trump was doing in February. He was golfing more than Tiger Woods, he was trolling tweeter, he was helping to spread the virus by holding a marathon of cult rallies, he was lying about the seriousness of the virus on a daily basis, and he was busy praising China for it's response to the coronavirus.. This is what happens whenever you have a fully compromised traitor as your president.
Trump praised China in a Feb 7 tweet:
"Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!"
Before that, Trump praised China and President Xi in a Jan 24 tweet....
"China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!"
Helsinki July 16, 2018
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
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As the relief package was being discussed, the only thing Trump wanted to know is, what's in it for him. He considers himself to be the world's biggest victim after all.
Most Americans agreed that Coronavirus-related corporate bailouts need to come with some strings attached. Trump and Steve Mnuchin wanted to hide the names of the corporations and businesses that will receive billions of dollars from the relief packages 6 months..
lawmakers were negotiating a $1.8 trillion stimulus package to help boost the economy during the global pandemic. One of the major sticking points of the debate on Capitol Hill: how to administer $500 billion in relief for big business and major corporations. Trump has already stated that he believes that he should be responsible for administering the money. This is the same con-man who ran a fake charity, a fake university, and tried to steal his dying father's entire estate. It's all but guaranteed that Trump and Jared will try to hoard billions for themselves, their own hotels, resorts, and other properties.
The proposal backed by Trump and Senate Republicans would give Steven Mnuchin wide discretion over which companies get money and when. It would also allow Mnuchin to withhold the names of the corporations and businesses receiving the bailout money for 6 months. Dems in Congress are saying, "hold on swamp, NOT SO FAST!!!" Dems want some guardrails around what companies can and cannot do with the money once checks are cut. Otherwise, what’s to stop an airline from using its bailout money to give its CEO a bonus instead of paying its workers? Or to prevent a major hotel chain from laying off workers while engaging in stock buybacks?
By and large, American voters agree companies shouldn’t get money without strings attached.
And the swamp howled.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Trump's presidency will be remembered as "The Great Oppression." And he will be remembered as "The Great Pretender." Trump is, and has always been, a fraud. Therefore his failure as a leader and as a president was inevitable.
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone else, or something else.
In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
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Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem & upheaval. I am a merchant of lies & deception. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, grotesque, selfish, indecent, malevolent, debased, indifferent, inept, sociopathic, and malicious.
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Parnas should have listened to Michael Cohen's warning about getting close to Trump. Just imagine that you're a loyal MAGA hat wearing Trump cultist like Parnas. And for more than a year, you worked for Trump by partnering with Rudy to help carry out Trump's bribery scheme in Ukraine. You even put yourself in legal jeopardy for Trump by illegally funneling tons of Russian money into his super-PAC, and republican campaigns.
Parnas received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
So then you get caught, arrested, and indicted. Then you turn on the TV one day, to see your cult leader, the man you loved and admired, the man that you risked everything for, announce to the world, that he's never met you, and has no idea who you are. 😲 How would you feel? 😄
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Ryan Zinke, another one of Trump's " very best people" who is facing an ethics probe over land dealings, insisted a month ago that he still has Trump’s full support.
While Zinke was in CA touring the deadly Camp Fire damage in Paradise with Gov. Brown, He told The Sacramento Bee he has no recollection of meeting in 2017 with wealthy Sacramento land baron Angelo Tsakopoulos, as first reported by the Washington Post.
Zinke is being investigated on multiple fronts. In what is considered the most serious matter, the Interior Department’s acting inspector general has referred to the DoJ, an investigation into whether Zinke acted improperly in connection with a land deal in Whitefish, Mont., with the head of oil-services conglomerate HALLIBURTON. As secretary, Zinke oversees oil and gas drilling operations on federal lands.
In the interview with The Sacramento Bee, Zinke said: "I talk to the president, he understands. These are vicious attacks.” Zinke said the president backs him “100 percent.”
The main probe, centers on Zinke’s involvement with a Montana land deal backed by David Lesar, the chair of Halliburton, an oil field services company. A foundation established by Zinke and run by his wife, Lolita Zinke, owns land in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana. Lesar’s developer is planning to build on some of the land, Politico reported this summer. The proposed hotel and retail stores that the developer wants to build in Whitefish also stand to boost property values in a nearby parcel of land owned by the Zinkes.
As an oil field service firm, Halliburton has direct and indirect business involving the Interior Department, which manages mining and drilling rights on federal lands.
Zinke remained involved with his foundation even after he took office as secretary of the interior, violating an ethics pledge he signed in Jan 2017. Emails showed that he was still coordinating the land deal as late as August 2017. The investigation, now in the hands of the DoJ, could result in criminal charges.
BUT WAIT...THERE'S MORE!!! The IG is also investigating whether Zinke improperly used agency funds to pay for travel for his wife. There are several other probes into Zinke’s conduct by other government oversight groups, including the US Office of Special Counsel and the House Oversight Committee. In total, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tallied 17 federal investigations around Zinke. It puts him on par with Scott Pruitt, who was forced to resign after a tsunami of scandals caught up with him.
Even Zinke’s aboveboard actions are just as alarming. Zinke has presided over the largest rollback of federal land protections in US history, approved new development in wilderness areas, and opened up NEARLY ALL, US coastal waters to offshore drilling.
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Trump and his co-conspirators tried to defy the will of the people, and establish a dictatorship on American soil.
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "patriots."
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Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem and upheaval. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, backwards,
grotesque, insecure, selfish, indecent, malevolent, paranoid, indifferent, sociopathic, inept, and deceitful."
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Jonathan Karl, the ABC News chief Washington correspondent broke down some details he learned while writing his new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
That includes what he has heard about Paul Gosar. Anderson Cooper asked Karl if Republicans have privately expressed embarrassment, shame and concern to him about the future of the party, Karl said, “Oh, yes.”
He expanded on that in reference to Gosar, after multiple Republicans stood up for him on Wednesday. But Karl said it’s a different story behind closed doors.
“The way Republicans would talk about Gosar privately, is entirely different than the spectacle today of effectively defending him,” Karl said. “I mean, they say he's lost it.
Gosar, whose own siblings have spoken out against him on multiple occasions, responded to the censure by retweeting the same video that got him in trouble in the first place, and Karl was not surprised.
“I've had top Republicans tell me about Gosar specifically, before this episode. ‘He's not all there,’” Karl said.
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Even Nixon knew he didn't have immunity. That's why he asked Ford for a pardon.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the WatergateScandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Those days are long gone.
Allowing Trump to run for election in 2024, would've been like allowing Nixon to run for election again in 1976..
Today, thanks to Trump, McCarthy, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crimeBoss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
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Greed over lives. Money over lives. Metal over lives.
Oh well, the only question now is, who's next? We can say this with confidence, because Trump, Moscow Mitch and republicans in Congress have made it abundantly clear, that greed, the NRA, and money, is more important than your life and even your kid's life. So....whose next? What will be the name of the next school I wonder. Whose kids will be next I wonder? Who will be the next parents to have to bury their child I wonder?
There is at least one Republican in Congress who finally gets it. He finally understands. That Republican is Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio. Mike Turner announced his support for a ban on sales of “military style weapons” following the deadly mass shooting in Dayton Ohio after he discovered his daughter came close to being one of the casualties.
“I believe these are necessary steps forward in protecting our country and a testament to American values, which include protecting human life,” Turner, said in a statement
Turner, a Dayton native, said he would also support legislation placing restrictions on high-capacity magazines as well as so-called red-flag laws, which allow police and family members to “quickly identify people who are dangerous and remove their ability to harm others.
Turner made this statement after he found out that his teenage daughter was across the street from the shooting that night and she had just missed being out on the street when the shooting started by just seconds.
So now all of a sudden he cares. It took his daughter nearly being one of the victims for him to finally get it. He should have gotten it after Vegas, Orlando, and after Parkland. He should have cared back in 2012 when 20 babies, 6 and 7 years of age, were cut down with an assault rifle.
So.....whose going to be next?
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when May 1 is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. There is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. Ignorant people like Trump are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I don't recognize anyone's authority."
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. The congressional oversight committee will begin hearings, and taking the testimony of those who were in the loop. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.. The truth will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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Russian disinformation agents have backed a new internet troll farm in Ghana, including a network that sought on-the-ground activists in Charleston as recently as last month, two Clemson University troll hunters have found.
The discovery reflects a notable shift in Russian cyber tactics — using proxies in western Africa and elsewhere to inflame American discourse, said Darren Linvill, a Clemson professor of education. “It’s simple outsourcing.”
The Ghana network’s effort to hire activists in Charleston is a reminder of how disinformation tentacles can reach deep into U.S. cities.
The Clemson professors discovered the Charleston connection in February when they stumbled on a social media post from the suspect Ghana network. The group said it was seeking a “chapter coordinator” in South Carolina to push issues similar to the Black Lives Matter movement.
That revelation follows a Post and Courier investigation earlier this year that revealed how a bogus Russian-backed group, "Black Matters US," tried to stage a divisive rally in Charleston in 2016 on the anniversary of the Emanuel AME Church shoo.ting.
The Ghana operation “tells me that they’re following the same playbook they used in 2016,” Linvill said. “They’re working in the same communities online and in the real world.”
In 2017, Linvill and Patrick Warren, a Clemson economics professor, compiled a database of more than 3 million Russian troll tweets, and later expanded it to 9 million. At the time, it was among the most comprehensive troves of Russian troll activity available.
Many of these Russian troll accounts were designed to spread inflammatory left-leaning, pro-Bernie Sanders messages, while others amplified right-wing and pro-Donald Trump posts, Linvill and Warren found. Whether right-wing or left-wing trolls, the Russians’ overarching goal was to inflame American discourse and sow chaos, sapping the country’s strength.
The Mueller report revealed that the Russian offensive to disrupt the 2016 elections began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections, and is continuing to meddle in our elections today. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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@ryanelliott6706
This list isn't about gun violence in general, it's about MassShootings specifically.
In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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The evidence against Trump is clear.
Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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Trump never misses an opportunity to display the utter contempt he has for America and the American people. In a tweet today, Trump claimed that the 75-year-old protester in Buffalo NY, who was pushed down by police officers, may have just been acting.
Trump: “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” Trump wrote. “75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”
Gugino’s attorney, Kelly Zarcone, told The Associated Press that “No one from law enforcement has even suggested anything otherwise, so we are at a loss to understand why the president of the United States would make such dark, dangerous, and untrue accusations about him. We can confirm that those accusations are utterly baseless and ridiculous,” she said.
Trump was parroting lies and propaganda from One America, a far-right network that's actually more craven than Fox. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
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According to republicans, we have two different constitutions. There's the Constitution that was created by our Founding Fathers -- the one we're all familiar with, and then there's the "alternative" constitution, that was apparently created the day that Trump was sworn into office. According to republicans, this "alternative" constitution says that Trunp is above the law, and he can literally do whatever he wants, without consequences, and without ever being held accountable.
"I pledge allegiance, to Lord King Donald Trump, of the Dystopian States of America, and to the monarchy for which he stands, one ruler, the chosen God, with oppression and subjugation for all."
---The GOP MAGA
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Trump is running the country the exact same way he ran his failed businesses, including his failed casinos. In the end Trump couldn't care less what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation, and his fake university.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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In his interview with Lester Holt, Trump literally admitted to obstructing justice when he said he fired Comey because he wouldn't stop the Russia investigation.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, Comey, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. And they all got a big laugh out of it, at America's expense. Let that sink in for a moment.
On July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Trump threw America and the men and women in our intelligence agencies under the bus once again when he sided with Putin.
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Deutsche Bank has launched an internal investigation into the longtime personal banker for Trump and Jared Kushner. The bank is looking into Rosemary Vrablic to determine if she had acted improperly when she and two colleagues bought an apartment for about $1.5 million in 2013 from Bergel 715 Associates.
In a financial disclosure report, Kushner and Ivanka said they had received $1 million to $5 million from Bergel 715 in 2019. The couple had not previously reported having an ownership stake in the company.
Kushner and Trump were clients of Vrablic at the time of the 2013 sale and had received about $190 million in loans from Deutsche Bank. Both were also granted hundreds of millions of dollars after that point, according to the Times. Banks usually prohibit employees from conducting personal business with clients out of concerns of conflicts of interest.
Even before Trump became president, his relationship with Deutsche Bank fell under scrutiny because of his TREMENDOUS debts to the bank, which at the time was being fined by US regulators over its provision of toxic mortgages that played a role in the 2008 housing crash. There were concerns that if elected, Trump could intervene in the Deutsche Bank case with a view to protecting his own companies.
One of the bank’s more troubling activities was laundering billions of Russian rubles (via sham transactions known as “mirror trades”) into U.S. dollars. Then there was client Trump. The smooth persuasions, the obsequious flatteries, the lying about his net worth to garner loans for office buildings, resorts, casinos. Just how disconnected and delusional the bank became can be seen in its ongoing relationship with Trump, whose multiple bankruptcies had made him a pariah in the banking world.
When Deutsche’s real estate team cut off Trump, private banking opened the spigot. When a loan came due, Trump had NO INTENTIONS of repaying, as if the rules for him were different. Deutsche’s brass was so in-thrall to Trump’s fake celebrity, and so eager to expand in America, one division lent $48 million to cancel the debt on a Chicago skyscraper — a debt Trump had defaulted on with another wing of the same bank. But the private banking division, which catered to the rich and famous, arranged the loan anyway — and then, when Trump stopped making payments, arranged another loan for Trump. 😲
Deutsche Bank bought Trump's con the same way American voters would. In what could serve as a requiem for the country’s lost innocence, the general counsel at Deutsche said, “What the he// are we doing lending money to a guy like this?” 😂
In the summer of 2016, Kushner’s real estate company (which received lavish financing from Deutsche) was moving money to various Russians. A bank compliance officer filed a “suspicious activity report,” but the report was quashed and she was fired. The suggestion is that maybe the money was payback for Russian campaign meddling. Management at Deutsche tended to look the other way when employees broke the rules, even when they did business with dictators like Putin and their friends.
Trump and Jared's relationship with the bank became a subject to the Mueller investigation. The special counsel specifically focused on a $285m loan that Deutsche Bank granted Kushner’s company only a month before Trump was elected – and just as the bank was settling with state prosecutors over charges it had aided in a Russian money-laundering scheme.
The bank is fighting off subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, in particular his tax returns. Trump sued to prevent his records from being turned over, but the Supreme Court ultimately ruled 7-2 that presidents are not immune from criminal investigation.
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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That's hilarious coming from the most corrupt human being on the planet.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
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In 1994, a Democrat led Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Carlson, Trump and Republicans have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
"The war is finally over. But when will people realize that it is possible for any of us to be manipulated by domineering and powerCrazed individuals, who know how to motivate the masses in order to misuse them for their own ends. While they keep well out of the way in safety, they have no hesitation in brutally sacrificing their people in the name of "patriotism."
-- Günter K Koshorrek
BloodRed Snow "The memoirs of a German soldier on the eastern front."
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Fun fact: Past presidents have been shot for far less than what Trump has done. Just thought I'd put that out there.
So as far as I'm concerned, if a president can be shot, then a president can definitely be indicted as well.
If there's ever been a sitting President that deserves to be indicted, it's this one. And he deserves to be indicted on multiple charges, from tax evasion, money laundering, bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, to conspiring with a hostile country against the United States.
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There's a reason Trump’s lawyers told him to plead the 5th more than 440 in his recent deposition. They know that he is hopelessly incapable of telling the truth.
In 2005, Timothy O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, had published a book called “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.” In the book, O’Brien cited people who questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people who estimated that the figure was between $150 million and $250 million.
Trump sued. He later told The Post that he intended to hurt O’Brien, whom he called a “lowlifeSleazebag.”
By filing suit, Trump hadn’t just opened himself up to questioning — he had opened a door into the opaque and secretive company he ran.
The lawsuit had given O’Brien's attorneys the power to request that Trump turn over internal company documents, and they used it. They arrived at the deposition having already identified where Trump’s public statements hadn’t matched the private truth.
Trump may not have realized it yet, but he had walked into a trap. 🤣
Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.
For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.
The lawyers confronted Trump with his own past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been patently false or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump was vulnerable — cornered, sweating, unprepared, and UNDER OATH!!
Thirty times, they caught him.
Trump had lied about sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.
That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s lies were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind.
“A very clear and visible side effect of my lawyers’ questioning of Trump is that he was revealed as a routine and habitual fabulist,” said Timothy O’Brien.
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.
The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.
Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
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Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
" TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.
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Trump is playing a dangerous game with our oceans and coastal communities.
The Trump said that he would roll back several major regulations meant to safeguard offshore drilling rigs, ending a bevy of safety measures put in place by President Obama after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico..
The Interior Department announced the newly revised Well Control Rule as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to expand offshore drilling and U.S. “energy dominance.” Under the rules, oil companies will be required to safety test devices meant to stop leaks for only 5 minutes every 21 days, far less frequently than in the past. The plan will also end mandatory reporting of some of those tests to the Interior Department. The changes are expected to save the oil industry more than $824 million over the next 10 years.
“Today’s final rule puts safety first, both public and environmental safety, in a common sense way,” newly confirmed Interior Secretary David Bernhard said in a statement. Bernhard is also a former oil lobbyist. IMAGINE THAT!!😲
The changes prompted an immediate outcry from environmental groups who worry they would open the door to yet another disaster like Deepwater Horizon.
“The well control rule was one of the most important actions we took, as a nation, in response to the BP-style disaster at sea,” Bob Deans, the director of strategic engagement at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “If the Trump administration’s final rule weakens these protections, as its proposed changes did, it will put our workers, waters and wildlife at needless risk. That’s irresponsible, reckless and wrong.”
The BP oil spill was the worst in U.S. history. An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers in April 2010 and the spill took months to cap before it was finally sealed off in late September. More than 210 million gallons of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico during that time, causing billions of dollars in environmental damages. The event also led to a dramatic loss of plant and animal life, and the loss of jobs and the livelihoods of many fisherman. Scientists are still studying the long-term effects on marine mammals and sea turtles.
Under the new regulations, oil companies will no longer be required to hire third-party safety inspectors to test the equipment meant to prevent leaks, known as blowout preventers. That same device failed during the BP spill.
The Gulf of Mexico and its coastline still haven’t recovered from 2010’s Deepwater Horizon blowout, which killed 11 workers, and thousands of marine animals as it gushed more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf for almost three months.
Trump has been moving to open up America’s oil fields for years, to various success. A federal judge blocked a plan to open up almost all of the country’s coastal waters to oil and gas leasing earlier this month, and Bernhardt said the Interior Department would put that plan on hold as it made its way through the court system
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While the coronavirus highlighted Trump’s indifference, criminal negligence and incompetence, we may look back at his response to the current protests as the moment when his longtime flirtation with authoritarianism hardened into something more sinister. There’s no limit to what Trump will inflict to get reelected. His own sister called him a cruel human being.
He called protesters “ter.rorists,” and suggested they should be locked up for at least a decade to silence them, encouraged the use of force against American citizens and the free press, and promised to unleash the military on American citizens. These are the actions of authoritarian regimes in countries the world over.
In many countries around the world, it would be distressing, but not surprising to see the government use the fear of terrorism to demonize and encourage the use of force to squash these protest movements. Playing up violent acts committed by a small minority is right out of the authoritarian playbook.
It shifts focus away from Trump's many failures, and assigns blame to a boogeyman. This step alone is critical for Trump. Trump is not to blame for the systemic racism and injustice, but addressing it is the LAST thing he would ever want to do. Why? Well for starters, he himself is a ra.cist.
Trump is not inciting this violence alone, either. Not long after he tweeted his baseless plans for ter.rorist designation, Matt Gaetz took to Twitter with a threat of his own, writing, “Now that we clearly see Antifa as ter.rorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?”
Trump's actions have already caused immense pain to everyday Americans and the American way of life. They set a dangerous precedent. We are on a perilous path. We are now seeing how Trump and those around him who share is authoritarian impulses respond protests that resulted from genuine grievances. Consider how they will handle the protests that almost certainly will erupt if Trump tries to postpone the election, steal the election, suppress the vote in Democratic areas, or refuses to accept its result if he loses.
In a 2016 replay, Trump recently refused to say whether he would accept the election results if he loses. That was a clear threat, and a warning. Trump has identified his true enemies, — and
It is America's constitution, and us.
Trump doesn't even need Pence as a running mate. Trump's running mate is tyranny.
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Bannon knows what he did, and so do we, because he bragged about it on his podcast. It's now a part of history
A day before the insurrection, Bannon made comments on his podcast stating that "all he// is going to break loose tomorrow. It's gonna be moving. It's gonna be quick. And all I can say is strap in, the War Room, a posse. You have made this happen and tomorrow it's game day."
“We’re now on the cusp of really reversing this, decertifying this, and that is because of you, this audience that has responded to everything. It’s now put us at the point that it’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point ofAttack. Right? The point of attackTomorrow. It’s going to kick off; it’s going to be very dramatic.”
“It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be extraordinarily different. And all I can say is: Strap in. Let’s get ready. So many people said, ‘Man, if I was in a revolution, I would be in Washington.’ Well, this is your time in history.”
Bannon said this to his listeners on January 5.
Can someone please inform Boxcar Bannon, that if you plan and incite an insurrection on our nation's Capitol, and it fails, you're going to be prosecuted. It's called law and order. So please, stop the squeal. 🤣
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If Trump really cared about America, why did he wait until he was in his 70s to run for president? He's never ran for any political office, or served America in any way in his entire long and fraudulent life. He nor his kids have ever served in the military, he has never promoted or championed any worthy causes, and he ran a fake charity foundation that is now defuncted and under investigation, because he used it for his own financial gain.
In the 73 years Trump has been on this earth, his only claims to fame, are being a 5 time draft dodger, a crook, money launderer, illiterate, megalomaniac, sexual predator, twitter troll, demagogue, racist, traitor, failed business owner, tax cheat, welfare queen, con-man, malignant narcissist, a deadbeat who doesn't repay his debts, and a loudmouth bloviating pathological liar.
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Trump bragged in a TV interview that one of the buildings he owns, 40 Wall Street, became the tallest building in downtown Manhattan after the Twin Towers came down, but it’s actually 25 feet shorter than 70 Pine Street, just one block away.
Trump acted as if OBL did him a favor by bringing down the Twin Towers.
During a 2019 July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Trump has told outrageous lies about helping first responders on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
"I was there for several months — I have no knowledge of his being down there," Richard Alles, a New York Fire Department battalion chief during 9/11, told PolitiFact.
"There would be a record of it," Alles continued. "Everybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services."
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Mumble Rap
I never said he was a dictator. I said in his diseased mind, he's convinced himself that he is. That's why he admirers dictators like Kim Jung Un, and his muse, Putin.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love
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Trump and Republicans had a field day criticizing Obama’s response to the Ebola virus. Trump even tweeted that Obama should resign after only 11 reported Ebola cases and 2 deaths.
Darrell Issa, said the response had been inept, characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to protect U.S. healthcare workers at home.
“Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be tolerated,” Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.
Ted Cruz called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious."
Ultimately, the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa resulted in 11 confirmed cases and only two deaths in the U.S. Obama’s quick response to the virus included deploying nearly 3,000 service members to West Africa to help contain the outbreak there.
Because of Obama's leadership, the Ebola virus did not spread in the US. There were only two deaths from the disease in the country, and both of them were people who contracted it in Africa. History has proven that the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus was competent and effective.
After the Ebola virus outbreak, President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it in 2018.
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018. "And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump." Rhodes said.
"And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House."
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Experts have criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle the National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Trump bragged that he was going to pick the best people for his administration. Trump also said the same thing about Trump University. He bragged that he hand-picked only the best to teach at Trump University. But dozens of those he picked had checkered pasts, including serious financial problems and even convictions for cocaine trafficking or child molestation. The lawsuit against Trump found that he and his fake real-estate seminars were a massive fraud, designed to "upsell" students into buying course packages costing as much as $35,000. Many of those hired to teach did not have college degrees and were not licensed to broker real estate. At least four had felony convictions.
Ron P. Broussard Jr. was hired to the Trump University staff in 2007, even though he was never licensed as a real estate agent or broker, Broussard was listed as "staff" or "coordinator" for at least five Trump seminars titled "Fast Track to Foreclosure." Records show the former Army sergeant was convicted at court-martial in 1994 of sodomy and indecent acts with a child. The child was an 8 year old daughter of a fellow soldier. He served five years in the military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. He's currently a registered sex offender.
Timothy C. Gorsline taught at least eight Trump University seminars in 2008 He pleaded no contest a decade earlier to felony cocaine possession, according to an electronic database of Florida court records. Copies of Gorsline's resume at Trump University showed that when asked if he had been convicted of a felony, Gorsline marked an X indicating "Yes."
Damian D. Pell, who helped teach at least 23 Trump University seminars from 2008 to 2010, pleaded guilty in Florida to a felony charge of trafficking cocaine. Court and arrest records show that Pell's car was pulled over by Sheriff's deputies in June 1999. Authorities recovered 62 grams of powder cocaine from his car, and 1,200 grams in a subsequent search of his home — a haul with a street value in excess of $154,000.
Spencer J. Raffel, who staffed a Trump University event in 2008, had a felony conviction in FL for grand theft, according to court records. He was sentenced to serve three years of probation in 1989. Court records also showed that Raffel, 52, had a multi-decade history of failing to pay debts, including defaulting on real estate loans, during the same period he was helping teach students how to profit from properties in foreclosure.😲
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued in 2013, alleging that the university was a "fraud from beginning to end," geared toward pressuring students into buying ever more expensive seminars, course materials and mentoring services of little educational value. Regulators say Trump University staff often targeted senior citizens or those already in dire financial straits, encouraging them to max out their credit cards to pay for classes they couldn't afford.
In his 2005 video, Trump said his hand-picked instructors would give his students a better education than top-level university business schools.
"Honestly, if you don't learn from them, you don't learn from me. If you don't learn from the people we're going to be putting forward — these are all people that are hand-picked by me — then you're not going to make it in terms of the world of success," Trump said.😲
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Trump and republicans have essentially been purchased by Russians. They receive their funding for Russians, and then they receive their marching orders from Russians. That's how it works whenever you've been fully bought, and fully compromised.
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy, received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, even though they have attended events at his properties, and they have posed in multiple photos with Trump.
Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot disclose to the government.
Lev Parnas paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy. Along with their work with Rudy, Parnas and Fruman are accused of meeting at Trump’s Washington hotel to discuss a Ukraine gas deal linked to Yovanovitch’s removal.
Parnas was throwing Russian money at Republicans like beads at Mardi Gras to any republican that was willing to expose themselves to him.
In October, Repub. McCarthy said he plans to donate the $111,000 that was given to the House Republicans' main fundraising committee by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas.
A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman..
Prosecutors say that they “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
In 2018, Parnas and Fruman donated directly to Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions. Fruman also gave to SC. GOP Rep. Joe Wilson and to a joint fundraising committee tied to Governor Rick Scott in his successful bid for Senate. Both Sessions and Wilson have acknowledged meeting with both men.
Fruman and Parnas also gave to other joint fundraising committees, which drew more GOP lawmakers. FEC records show that 22 other Republicans who were lawmakers at the time received contributions from Fruman, who misspelled his last name as “Furman” in filings in “a further effort to hide the source of the funds and to evade federal reporting requirements,” according to the indictment
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Twitter has shut down multiple accounts that it says were operated by a white supremacist group posing as liberal groups encouraging violence..
A white supremacist group created a fake Twitter account, posed as the Antifa movement and called for violence during the ongoing protests sweeping the nation, Twitter said.
“Tonight’s the night comrades," the group tweeted on Sunday. “Tonight we say ‘f--k the city’ and we move into residential areas... the white hoods... and we take what’s ours.”
Twitter said the white supremacist group Identity Evropa used one fake account, @Antifa_US, to call for violence in majority white suburbs, in the name of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"This account violated our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. We took action after the account sent a Tweet inciting violence and broke the Twitter Rules" the company said.
Twitter said it has also targeted other fake accounts run by Identity Evropa. The company said the accounts posted hateful tweets targeting race, religion and sexual orientation.
Twitter has seen a wave of fake accounts spreading false information about the ongoing protests in recent days.
Trump and his supporters have claimed, without evidence, that Antifa is behind the violence seen in some of the protests nationwide.
In an internal FBI situation report, the FBI’s Washington Field Office found no intel evidence indicating Antifa involvement or presence in the violence that occurred on May 31 during the D.C.-area protests. That same day, Trump announced on Twitter that he would designate “Antifa” a terrorist organization, even though antifa is not an organized group.
But not surprisingly, the report did warn that individuals from a far-right social media group had called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, and use automatic weapons against protesters. A Department of Homeland Security intelligence note warned law-enforcement officials that a white supremacist channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram encouraged its followers to incite violence to start a race war during the protests.
Antifa, short for anti-facist, poses a threat to a devout fascist like Trump, so it only makes sense that Trump would want to go after them. Adolf did the same thing to opponents of his fascist regime. It's only natural that a fascist would view any anti-facist group has his enemy.
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So after Republicans broke their own rules and went back on their word about picking a Supreme Court Justice during an election year, when millions of Americans have already voted, Dems have every right to pack the court, and Republicans have absolutely no room to talk. Republicans made a promise to the American people, and they broke that promise without even blinking an eye or giving it a 2nd thought. So If Dems decide to pack the court, republicans have no one to blame but themselves. Because it didn't have to be this way. All republicans had to do, was honor the promise they made.
Because let's face it, if the situation were reversed, and Dems broke their promise, and went back on their word, what would republicans do? We all know the answer to that question.
So, by breaking their own rules and going back on their word, Republicans are giving Dems a green light to pack the Supreme Court. I love it!!!!😆 👏👏👏
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
Jesse Lee Peterson is a right-wing "pastor," certifiedNutter, and talk show host, who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” When Rep. Elijah Cummings passed away last October, Peterson declared on his radio show, “He dead”—like Trump enemies John McCain and Charles Krauthammer, Peterson noted. “That’s what happens when you mess with the Great White Hope. Don’t mess with God’s children.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump? I THINK NOT.....
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On January 6, Capitol Hill Police Officers stopped the steal that Trump had planned for that day. We as a nation, owe them a debt of gratitude.
"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
I have a feeling that if the "January 13th McCarthy" ever meets "today's McCarthy" they are going to have a serious falling out.🤣
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Make no mistake, Trump supporters are just like him. They don't believe in democracy or our Constitution. They hate everything America is suppose to represent and stand for. Trump supporters are NOT patriots by any stretch of the imagination.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
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A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. Trump was 4 billion dollars in debt, and American banks had stopped loaning him money after multiple bankruptcies. Trump was financially ruined until the Russians bailed him out. "They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
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What we've learned so far from Bolton’s book is that obstruction of justice is not the exception in Trump's White House, it's the #1 rule. And apparently, it only gets worse from there. Asking countries like Russia, China and Ukraine for quid pro quos to help him get reelected seems to be the #2 rule.
Trump unwittingly admitted to obstruction of justice in his May 2017 interview with Lester Holt. In the interview, Trump said he fired James Comey because he wouldn't shutdown the Russia investigation. I say unwittingly because Trump doesn't believe he obstructed justice, because he doesn't actually believe in the concept of justice to begin with. And he certainly doesn't believe in law & order.
Trump: "I do solemnly swear, that I will faithfully desecrate the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, pervert, offend, and violate the Constitution of the United States. So help me Putin...OR Gyna....if you're listening."
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Trump: "When I said, 'Go to the church,' I didn't know protesters or not. Nobody tells me that. No one tells me anything around here. Like during that solar eclipse, no one told me not to stare directly at it. So they say, 'Yes my Lord, we'll go to the church.'"
"When I went, I didn't say, 'Oh, move them out'—I didn't know who was there. I simply told them to dominate the streets. I figured I was just going to take a leisurely stroll over to the church, very nearby, and in the spirt of Caligula, casually dominate everything along the way."
"So we walked over to the church - It was a very fast walk, but not too fast, but kinda fast. It could've been faster, but Bill "lunchbox" Barr kept slowing me down. I think it was very symbolic. Yes, I did hold up a Bible, but not for too long, because that Bible got really really hot. It started to burn my hands. It must have been one of those deep state Bibles or something."
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Trump's foreign policy amounted to him trying to get foreign countries to spend money at his properties.
So last year we learned that on Don the Con's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to his failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland, for the sole purpose of lining his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that DJT wanted to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
We then learned that DJT asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
This is a level of corruption that we have never seen before, or even imagined. Its gratuitous, egregious and overt corruption on steroids.
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100 years from now, kids in our schools will still be learning about the events that took place on January 6, 2021, the day our nation's Capitol came under attack from insurrectionists, the same way our kids are still taught today about the events that took place on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, and the events that took place on 9-11. These are dates that will forever live in infamy.
On January 6, the world watched in horror as Trump's horde of insurrectionists stormed our nation's Capitol. They said that they were starting a new "revolution." But here's the problem with that, in 1776, this nation fought a revolution in order to remove a monarch, and establish a democratic republic.
Trump's horde led an insurrection in order to destroy our democratic republic, and INSERT a monarch.
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Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Since the 1930s, the modern conservative movement has tried to restrict majority rule at every turn — because they know a mass democratic movement poses an existential threat to their power.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of stateTerror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact taking it from you..
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
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Trump despises working class everyday Americans, He has always looked down on them. And this comes as no surprise to anyone who has personally known Trump for years.
On his show on May 19, Howard Stern asked the same question I've been asking myself since the 2016 campaign. Howard Stern, who has personally known Trunp for decades, questioned why people would vote for Trump, when in reality, Trump is disgusted by his biggest supporters. According to Stern, like himself, Trump isn’t cut out for running a government, and the Trump supporters are to blame for the country’s troubles. Stern went on to say that Trump would be “disgusted” by the MAGA crew..
Howard Stern: “The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most,” Stern said. “The people who are voting for Trump for the most part... he wouldn’t even let them in a f---ing hotel. He’d be disgusted by them. Go to Mar-a-Lago, see if there’s any people who look like you. I’m talking to you in the audience - the Trump voter who, you know, idolizes the guy. He despises you."
“I don’t hate Donald,” he continued. “I hate you for voting for him, for not having intelligence. For not being able to see what’s going on with the coronavirus, for not being able to see what the Justice Department is doing. I hate you, I don’t want you here.”
Trump: “Maybe this Covid thing is a good thing. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.”
In case any of you Trump supporters are confused, he's talking about YOU. 😆
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Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or he is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.
But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.
Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s too criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.
Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution, for which he should be impeached. An oath is an oath.
Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.
The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.
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The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The unredacted emails were secured through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act launched by the Center for Public Integrity. The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB.
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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It's becoming abundantly clear, that Trump and republicans are now owned by Russians. They receive their funding for Russians, and then they receive their marching orders from Russians. That's how it works whenever you've been fully bought, and fully compromised.
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy, received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, even though they have attended events at his properties, and they have posed in multiple photos with Trump.
Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot disclose to the government.
Lev Parnas paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy. Along with their work with Rudy, Parnas and Fruman are accused of meeting at Trump’s Washington hotel to discuss a Ukraine gas deal linked to Yovanovitch’s removal.
Parnas was throwing Russian money at Republicans like beads at Mardi Gras to any republican that was willing to expose themselves to him.
In October, Repub. McCarthy said he plans to donate the $111,000 that was given to the House Republicans' main fundraising committee by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas.
A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman..
Prosecutors say that they “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
In 2018, Parnas and Fruman donated directly to Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions. Fruman also gave to SC. GOP Rep. Joe Wilson and to a joint fundraising committee tied to Florida Gov. Rick Scott in his successful bid for Senate. Both Sessions and Wilson have acknowledged meeting with both men.
Fruman and Parnas also gave to other joint fundraising committees, which drew more GOP lawmakers. FEC records show that 22 other Republicans who were lawmakers at the time received contributions from Fruman, who misspelled his last name as “Furman” in filings in “a further effort to hide the source of the funds and to evade federal reporting requirements,” according to the indictment.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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@dh1752
🤣😅
They were banned before, and they can be banned again.
In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
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Q is a cult that caters specifically to the mentally unstable.
Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality came to us from North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the despotic dictator that Trump admires so much.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
The Republican party has been replaced by a destructive cult known as Trumpism. It's a cult rooted in lies, absurdities, wild conspiracy theories, self-deception, hypocrisy, self-righteous bigotry, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience to the "Chosen One."
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right..
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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As White House counsel under President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history. Since then, Dean has penned several books and countless columns on the theme of presidential abuses of power.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
In Trump, Dean says he has observed many of his former boss’s most dangerous traits—obsessive vengefulness, reflexive dishonesty, all-consuming ambition—but none of Nixon’s redeeming qualities.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle.
The Atlantic, January 17, 2017
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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I wish that there was a way we could somehow flatten the curve of Trump's lies, better known as Bull sht Mountain.
First of all let's be clear, America doesn't currently have a president. In fact, we haven't had a president since January 2017. What he have now is a mentally impaired con-man who doesn't believe in science or facts. And he has literally told Governors and Mayors that he's not responsible for anything, and that they are on their own during this national health crisis.
Trump is now bragging about the ratings of his daily live news conferences on the coronavirus, and suggested that the large viewer numbers — rather than the multiple lies he has told during them — are fueling discussions in the media about ending the practice of broadcasting them live and unfiltered.
Trump: “Because the ratings of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the NYT, the Lamestream Media is going crazy" Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. Apparently this is all a game to him.
What Trump's utterly oblivious, self-absorbed, Ineffectual pompous a$$ doesn't realize is that the American people aren't tuning in because of him, we are tuning in because we want to keep up-to-date on the coronavirus and the US’s policies on it. The American people are watching the press briefings to hear from the coronavirus task force, which includes top public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and others on the task force.
Trump has made dozens of false claims during the briefings, which have directly led to the loss of lives, including overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, to falsely saying that anyone who wants to be tested for coronavirus infections can be, to claiming that the coronavirus will magically disappear, to claiming that there are no shortages of coronavirus tests, to claiming that America has tested more people than any country in the world, to claiming that the coronavirus was no different than the flu.
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Sid McGraw
" I'm not saying that these should be pardoned."
You could have just stopped right there. And I have lived in their shoes, I have served in combat, and through it all, I have nothing to be ashamed of, because I didn't disgrace the uniform I wore. And as a professional warrior, and a Platoon Sergeant, I led by example. I refused to allow my Marines to disgrace themselves, their uniform, the Platoon, and my beloved Corps. There are bad apples in every unit, and in every branch of the military, making excuses for them would only weaken the cohesiveness, professionalism, and mission effectiveness of any unit or branch of the military.
Semper Fi...
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In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “5uckers&Losers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure man-baby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
The decision prompted harsh criticism on Twitter, with Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill, saying that Trump was dishonoring U.S. servicemen.
"TheyDied with their face to the foe, and that pathetic-Inadequate DJT couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen", Soames stated.
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
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Interesting.
Lauren Boebert has a rap sheet that makes the Republican party's "law-and-order" stance comical. Cited and fined in 2010 for having two at-large PitBulls whoAttacked a neighbor’s dog, she was arrested in 2015 for helping underage drinkers avoid arrest.
While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies’ reports. She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015.
A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs.
Back in 2004, her husband Jayson pleaded guilty to indecent exposure after publicly exposing himself to underage girls in a bowling alley while courting the 17-year-old Lauren, who was there.. The same year he was arrested and served seven days for assaulting her; she was later charged with assaulting him in retaliation.
So how does someone like Boebert get elected to Congress? With a lot of help from other farReich Republicans, including Ted Cruz, who gave her at least $70,000, which the Federal Elections Commission says she failed to disclose.
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Let's be clear, when Trump said "stop the steal" it was code word for his followers to "start the steal."
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution. It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
Some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Two of these people have detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turnedViolent.
Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is the first account detailing their role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence.
The two sources, both of whom have been granted anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, describe participating in “dozens” of planning briefings ahead of that day when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol as his election loss to President Joe Biden was being certified.
“I rememberMarjorie T.G. specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”
Rolling Stone has confirmed that both sources were involved in organizing the main event aimed at objecting to the electoral certification.
These two sources also helped plan a series of demonstrations that took place in multiple states around the country in the weeks between the election and the storming of the Capitol. According to these sources, multiple people associated with the March for Trump and Stop the Steal events that took place during this period communicated with members of Congress throughout this process.
Along with Greene, the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).
“We would talk to Boebert’s team, Cawthorn’s team, Gosar’s team like back to back to back to back,” says the organizer.
And Gosar, who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters, allegedly took things a step further. Both sources say he dangled the possibility of a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.
“Our impression was that it was a done deal,” the organizer says, “that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval … in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House "Freedom" Caucus to sign on as a show of support.”
The organizer claims the pair received “several assurances” about the “blanket pardon” from Gosar.
“I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing,” Gosar said, according to the organizer.
In another indication members of Congress may have been involved in planning the protests against the election, Ali Alexander, who helped organize the “WildProtest,” declared in a since-deleted livestream broadcast that Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs helped him formulate the strategy for that event.
“I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said at the time. “We four schemed up on putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that — who we couldn’t lobby — we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside.”
The rally planner, who accused Alexander of ratchetingUP the potential forViolence that day while taking advantage of funds from donors and others who helped finance the events, confirmed that he was in contact with those three members of Congress.
“He just couldn’t help himself but go on his live and just talk about everything that he did and who he talked to,” the planner says of Alexander. “So, he, like, really told on himself.”
The sources plan to share that information with congressional investigators right away. While both sources say their communications with the House’s Jan. 6 committee thus far have been informal, they are expecting to testify publicly.
“I have no problem openly testifying,” the planner says.
--Rolling Stone
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July 16, 2018. That was the day Traitor Trump betrayed America. That was the day that every deceased American president, from Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Bush, sat straight up in their graves.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Putin was extremely strong and powerful by the way he resisted the urge to burst out laughing when Trump uttered those words.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior.
I began this book with the assumption that Trump is a malignant narcissist. Actually, watching him and listening to him reminded me of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the cult I joined in college, in that both have a kind of God complex where they’re the only one with the answers, the only one who can fix things. Moon was going to create a theocracy and Trump was going to “drain the swamp.” But the way they carry themselves is similar.
But what really made me think of Trump as a cult was the way the groups who supported him were behaving, especially religious groups who believed that God had chosen Trump or was using Trump. There are actual pro-Trump religious groups, like the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders were saying, “We’re of God. The rest of the world is of Satan, and we need to follow our chosen leaders who are connected to God.”
There was this blind-faith aspect to the whole thing and an unwillingness to look at any inconvenient facts. That’s all very cult-like.
The bottom line is that I see very sophisticated mind-control techniques being used through the media, through religious broadcasters and radio talk-show hosts. It’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil, authoritarian view of reality that is mostly fear-based. And there’s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the image of the leader."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
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We already know that Trump bribed the President of Ukraine with taxpayer money. This fact has been corroborated by the whistleblower, by official documents, texts messages, by the under oath testimony of multiple witnesses, by Trump's own senior white house aides and staff, by Mulvaney, and by State Department officials, and by Trump's own words. Trump's own National Security Adviser Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution clearly states, that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Deborah Layton has encouraged more help for mind-control victims. "It can happen to the best of us," Layton said. At age 18, in the early 1970s, Layton's need for belonging attracted her to the Peoples Temple, a group that offered her a sense of comfort and answers to life. The leader, JimJones, made her feel like she was joining the Peace Corps. A few years later, Layton went to Jonestown.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined the term fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
She escaped from Jonestown in 1978 and reported to police about activities there. She later said she felt ashamed at being warped into a cult.
“People do not knowingly join cults that will ultimately destroy and ki// them. People join self-help groups, churches, political movements, college campus dinner socials, and the like, in an effort to be a part of something larger than themselves. It is mostly the innocent and naive who find themselves entrapped. In their openhearted endeavor to find meaning in their lives, they walk blindly into the promise of ultimate answers and a higher purpose. It is usually only gradually that a group turns into or reveals itself as a cult, becomes malignant, but by then it is often too late.”
― Deborah Layton, A Jonestown Survivor's Story
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
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History: "Why oh why must I continually repeat myself? Sometimes I feel as if people believe I actually enjoy repeating myself. How many more times must I show the world what happens when people allow despotic and authoritarian dictators like Adolf, Mussolini, Lenin Stalin, Putin, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, and now Trump to come to power. It NEVER ends well. It never has, and it never will. But YOU people don't learn, and you clearly don't pay attention. It's like you're suffering from chronic amnesia. I have even gone so far as to keep a trash-heap of old tattered authoritarian regimes of the past as a reminder, and a warning, for the world to see. But alas, I am forced to repeat myself yet again, because you people don't learn.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done.
Dr. Fauci does not set policy in this country, because like he said, that's not his job, nor his responsibility. But now we have miscreants like Tucker Carlson, Paul Ryan, and other republicans trying to infer that Dr. Fauci is somehow in charge of setting policy for the coronavirus response, which is a blatant lie. Dr. Fauci is easily one of the most qualified medical experts in the field of infectious diseases in the world, with decades of experience. Dr. Fauci can't make Trump do anything. He can't make states do anything. His job is to provide the president, and other elected officials, with the best possible advice on how to deal with the pandemic. That advice is based on science, facts, and decades of experience. Trump will either take that expert advice, or he will ignore it, and do whatever his tremendous gut tells him to do.
Why anyone would choose to listen to Trump instead of Dr. Fauci is beyond me. Call me Krazy, but if I want to know how to effectively deal with a pandemic outbreak, I'm calling Dr. Fauci. If I want to know how to bankrupt multiple casinos, or set up a fake university and charity foundation, or lie like it's my job, or launder money with the Russians, then I'm calling Trump, and nobody but Trump.
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President Obama visited our Troops overseas 7 times. That's not even counting the multiple times he visited our troops at military bases here during the holidays. Obama visited our troops in Iraq just 3 months after taking office. Traitor Trump waited two whole years before he visited our troops for the first time in Iraq. And that was only because he was pushed to do so. And even then, he turned that visit into a rally for himself, and used our troops as political props.
As a compromised President and traitor, Trump serves at the pleasure of Putin. He's not interested in protecting our troops, he's only interested in slavishly serving and protecting Putin. And if that means selling out our troops, then so be it. As far as Trump is concerned, their lives are a small price to pay, just as long as he gets what he wants.
Since the 80s the Russians have been financially supporting Trump and bailing him out from bankruptcy after American banks stopped loaning Trump money. He is still indebted to them today. And just like any loyal dog, Trump knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him..
And now, In order to garner favor with Putin, Trump is allowing him to place bounties on the lives of our troops serving in Afghanistan. This is what happens when you have a disloyal treasonous cretin like Trump as our President. He has spent the last four years on his knees at the feet of dictators like Putin, sniveling and groveling for their approval, all the while selling America out, and hanging our troops out to dry.
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Trump sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of Trump's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day.
The truth of the matter is, if Trump had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with Trump's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. Trump had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card Trump had left, and he played it.
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Not so fun fact:
In 2016, a republican led Senate blocked a bill to bar guns sales to terrorism suspects just eight days after a gunman, who had been on the FBI terrorism watch list took 49 lives in a mass shooting in an Orlando FL. nightclub.
Thanks NRA and Republicans.
The problem with republicans is that they couldn't care less about what happens to Americans, well, that is until it affects them, or one of their loved ones.
Republican Mike Turner announced his support for a ban on the sales of military style weapons following theDeadlyMass shooting in downtown Dayton Ohio on August 4, 2019 after he discovered his daughter was almost one of the casualties.
“I believe these are necessary steps forward in protecting our country and a testament to American values, which include protecting human life," Turner said in a statement
Turner, a Dayton native, said he would also support legislation placing restrictions on high-capacity magazines as well as so-called red-flag laws, which allow police and family members to “quickly identify people who are dangerous and remove their ability to harm others.
Turner made this statement after he found out that his teenage daughter was across the street from the shooting that night and she had just missed being out on the street when the shooting started by just seconds.
So now all of a sudden he cares. He should have cared back in 2012 when 20 babies were the victims in the Sandy Hook shooting. We all should have cared.
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Recent books by Timothy Snyder, Masha Gessen, and Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig have traced Trump’s growing pattern of lies and lawlessness. Yes, nearly all presidents have occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One falsehood does not undermine democracy, but 20,000+ can; one governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully executive the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama.
• Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
• Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
• Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to apologist Mark Meadows.
• Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
• Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-Nazis while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
• Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
• Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
• Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
• Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler—to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
• Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
• Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
• Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
• Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
• Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
• Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
• Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is deviant fascism.
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Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview...
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us, that I can assure you.” —Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting.
March 24: "But we've never closed down the country for the flu. So you say to yourself, 'What is this all about? " -- Trump fox interview
March 27: “You call it germ, you can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You can call it many different names. I’m not sure anybody knows what it is.” -- Trump interview
Trump today: "The World Health Organization got it wrong. In many many ways they were wrong. They minimized the threat of the coronavirus very strongly...not good. I on the other hand, was tremendously strong in my warnings about the coronavirus.
I knew this was a pandemic from the very beginning, but no one believed me. No one even knew what a pandemic was until I used the word. Meanwhile, you had some people calling it a hoax. Some people even said it would just disappear like magic, and we should end social distancing by Easter. I think it was Obama who said that. Then we had some people comparing COVID-19 to the flu, which is like comparing apples to origins. The oranges of the coronavirus virus are totally different from the flu. Even I know that.
Now many people are saying that I was the first person to warn the world about the seriousness of the coronavirus. I correctly predicted everything that has happened so far. In many ways, I'm sort of like a modern day Nachodamus."
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Everyone makes mistakes, but the wisest people know it, admit it, and accept it. The greatest failure is failing to recognize our proneness to mistakes.
"The buck stops with me."
-- President Biden, 08/20/2021
As president, Biden takes responsibility for the chaos of the Afghan withdrawal.
'No, I don't take responsibility at all'."
--Trump 03/13/2020
Trump deflects blame for his coronavirus testing debacle, and the soaring number of infections.
Personally, I like presidents who don't dodge drafts or responsibility.
Thank you President Biden, for doing the right thing. It wasn't pretty or easy, but doing the right thing is often times not easy. It's the reason why doing the wrong thing comes easier for some.
History teaches that there has been a long-running battle with fear of the truth. People mistakenly fail to admit the truth, and in so doing, help to perpetuate recorded falsehoods. And if it’s not fear, then it’s distortion of the truth to promote a personal or political cause.
Loyalty to the truth should be the ultimate goal of the historian and the reader.
What can the individual learn from history — as a guide to living? Not what to do, but what to strive for. And what to avoid in striving. The importance and intrinsic value of behaving decently. The importance of seeing clearly—not least of, seeing yourself clearly.
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On Dec 16th 2019, Rudy admitted in an interview with Laura Ingraham, that as Trump's personal lawyer, he became a central figure in US foreign policy in Ukraine, promoting Trump's desire for an investigation into nonexistent Ukrainian election meddling; taking trips to advance a bogus investigation into the Bidens; and, by his own admission, exerting control over US diplomatic staffing in that country to serve the interests of his client.
Rudy admitted he played a leading role in the removal of Marie Yovanovitch, which set the stage for Trump efforts over the summer to bribe Ukraine into investigations of the Bidens for Trump’s own political gain.
Rudy: “I forced her out because she’s corrupt,” Giuliani said. I came back with a document that will show unequivocally that she committed perjury when she said that she turned down the visa for Viktor Shokin because of corruption .... there’s no question that she was acting corruptly in that position, and had to be removed. She should have been fired, if the State Department weren’t part of the deep state. I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way,” he said. “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."
Keep in mind, Rudy is NOT, I repeat NOT, a State Department employee. He has not been appointed by Trump for some sort of special diplomatic role. He has no official title, and he has no security clearance. He is simply serving as Trump’s personal goon, I mean attorney.
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NEVER FORGET
Never forget, that on 9/11, just hours after the towers fell, Trump bragged to local TV station WWOR, that his building 40 Wall Steet, was now the tallest building in downtown Manhattan. On a day of such unimaginable loss and tragedy, Trump seemed to be more focused on the bragging rights of now having the tallest building in Manhattan. But in true Trump fashion, his boast about having the tallest building in Manhattan after the towers fell was a big lie. The nearby 70 Pine Street building is 25 ft, taller than Trump's.
Trump also lied about losing 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend he lost on 9/11.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders that the legislation “provides pensions for those who are suffering from cancer and other illnesses stemming from the toxic debris they were exposed. Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. ”He then told an outrageous lie when he said, “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Trump wants to claim victim status too it appears. He can't stand to see anyone other than himself being viewed as a victim. Once again, Super Narcissist had to make it all about him.
Trump has told similar egregious lies about his whereabouts on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲 Super Narcissist strikes again.
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
During a 2015 rally, Trump claimed he watched the 9/11 attacks from a window in Trump Tower.
“Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that,” he said.
There’s just one problem — Trump Tower is more than four miles away from ground zero.
But who knows, maybe Trump was trying to receive money from the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund for his poor injured eyes, and the horror that they witnessed.
NEVER FORGET
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
Mary Trump, a 55-year-old psychologist, blames Trump's father for giving Donald his bad habits. Fred Trump Sr was a cold and forbidding patriarch who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps – demanding Trump to follow less-than-scrupulous real estate practices and eventually propping him up if his own initiatives failed.
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes.
"His monster had been set free."
In the book she says that after Trump announced his White House run in 2015, Trump's sister, retired appeals court judge Maryanne Trump Barry, mocked him.
“He’s a clown – this will never happen,” Judge Barry said.
She also writes that In order to get into the prestigious University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, the future president paid someone to take his SAT.
"To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him," Mary Trump wrote. "That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records."
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mitch McConnell, "all whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred," recognized after the election that Donald Trump's personal history and personality flaws made him vulnerable to manipulation, Mary Trump writes.
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
"Fear – the equivalent of weakness in our family – is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old," she said.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not at all what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing.
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DJT sat in the White House, and watched theVio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
AndVio.lence was the only option they had left. DJT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, theViolence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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Trump: "For the record, I was never a big fan of testing, because I like the numbers where they are right now. So when the number of infection cases goes up because of more testing, don't blame me. And I take no responsibility for any of these, and the reason why is because everyone knew that I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House. So again, don't blame me, blame the people who voted for me. Blame the people like Lindsey Graham who continue to defend me."
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"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
This had the feel of speeches given by one the world's most despotic dictators in history.
Trump criticized Dems who did not applaud during his first State of the Union address. “They were like death and un-American,” he said. “Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?”
Trump is very reminiscent of Stalin in this way. You can see it in him during this SOTU address. He literally pauses for the applause, and he even applauds himself.
During Stalin's reign of terror, he demanded a long and enthusiastic applause, and standing ovations whenever he gave a speech. As a result, the applause and ovations he received became largely panic-driven. People feared that the first person to stop clapping would be the first to be called an enemy of the state, and be hauled off to a gulag. The clapping and ovations would last up to 10 minutes. Failure to applaud could certainly be considered treason. So the sheeple went on and on, clapping and shouting “Long live Comrade Stalin,” “Glory to our beloved Comrade Stalin," clapping to the point of exhaustion, and until the palms of their hands bled.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described what the surreal scene looked like in his book, The Gulag Archipelago:
“The applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly…Nine minutes! Ten!…Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers.”
At last, after eleven minutes of non-stop clapping, the director of a paper factory finally decided enough was enough. He stopped clapping and sat down—a miracle!
“To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down,” Solzhenitsyn says.
That same night, the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years. Authorities came up with some official reason for his sentence, but during his interrogation, he was told: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, the violence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Trump is the most prolific pathological liar in American history.
A pathological liar like Trump, is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way.
Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies. Trump does this constantly at his rallies. He tries to play the victim and the hero at the same time.
Pathological liars are great storytellers. Their lies tend to be very detailed and colorful.
Even though obviously over-the-top, the pathological liar may be very convincing.
Along with being made the hero or victim in their stories, pathological liars tend to tell lies that seem to be geared at gaining admiration, sympathy, or acceptance by others.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
Trump also claimed that he lost 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend that he lost on 9/11.
A pathological liar tells lies and stories that fall somewhere between conscious lying and delusion. They sometimes believe their own lies. It’s difficult to know how to deal with a pathological liar who may not always be conscious of their lying. Some do it so often that experts believe they may not know the difference between fact and fiction after some time.
Like when Trump said that his father was born in Germany.😂 Everyone knows that his father was born in NY. When asked questions, they may speak a lot without ever being specific or answering the question.
Most people lie at one time or another. Previous research has suggested that we tell an average of 1.65 lies every day. Most of these lies are what are considered “white lies.”
Pathological lies, on the other hand, are told consistently and habitually. They tend to appear pointless and often continuous. It's been reported that Trump tells at least 12 lies per day.😲
Identifying a pathological liar isn’t always easy, unless his name is DonaldTrump. The following are some signs to help identify a pathological liar:
They often talk about experiences and accomplishments in which they appear heroic, they're also the victim in many of their stories, often looking for sympathy, their stories tend to be elaborate and very detailed, they respond elaborately and quickly to questions, but the responses are usually vague and don’t provide an answer to the question, they may have different versions of the same story, which stems from forgetting previous details, or previous lies..
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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A ccult leader is a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A ccult environment like Trump ism, discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brain washing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
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Every maniacal dictator needs a Heinrich Himmler, and Trump has clearly found his in Stephen Miller.
"Perhaps we shall also have to hold in check other coloured peoples who will soon be in their certain prime, and thus preserve the world, which is the world of our blood, of our children and of our grandchildren."
--Heinrich Himmler
"The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."
--Heinrich Himmler
"All of us, who are members of the Germanic peoples, can be happy and thankful that once in thousands of years fate has given us, from among the Germanic peoples, such a genius, a leader, our Fuehrer Adolf H, and you should be happy to be allowed to work with us."
--Heinrich Himmler
We have only one task, to stand firm and carry on the racial struggle without mercy.
--Heinrich Himmler
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On Fox, Rudy said he's not worried about Trump throwing him under the bus, because he has "insurance." Well clearly that can only mean one thing, Rudy is admitting to having evidence of Trump's criminality.😂
And make no mistake, Trump's other longtime partner in crime, Roger Stone, will definitely try to cut a deal. Because there is absolutely no way a coward like him is going to go to prison if he can help it. His only chance of preventing that from happening is giving up Trump.
This is usually what happens with any criminal organization when the feds are closing in on them. Trump's den of thieves has quickly turned into Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. We are witnessing the treacherous behavior of criminals when they start hedging their bets. Nonstop chaos, upheaval, back-stabbing, unbridled buffoonery, cowardice, and betrayal is about to ensue.
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Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth..
Steve Bannon’s contacts with Stone during the 2016 campaign was one of the featured parts of Stone’s trial..
"I think we did, yes,” said Bannon, when asked during Stone's trial whether the Trump campaign viewed Stone as its “access point” to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Stone’s denials of having any contact with WikiLeaks were obliterated by testimony from people like Bannon and a trail of emails and phone records. One message from Aug. 16, 2016, shows Stone telling Bannon on the day he took over as campaign CEO about the prospect that WikiLeaks would drop more damaging documents for the Clinton campaign.
“I have an idea … to save Trump’s @55,” Stone wrote.
Bannon testified that he heard repeatedly from Stone — before he even took over as Trump campaign chief — about his access to WikiLeaks. And Stone kept on talking about the potential of more detrimental materials through the late summer and early fall, at a time when Clinton had the lead in the polls.
Bannon’s contacts with Stone included an Oct. 4, 2016, exchange after a much-hyped Assange news conference, which fueled the hashtag "October?surprise" but it turned out to be a bust.
“It was a big dud, yes,” Bannon said.
But a few days later, WikiLeaks dumped emails stolen from the Clinton campaign just minutes after The Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape. Bannon described that chain of events as the “Billy Bush weekend” — a reference to Trump bragging about grabbing women by the p..
Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks.
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free...
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Jack O’Donnell is author of the memoir "Trumped!" The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall. Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino..
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican" Trump said.
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke.
Trump: "Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife."
Jeb Bush’s wife is Mexican-American
During the campaign, Trump impugned the character of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a native-born American, hailing from Indiana, who was hearing a class action case against Trump's now-discredited fake Trump University..
"He's a Mexican," Trump said to CNN of Curiel. "We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can't even believe."
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.”
― DaShanne Stokes
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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Trump: "But if you only count the votes that were for me, I won by a tremendous landslide." 😅🤣
This is how he thinks.
Let's be clear, the only reason Trump won in 2016 was because millions of Americans didn't vote. The voter turnout in 2016 was only 54%. Voter turnout in 2020 was exceptionally high at 66.8%. If voter turnout had been 66% in 2016, Trump would have lost that election as well. And this is why Republicans are engaging in voter suppression.
DJT openly admitted on fox that making it easier for more Americans to vote would hurt the Republican party.
DJT: “The things they had in there were krazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox.
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
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In May of 2018, When China's President Xi Jinping, who is the leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump praised him for it. Just let that sink in for a moment.
In remarks at Mar-a-Lago, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un, the dictator who continues to threaten America with nuclear war, for his authoritarian control over his people.
Trump: "He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018:
At a rally, Trump confesses to the love he has for Kim Jung Un, the most brutal dictator in modern history.
Trump: "I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said. “And then we fell in love, okay. No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
These are the inexplicable and indefensible words of a sitting US President. And no amount of lies, spin, or deflections will ever justify them, or erase them.
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Thomas Fletcher
It's not a hypothetical anymore because it actually happened.
June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are 10 warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
• There are records, books, news articles, or broadcast reports that document the abuses of the group/leader.
• Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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I'll stop calling Trump a Russian asset when he finally stands-up for America, and condemns Putin for engaging in cyber-espionage against America during the election. In other words, I'll be calling Trump a Russian asset for the rest of my life.
Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory. The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle, by exploiting their hubris, their insatiable greed, naivety, lack of patriotism, and by exploiting Trump's malignant narcissism. Trump and his people presented themselves as easy targets
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The Republican Party today is a criminal political cult obssessed with power and greed, and to achieve their two priorities, they will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING.
Since 2016, we have witnessed a test of the depths to which the Republican Party will sink. How much corruption, how much collusion with foreign powers and betrayal of the national interest will that party’s elected representatives stand for? Well the results of that test are abundantly clear, shocking, and horrifying: There is no bottom.
The GOP is now a thoroughly corrupt party. Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and our democracy will remain under threat even if and when he’s gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
The modern GOP as a whole, is overwhelmingly corrupt, and dominated by fanaticals and extremists. Anyone imagining that Trump being defeated in November will lead to a moral awakening, or that republicans will return to democratic political norms once Trump is gone, is living in a fantasy world.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want. The Republican party doesn't even hide it's contempt for the American people anymore.
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.”
― Tiffany Madison
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Any deal that Trump makes is guaranteed to end badly.
The Trump White House agreed to a May 1 troop withdrawal. Biden had to decide whether to honor a deal that included the Taliban, but not the Afghan government.
The most disturbing thing about the agreement Trump made, was that the Afghan government was left out of it. Trump was negotiating with the Taliban about whether or not to remove our troops, and NOT with the Afghan government, which was hosting our troops.
The Republican National Committee has conveniently removed an inconvenient webpage from 2020 in which it praised Trump for signing a "historic peace agreement with the Taliban."
The page had been removed with the web address redirecting to a 404 error page featuring the quip: "It looks like you're as lost as Biden is."
Featured as part of a section titled "President Trump Is Bringing Peace In The Middle East," the page described how Trump had "continued to take the lead in peace talks."
In the now-deleted GOP webpage, it is stated that Trump negotiated a deal for the withdrawals by May 2021 "in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the organization's current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at the request of Trump.
Remember when Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David?
As recently as April, Trump was also voicing his support for withdrawal, stating that "getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do."
The UK's defense minister blamed the chaos in Afghanistan on Trump on Monday.
UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace has pointed the finger at Trump.
He told "BBC Breakfast" on Monday: "The die was cast when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation."
"President Biden inherited a momentum, a momentum that had been given to the Taliban because they felt they had now won. He'd also inherited a momentum of troop withdrawal from the international community, the US."
"So I think in that sense, the seeds of what we're seeing today were before President Biden took office. The seeds were a peace deal that was effectively rushed, that wasn't done in collaboration properly with the international community and then a dividend taken out incredibly quickly."
He had previously called Trump's deal "rotten" and said the international community would likely "pay the consequences."
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with thisFraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straightWhite, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those theyHate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous whiteMen who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. His ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019.
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca.
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Trump: "For the record, I was never a big fan of testing, because I like the numbers where they are right now. So when the number of infection cases goes up because of more testing, don't blame me. And I take no responsibility for any of these, and the reason why is because everyone knew that I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House. So again, don't blame me, blame the people who voted for me. Blame the people like Lindsey Graham who continue to defend me."
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@JasonDrvmz
WRONG!!!
In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
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Today, there is nothing more patriotic, than being a never Trumper.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past last year in March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
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"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
--Charles Dickens
These quotes aptly describes McConnell and many other Republicans..
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Trump is running the country with the exact same type of logic, wisdom and leadership that he used with his casinos. And it worked out great for him personally, but it was a disaster for the casinos, investors, and the thousands of his casinos employed.
A close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings leaves little doubt that Trump’s casinos were protracted failures. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed the city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.
But even as his companies did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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Trump is running the country the exact same way he ran his failed businesses, including his failed casinos. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation, and his fake university.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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In 2018, 8 republican lawmakers decided to celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas.
The group celebrated America's Day of independence in Moscow laughing it up with a number of key Russians, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two same two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press laughing it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Comey was fired.
What's worse is that we have no way of knowing what was said during their meetings with Russian agents and officials, because the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the gloating Russians.
It may be a coincidence that two of the eight republicans who went to Moscow for some vague reason on the Fourth of July are now mouthpieces for the Kremlin. But fortunately for me, I don't believe in coincidences.
These 8 republicans have all the signs of a GOP/GRU Russian sleeper cell. Consider: Eight Republican lawmakers—and, notably, not a single Democrat—journey halfway around the world to spend America's Independence Day with Putin’s coziest cronies. We don’t really know what happens once they get there, but we do know that the Russians are really good at both psy-ops and kompromat.
It would explain why republicans like Johnson, Kennedy and others have been regurgitating Russian propaganda almost word for word.
It’s like the tv series, "The Americans" but with actual Americans.
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of the mess that I've caused. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president and a real leader. They're acting as if I actually care. But that's not who I am. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who ignored all the signs of my sociopathy. Blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They were both fully aware of exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. Now Lindsey is practically my golf caddie. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man, grifter and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85, and in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers cited by The Times show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Donald Trump sole control over his dying father's estate.
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
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The FBI obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with the NRA, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, in 2016.
José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said the FBI requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.
“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.” 😲😲😲 Tic Tic Tic Tic tic...
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Barr is clearly lying. He can tell by the downward shift of his eyes.
Trump is terrified that Flynn and Roger Stone won't be able to do a long stretch in prison, and will decide to cut a deal instead, and reveal all of Trump's crimes. Stone could corroborate Rick Gates' testimony that Trump did in fact collude with WikiLeaks..
In the video of a December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin's propaganda network RT at a Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who would later become Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's campaign when he was being paid $45,000 to speak at the gala.
"It is not a coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin," said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Flynn's Moscow jaunt, like his oddly timed phone chats with the Russian ambassador, has been well reported. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 dinner, was attended by a healthy serving of ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs.
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin.
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats. Like Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
So he's going to pardon antifa and BLM? 🤣
Because that's who his supporters believed stormed the Capitol.
And is he going to pardon Ashli Babbitt too?
So you canBeat theCrap out of a cop, and Trump will pardon you. Oh well, so much for blue lives matter. It was all a charade.
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I learned that we can never take our democracy for granted. I learned that what happened in German in the 1930s, can in fact happen here. I learned that there are people and forces in this country who really don't believe in America, it's constitution, and what they represent.
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship ruling the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "patriots."
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be with his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence along the narrow path, leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
Semper Fi..
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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Dr. Fiona Hill
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves..
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified."
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016."
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
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Trump: "For the record, I was never a big fan of testing, because I like the numbers where they are right now. So when the number of infection cases goes up because of more testing, don't blame me. And I take no responsibility for any of this, and the reason why is because everyone knew that I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House. So again, don't blame me, blame the people who voted for me. Blame the people like Lindsey Graham who continue to defend me."
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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The sad reality is that Trump and republicans don't believe in democracy, our Constitution, or your right to vote, and they are terrified of American voters. Your right to vote is the biggest threat to them.
In March, Trump openly admitted that an increase in voting numbers would hurt his party, saying proposed reforms would result in “levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Trump and the GOP are obssessed with greed and absolute power. And the three biggest threats to them achieving those goals, are the Constitution, the free press, and the American voters. If Trump and the Republican party had their way, there would be no earlier voting or mail-in ballots. There would be only one day to vote, at one location per state, with only a 2 hour window to cast your vote.
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for American companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
Trump has been beholden to the Saudis for decades. They bailed him out when American banks refused to loan the con-man anymore money.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Jared and his adviser Hope Hicks, were behind Trump's church photo-op on Monday, where peaceful protesters were dispersed with tear gas. Hicks, who served as Trump's closest campaign aide and later as White House communications director before a stint at Fox, recently returned to work at the White House under Jared Kushner.
Bunker Boy was reportedly embarrassed and upset by news reports that like Adolf, he had scurried down to his bunker as protests raged outside. So in the spirit of Caligula, Trump stormed over to St. John's Church to hold up a book that he has never read or opened for cameras. Police backed by the National Guard unleashed tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang shells on peaceful American citizens, just to clear the path for Bunker Boy.
Hicks and Jared reportedly hatched the dubious plan with others at the White House, to have Trump march over to the church, and pose for pictures holding a bible, while looking like a stone-cold lunatic.
Attorney General Barr personally ordered law enforcement officials to pull a Tiananmen
Square, and clear the park of protesters, a Justice Department official stated.
And even though the photo-op stunt was an unmitigated disaster, some of Trump's aides reportedly celebrated the incident, but apparently not all of them.
"I've never been more ashamed," one senior White House official told Axios. "I'm really honestly disgusted. I'm sick to my stomach, and they're all celebrating it. They're very very proud of themselves."
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Trump is more than happy to make 800 thousand Americans suffer until he gets what he wants, even if what he wants has been rejected by the majority of Americans.
Trump: " My immature and petulant needs, far outweighs the needs of 800 thousand Americans who will go without a pay check."
If we have so many terrorists coming across the border, why haven't we seen massive terrorist attacks across the country from these terrorists? The answer is simple...terrorists are not crossing into America at our southern border. The only terrorist attacks in America, are coming from Americans. American right-wing extremists who are plowing cars into crowds of people, and shooting up concerts, schools, clubs, bars, grocery stores, pizza parlors, movie theaters, churches, and Synagogues. Right now, you or your child, are far more likely to be gunned down by an American in a mass shooting, than being the victim of a terrorist attack at the hands of some foreigners who snuck across the southern border. REALITY MATTERS.
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"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Trump supporters are all united by one word.....kruelty. Kruelty is the point.
Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to kruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.
It is not just that the perpetrators of this kruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.
Trump’s only true skills are kruelty, and the con. His ability to carry out that kruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.
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Trump is weak because he's cruel.
"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return..
Trump has sent thousands of our troops to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil and HIS own personal business interests.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85, and in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers cited by The Times show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Donald Trump sole control over his dying father's estate.
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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Trump actually believes he can set a deadline for a pandemic to end. And if that doesn't work, he'll probably take a map and a sharpie, and draw a diagram of the coronavirus heading out to sea. There is no end to this man's pathological ignorance. I swear, ignorance is like a religion to him. I've never seen a human being so confident and devoted in his own stupidity.
Trump should just stop talking all together, because he has never solved a single problem in his entire life. He doesn't solve problems, he only creates problems, or he exacerbates them. Trump himself is a systemic problem for the country, on multiple levels. He portrayed the pandemic as a hoax, and believes he knows more than medical experts in their own fields. To put it mildly, he is a walking talking, living breathing fk up.
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Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
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In May of 2018, When China's President Xi Jinping, who is the leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump praised him for it. Just let that sink in for a moment.
In remarks at Mar-a-Lago, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un, the dictator who continues to threaten America with nuclear war, for his authoritarian control over his people.
Trump: "He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018:
At a rally, Trump confesses to the love he has for Kim Jung Un, the most brutal dictator in modern history.
Trump: "I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said. “And then we fell in love, okay. No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
These are the inexplicable and indefensible words of a sitting US President. And no amount of lies, spin, or deflections will ever justify them, or erase them.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino.
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican.”
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke.
Trump: "Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife."
Jeb Bush’s wife is Mexican - American
During the campaign, Trump impugned the character of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a native-born American, hailing from Indiana, who was hearing a class action case against Trump's now-discredited fake Trump University.
"He's a Mexican," Trump said to CNN of Curiel. "We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can't even believe."
Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. It's the type of comment that only a racist would applaud..
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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MAGA: "One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, One belonging to me, and another belonging to the one and only true WhiteLord, Trump.
After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints.
This really troubled me, so I asked the one and only true WhiteLord about it.
"WhiteLord, you said once I decided to follow you, You'd walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints. You also said that you would walk with me to the Capitol, but you were nowhere to be found that day. I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."
Trump whispered, "My precious uneducated child, I love you and will never leave you during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you, while wearing my never surrender gold sneakers." 🤣
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Trump said it was one person coming from China. He literally said that. He should be dragged out of the White House for that comment alone.
Trump Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Trump March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.”
Trump's indifference, sincere ignorance, and conscientious stupidity, are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And no amountof lies, spin, or deflections will ever change that.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable.
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable..
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Researchers say there are four main components to TIV:
Need for recognition – whereby individuals have a high level of need for theirVictimization to be seen and recognized by others
Moral elitism – seeing oneself as morally pure or "immaculate," and seeing those who oppose, criticize or victimizeOneself as completely and totally immoral and unjust
Lack of empathy – having little empathy or concern for the suffering of others, because your ownVictimhood is so much greater than the suffering of others. Also includes an entitlement to act selfishly or harmfully towards others, without recognizing their pain or experience
Rumination – a strong tendency to brood and remain extremely fixated on times, ways, and relationships where they experiencedVictimization and being taken advantage of.
A person who has TIV may be very vocal about theirVictim status whether it's caused by societal issues, a personal problem, or something they've fabricated. They believe their status affords them moral superiority to others and allows them to behave in ways that are unassailable.
People with TIV are also more likely to try to SeekRevenge on those who've aggrieved them.
This type of person is defined by, and clings to, their perceived trauma andWeaponizes it against others. Some people can even develop TIV without even experiencing severe trauma orVictimization."
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
"TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“SharedPsychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“MadnessForMillions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology.
When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusionsParanoia and a propensity forViolence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbookonViolence, I emphasize the symbolic nature ofViolence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat.
ViolenceHelps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
--Bandy Lee
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much theylove and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. That was pretty low even for Trump.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
Semper Fi..
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham..
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for with Russian money.
It's why repubicans are fighting so hard to defend him instead of the Constitution. It's also why Republicans have been repeating the exact same lies and propaganda of the Russian government and Russian security services like the GRU.
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Trump: "I happen to know more about vaccines than any doctor. In fact, I have my own people, the best people by the way, working on a coronavirus vaccine at TUMC, Trump University Medical Center. We should have the vaccine ready within the hour, if not sooner. Plus my vaccine will come with a bonus....it also cures gout. However unfortunately, some minor side effects of the vaccine may include hallucinations, loss of teeth, permanent blindness, elephantiasis, and acute death."
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How is it that every country was infected with the same coronavirus, but America had the worst national response to the outbreak, with more deaths and infection cases than any country in the world?
Trump: " Well don't look at me. I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm just a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. I don't even believe in science for crying out loud. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House.
So again, don't blame me for this, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham, who knows exactly what I am, but yet continues to defend me. I'm the same person that I've always been, an unscrupulous con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of DT's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with DT's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
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July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Clinton’s emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
5 hours later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
7/16/2018
Trump in Helsinki: "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia." What???😲😲
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump today: "I don't know anything about Wikileaks, that's not my deal in life."😲
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"Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one."
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Blatant dictatorship – in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule – has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by different means.
Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine.
Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box. The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. With a classic coup d’état, as in Pinochet’s Chile, the death of a democracy is immediate and evident to all. The constitution is suspended or scrapped. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance.
Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended, by political parties and organized citizens but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not.
This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy – packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence) and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy – gradually, subtly, and even legally – to kill it.
Not only did Americans elect a demagogue in 2016, but we did so at a time when the norms that once protected our democracy were already coming unmoored.
But if other countries’ experiences teach us that that polarization can kill democracies, they also teach us that breakdown is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is happening to our country. But protecting our democracy requires more than just fright or outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from other countries to see the warning signs – and recognize the false alarms. We must be aware of the fateful missteps that have wrecked other democracies. And we must see how citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert breakdown.
How Democracies Die
--by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, professors of government at Harvard University.
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In a 2016 BBC interview, Trump lied when he said he had no business dealings with Felix Sater, a felon with ties to the Russian mob, and the Trump Soho real estate debacle. When the interviewer pressed Trump about his connections to Sater, Trump became frustrated and walked out of the interview by making a lame excuse about having a bunch of people waiting for him downstairs.😂 He looked like a cornered rat.
The video is on YouTube. It's titled: Donald Trump's Business Links to the Mob-BBC News Night.
According to Felix Sater, who built the Trump Soho condominium tower in Lower Manhattan and partnered with Trump on several other projects, Trump didn’t lose sleep over where the money to build his branded properties came from.
“I would show him a deal and he’d say ‘let’s go,’” recalled Sater, who once occupied an office down the hall from the future president in Trump Tower. “The due diligence part was kind of light.”
At a panel hosted by The New Yorker magazine where he shared the stage with journalists Adam Davidson, Ruth Marcus and David Barstow, Sater shared some insights into the president’s relationship with Russia.
Sater acknowledged that Trump has an affinity for Russian investors, but according to him the reason is mundane. “Donald Trump loved Russian buyers for one very simple reason: their checks cleared, and quickly,” Sater said.
Asked if money was laundered through Trump properties, Sater replied “yes and no,” pointing to his Trump Soho co-developer Tamir Sapir as an example. “He made his money, when the Soviet Union collapsed, in the oil business. Rightly, wrongly, stole it, deserved it, didn’t deserve it… he took all that money and invested it in New York real estate,” Sater said of the late Sapir.
Sater’s Bayrock Group built Trump Soho in partnership with the Sapir Organization and leased the Trump name for the property. Trump hired him as a “senior adviser” in 2010 and gave him a Trump Organization business card. That year, the three companies were sued for allegedly lying about sales at trump SoHo. Sater tried to broker a Trump-branded real estate development in Moscow in 2015, while he was running for president.
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In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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By staying home on Dec 25 of 2018, Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn't visit military personnel on or before Christmas.
President Obama visited troops at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, in Kaneohe Bay, every Christmas he was in office, from 2009 to 2016.
President Obama traveled to Iraq in April 2009, just a few months after taking office.
Trump was in office for more than 2 years before he visited our troops in a war zone.
Trump also referred to our troop as losersAndSuckers.
In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “SuckersAndLosers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier, and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure man-baby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
The decision prompted harsh criticism on Twitter, with Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill, saying that Trump was dishonoring U.S. servicemen.
"TheyDiedWith their face to the foe, and that pathetic-Inadequate DJT couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen", Soames stated.
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If your loyalty, and allegiance is to Trump, then vote red. If you're ok with unchecked nepotism in the white house, then vote red, if you're OK with the most corrupt administration in American history, then vote red. If you're ok with republicans cutting social security, medicare and Medicare, in order to pay for the massive tax cut Trump and republicans gave to corporations, and the most wealthy, then vote red. If you're ok with a pathological narcissist in the Oval Office, who has now told more than 5000 lies in his 2 years in office, then vote red. But if your loyalty is to America, and her ideals, then voting BLUE💙💙💙. It's literally that simple. America vs Trump. Make a decision.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also killed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki// anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked.
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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On January 6, Capitol Hill Police Officers stopped the steal that Trump had planned for that day. We as a nation, owe them a debt of gratitude.
"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by MobRioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
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What's so mind-boggling to me, is the fact that we have a sitting President, who isn't even trusted by his own people to testify under oath, because they know that he's incapable of telling the truth....about anything....EVER.
Trump isn't even trusted by his lawyers and the people closest to him, but yet the want the American people to trust him. Let that sink in for a moment.
This is the 3rd time that Trump has asked another foreign country to interfere in our elections. And if he gets away with it this time, he will absolutely do it AGAIN!!! Because a sociopath like Trump, with no impulse control, who doesn't know right from wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible, and completely incapable of being corrected.
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@TheRealCartman1
In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “5uckers&Losers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier, and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure man-baby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
The decision prompted harsh criticism on Twitter, with Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill, saying that Trump was dishonoring U.S. servicemen.
"TheyDiedWith their face to the foe, and that pathetic-Inadequate DJT couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen", Soames stated.
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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My favorite part of the Mueller report is Trump's reaction when he found out about the creation of the Special Counsel investigation.
On May 17, 2017 then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Trump about the special counsel investigation.
“When Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I am f-----d’” according to the report, which based its retelling of this conversation on notes taken by Jody Hunt, Sessions’ chief of staff at the time.
Trump then became angry, according to the report, and “lambasted” Sessions for his decision to recuse himself from the investigation.
“How could you let this happen Jeff?” the president said, according to the report..
Trump told Sessions that the Attorney General was his “most important appointment” and said Sessions had let him down. Sessions told investigators Trump told him “you were supposed to protect me.”
This does not sound like the reactions of an innocent man who has nothing to hide, and nothing to worry about. This sounds like the reactions of a criminal and a traitor, who has just been caught, and now has a lot to worry about. 😲
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state..
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News...
In 1984, a Russian immigrant named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin was fixated on one apartment building on Fifth Avenue,Trump Tower.
The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of Trump, who personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin. If the transaction seemed suspicious, there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises..
In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money" A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in NY. His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America.
Many Russian mobsters used Trump's apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.
With Trump's constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. Public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all, Semion Mogilevich.
In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. Mogilevich’s greatest talent, the one that places him at the top of the Russian mob, is finding creative ways to cleanse dirty cash. According to the FBI, he has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world. In 1991, he made a move that led directly to Trump Tower. That year, the FBI says, Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring a fellow mob boss, Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. If Mogilevich was the brains, Ivankov was the enforcer..
The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. “He was like a ghost to the FBI,” one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years..
The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. “We were looking around, looking around, looking around,” James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section, told Friedman. “We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.”
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A perfect example of what happens when Don the Con testifies under oath.
I'm sure Trump never wants to see Tim O'Brien again after their last encounter.😂
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally, genetically, and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
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The January 27 phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto has insisted publicly his country will not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full.
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The only thing Trump regrets is not getting his tower in Moscow.
In a CNN interview, Rudy Giuliani said that Trump Tower Moscow “was a real estate project. There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it.” 😂
There's proof online that Trump signed it. The letter of intent with Trump signature has been available to every media outlet.
Trump himself signed the letter of intent, which is dated October 28, 2015 — five months after Trump launched his presidential campaign, and during a period in which he was lavishing praise on Putin.
Michael Cohen testified under oath to Congress that Trump signed the document.
The letter of intent, which was also signed by Andrey Rozov, owner of the Russian firm that would have partnered with the Trump criminal organization on the project, I.C. Expert Investment Co. — outlined a deal that would have given Trump’s company a $4 million upfront fee, no upfront costs, a percentage of the sales and control over marketing and design. The deal also included an opportunity to name the hotel spa after Trump’s muse, Ivanka.
During a news conference in Jan 2017, days before his inauguration, Trump told another blatant lie about his dealings in Russia.
Trump: “I have no dealings with Russia, I have no deals in Russia, I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we stayed away,” Trump said. “We could make deals in Russia very easily if we wanted to. I just don’t want to because I think that would be a conflict. So I have no loans, no dealings, and no current pending deals.” 😲
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.
Lev Parnas" lawyer sent a letter to Moscow Mitch stating that he is ready to give testimony, as well as provide documents, that will prove that GOP Super PAC America One, Rudy, Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mulvaney, Bill Barr, Nunes, Pence, and Desperate Housewife of Capitol Hill 👉Lindsey Graham, were all part of Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Is it any wonder why Republicans were so vehemently against introducing witnesses and evidence into the Senate trial. They were covering up their own crimes. But it will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
--Buddha
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The origins of the term Liberal can be traced back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of liberty ("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift fromCommunism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia..
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him..
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
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@TheOuskie
Wrong!!!
The Civil War was Started over an act of sedition when Fort Sumter was attacked.
The south tried to secede from the Union, which unconstitutional.
Fun Fact: No state can secede from the Union, period. Because there is no provision within the constitution that would allow a state to secede from the Union.
The only thing they can do is engage in sedition and treason. And the confederacy tried that once.
The late, and VERY conservative Supreme Court Judge, Antonin Scalia answered a letter from a screenwriter asking for tips on a screenplay involving Maine seceding from the union:
Scalia: "I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one Nation, indivisible.)"
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump.
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A letter of intent forwarded by Russian-born businessman Felix Sater to the Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, outlines the terms of a licensing agreement to purchase property to build a "Trump World Tower Moscow."
Sater sent the letter of intent - dated October 13, 2015, and signed by a Russian investor named Andrey Rozov - to Cohen for then-candidate Donald Trump's signature.
Emails exchanged between Cohen and Sater - who have known each other since they were teenagers - weeks later indicated that they were preparing to celebrate not only Trump's election victory, but also the potential Russia deal.
Sater boasted of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the emails, which were obtained by The New York Times, telling Cohen that he would "get all of Putins team to buy in" on the Moscow deal.
Slater email to Cohen: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," Sater wrote, according to The Times. "I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected."
Two months later, Cohen emailed Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, asking for his "assistance" in pushing the deal through, according to emails submitted to congressional investigators..
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The wheels have fallen off Republican claims (LIES) that Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating increased growth and government revenues over the next decade. Reminds me of Cheney's claim that the Iraq war would pay for itself. Republican voters fell for that one too.
“Not only will this tax plan pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” Treasury Sec Steven Mnuchin famously boasted (LIED) in September 2017.
The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time last year, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American.
The Treasury Department reported the debt hit $22.012 trillion, a jump of more than $30 billion in just this month.
The national debt has been rising at a faster rate following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax-cut package after a little more than a year. The nation has added more than $1 trillion in debt in the last 11 months alone.
Trump has quickened the rate at which the debt is growing by widening the deficit to finance his $1.5 trillion package of sweeping tax cuts for himself, his wealthy friends, big banks, and corporations.
Trump promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves by spurring on economic activity, but revenues have since stalled. Federal spending by the Trump administration is around 6.6 percent higher than it was before. In 2017, the national debt grew by 4 percent, according to CBO data, which excludes intragovernmental holdings. By the following year, Trump's second in charge, this had accelerated to 7 percent.
It's a similar story with the deficit. When Trump was elected in 2016, the size of the deficit measured as a portion of GDP was 3.2 percent. By the end of 2018 this had increased to 3.9 percent. The deficit is expected to hit 4.2 percent in 2019. It is on course to reach a nominal value of $1 trillion by the end of the year.
That increase comes despite the economy doing well, so yes, it can be attributed directly to his tax cuts for the wealthy, which clearly aren't paying for themselves, as most professional economists warned. Trump's tax cuts was nothing more than corporate welfare, OR, a tax cut for the swamp.
Trump thinks about the national debt as he does his own personal debt. A 2016 Fortune magazine analysis revealed Trump's business is $1.11 billion in debt. That includes $846 million owed on five properties. This is not surprising considering that Trump famously bragged about being the "King of Debt" along with the fact that Trump has filed for bankruptcy 6 times, and has relied on Saudi Royals, and Russian Oligarchs to come to his rescue and bail him out numerous times over the years.
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1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "br@inwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
"Lying is second nature to Trump. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.”
The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement.
Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment..
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his crime family had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, Trump used his charity foundation to pay-off a $158,000 lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
Why on earth anyone would trust or believe anything that Trump has to say is beyond me.
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So far Trump's presidency as amounted to nothing more than a 3 year long smash and grab for him and his pointless kids...Jared included.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂😲😆
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Trump and his family are literally running a criminal enterprise out of the white house.
The notion that Trump was actually concerned about corruption in Ukraine, or corruption in general, is laughable.
Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now. 😔 Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, because Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible..
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
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Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
Mary Trump, a 55-year-old psychologist, blames Trump's father for giving Donald his bad habits. Fred Trump Sr was a cold and forbidding patriarch who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps – demanding Trump to follow less-than-scrupulous real estate practices and eventually propping him up if his own initiatives failed.
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes. "His monster had been set free."
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mitch McConnell, "all whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred," recognized after the election that Donald Trump's personal history and personality flaws made him vulnerable to manipulation, Mary Trump writes.
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
"Fear – the equivalent of weakness in our family – is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old," she said.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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Nearly all presidents have occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 20,000+ lies surely can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully executive the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama.
• Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
• Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
• Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to apologist Mark Meadows.
• Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
• Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-Nazis while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
• Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
• Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
• Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
• Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler—to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
• Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
• Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
• Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
• Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
• Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
• Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
• Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is deviant fascism.
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Let's be clear, the only reason Trump won in 2016 was because millions of Americans didn't vote. The voter turnout in 2016 was only 54%. Voter turnout in 2020 was exceptionally high at 66.8%. If voter turnout had been 66% in 2016, Trump would have lost. And this is why Republicans are engaging in voter suppression.
Again, let's be clear, the GOP isn't trying to stop mass voter fraud, because mass voter fraud doesn't exist, and Republicans know this. Republicans are trying to stop Americans from voting in mass.
DJT openly admitted on fox that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.
DJT: “The things they had in there were krazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox.
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Remarks in the Capitol Rotunda at the Signing of the Voting Rights Act.
August 06, 1965
"This act flows from a clear and simple wrong. Its only purpose is to right that wrong. Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American, in his heart, can justify. The right is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny."
"In 1957, as the leader of the majority in the United States Senate, speaking in support of legislation to guarantee the right of all men to vote, I said, "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."
"If you do this, then you will find, as others have found before you, that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men."
-- President Lyndon B. Johnson
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Trump begged Georgia's secretary of state to overturn the election results in an astounding hourlong phone call. Trump offered up a smorgasbord of lies and false claims about voter fraud and repeatedly berated state officials for not violating the constitutional on his behalf.
The phone call featured Trump, days before he is set to leave office, pleading with Raffensperger to alter the vote total and launching into a tirade of farcical conspiracy theories about the election. Trump even suggested that Raffensperger, who is a Republican, may face criminal consequences should he refuse to intervene in accordance with his wishes.
"So look," Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state." 😂😅
Raffensperger and his office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, pushed back against Trump's claims and said President-elect Joe Biden's victory of about 12,000 votes was accurate.
"The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry," Trump said in the call. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated." 😂
Translation: Trump wanted the Secretary of State for Georgia to illegally overturn the election in his favor.
Raffensperger responded, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong."
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also present on the call.
Meadows at one point suggested that the secretary of state's office and Trump's team find a path forward to resolve the dispute that did not involve the courts. Raffensperger said he did not believe there was one.
Translation: Trump and Meadows tried to violate the constitution and the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.
Trump also brought up a flurry of debunked conspiracy theories.
Raffensperger said Trump was being misled by claims on social media.
"Mr. President, the problem you have with social media is that people can say anything," he said.
"I know this phone call is going nowhere other than ultimately, you know — look, ultimately I win, okay?" Trump said. "Because you guys are so wrong. ... You've treated the population of Georgia so badly."
Democrats in and out of Georgia were swift to respond to the tape. Adam Schiff stated that "Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare."
"Once again. On tape," Schiff said, referring to Trump's impeachment. "Pressuring an election official to 'find' the votes so he can win is potentially criminal, And another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not."
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I just love the fact that neither Trump or his supporters can prove that the election was stolen. 🤣
And there's a reason why they can't prove it. 🤣
MAGAS: "We have a treasure trove of evidence that proves the election was stolen."
America: "Well then, why don't you just release the evidence."
MAGAS: "Well, it's complicated you see. We gave the evidence to Sasquatch, the hide and seek champion, for safekeeping. And now we can't seem to find him. But we know he's out there....somewhere."🤣😅
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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President Obama said that when making a decision, it's helpful not to watch TV or read social media.That's because that "creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment," He also said it's important to "have a team with a diversity of opinion" to help with making decisions and providing context.
President Obama had two important tips for any president to help make good decisions.
First, Obama said, you should "make sure you have a team with a diversity of opinion sitting around you."
"The other thing that's helpful is not watching TV or reading social media," he said. "Those are two things I would advise, if you're our president, not to do. It creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment."
Obama spoke about entering office during the Great Recession, and he said that the presidency is like "drinking out of a fire hose."
"That's doubly true when you're in the middle of a crisis," Obama said.
A president can't absorb all the information on their own when making a decision, so it's important to have teams to provide information and context about the problem, he said.
"Then what you have to do is create a process where you have confidence that whatever data is out there has been sifted and sorted," Obama said.
Obama said that because there's so much information out there now, including "opinion wrapped up as fact" and clickbait, it's important to filter through the noise.
"What it does mean is that if you are susceptible to worrying about what are the polls saying or what might this person say about this topic, or you start mistaking the intensity of the passion of a very small subset of people with a broader sense about your country or people who know something about the topic, that will sway your decision-making in an unhealthy way,"
"I am asking you to hold fast to that faith that is written into our founding documents...that ideal whisper...by slaves and abolitionist, that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders, and those who marched for justice. That creed...reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battle fields, to the surface of the moon. A creed at the core of every American, who's story is not yet written....YES WE CAN!!"
--President Barack Obama
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@John-sk9nh
I think you just used whataboutism as a defense. 😅
Deflecting or changing the subject is called "what-aboutism" — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. It's an attractive tactic for Putin, Trump, and Russian trolls. Whataboutism allows them to be vague, but appear straight-talking at the same time. What-aboutism is essentially a schoolyard taunt, brought to a national and global level.
The idea behind what-aboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A's faults — "Yeah? Well WHAT ABOUT that bad thing you did?"
It's not a complicated tactic — any grade-schooler can master it. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia.
One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it's a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings..
Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a black-and-white worldview. But in this worldview, it's very difficult to be the good guy; idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be "unmasked" as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency. If nobody is perfect, then it means that Trump and Putin should get a pass for any wrongdoings.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Trump’s blatant endorsement of lawlessness, has only encouraged brute lawlessness from his supporters.
“Bullies, narcissists and sociopaths exist in every walk of life and in every town and city in every country, If encouraged by a pathological leader, this minority will enthusiastically step forward to act beyond the law, to target opponents, and violentlyAssert their pathological values. If this process has the support of a critical mass of the general population, as Trump has, history suggests that societies can find themselves powerless to stop further descent into darkness."
--Ian Hughes
"Disordered Minds is based on research across a range of disciplines including history, psychology, politics and human nature. Over the course of my research, each of these disciplines yielded its own vital lesson."
"The lesson from history is already well known, even if it was in danger of being forgotten. The lesson is that at times of social and economic crisis, strongman leaders preaching simple solutions to complex problems can readily rise to power. These demagogues typically exhibit a rigidly narcissistic belief in their own infallibility, a paranoid fear of enemies at home and abroad, and a psychopathic ruthlessness which they apply to crush opponents and reshape the world according to their own disordered logic."
"The lesson that emerged for me from psychology is that these dangerous characteristics are not evenly distributed across the population but are instead concentrated in a relatively small proportion of the populace who suffer from certain disorders, namely psychopaths and those with narcissistic and paranoid personality disorders. Psychopaths suffer from an absence of conscience and a corresponding ability to treat others with casual brutality and disdain. Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder have distortions in perception and cognition which continually reinforce their belief in their own superiority. Anyone who dares challenge their superior status will immediately become the target of their unbridled narcissistic rage. Finally, people with paranoid personality disorder have a cognitive dysfunction that makes them believe, falsely, that others are always out to harm them."
"These dangerous disorders are not uncommon. Psychopaths and those with narcissistic personality disorder are thought to make up around 1-2 per cent of the population. The prevalence of paranoid personality disorder is thought to be much higher, at around four percent of the population. These numbers are such that we are likely to interact with someone with one of these disorders several times every day. In a country with the population of the United States, about 20 million people will have a dangerous personality."
"The lesson for democracy that I learned while researching Disordered Minds, is that, because of their tenacity and exaggerated self-belief, people with dangerous personalities often have a greater chance of gaining power than people with normal psychology. And when they do achieve office, they are compelled to dismantle democracy from within. Democracy, after all, places constraints on the power of leaders. Individuals with dangerous personality disorders are psychologically incapable of functioning within these constraints and duly set out to demolish them."
Once in power, they undermine the rule of law and make the law whatever they say it is. They discredit opponents and suppress dissent. They subvert the integrity and effectiveness of the electoral process. They violate the human rights of minorities and those they perceive to be acting against them. They discredit the very notion of truth and then navigate the narcissistic fog of confusion they create with much greater skill than their opponents."
Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities are Destroying Democracy by Ian Hughes
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@ddobry21
You are grossly mistaken.
In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
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Blatant dictatorship – in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule – has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by different means.
Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine.
Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box. The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. With a classic coup d’état, as in Pinochet’s Chile, the death of a democracy is immediate and evident to all. The constitution is suspended or scrapped. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance.
Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended, by political parties and organized citizens but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not.
This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy – packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence) and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy – gradually, subtly, and even legally – to kill it.
Not only did Americans elect a demagogue in 2016, but we did so at a time when the norms that once protected our democracy were already coming unmoored.
But if other countries’ experiences teach us that that polarization can kill democracies, they also teach us that breakdown is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is happening to our country. But protecting our democracy requires more than just fright or outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from other countries to see the warning signs – and recognize the false alarms. We must be aware of the fateful missteps that have wrecked other democracies. And we must see how citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert breakdown.
How Democracies Die
--by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, professors of government at Harvard University
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Trump's interest in doing business in Russia was first piqued in 1986, when he met the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin and they began discussing building a "large luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin in partnership with the Soviet government," as Trump recounted in his 1987 book, "The Art of the Deal."
Trump traveled to Russia in 1987 to survey potential locations for his hotel as landmark policies like perestroika and glasnost made the Soviet Union more open to foreign investments. Trump went back to Russia in 1996 and announced a plan to invest $250 million in Russian real estate and slap his name on two luxury residential buildings.Trump boasted about his plan when he met the Russian politician Aleksandr Lebed in New York in 1997, telling Lebed, "We are actually looking at something in Moscow right now ... Only quality stuff. And we're working with the local government, the mayor of Moscow, and the mayor's people. So far, they've been very responsive
Trump began seeing significant returns from Russian investments in US properties bearing the Trump name in the 2000s. A Reuters investigation last in 2017 found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, for instance.Reuters noted that its tally of Russian investors may be conservative. At least 703 — or about one-third — of the owners of the 2,044 units in the seven Trump buildings are limited liability companies, or LLCs, which have the ability to hide the identity of a property's true owner.
In the mid-2000s, the Trump Organization partnered with a company called the Bayrock Group, contracting it to pursue a development deal in Moscow. This effort was led by the Russian-born businessman Felix Sater, a man Trump lied about even knowing, and who's become a key figure in Mueller's investigation and Cohen's plea deal. At a 2008 conference, Trump Jr. also said, "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." In the 18 months prior to the conference, Trump Jr. made six trips to Russia.
In 2013, Trump traveled to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. During the visit, he said, "I have plans for the establishment of business in Russia. Now, I am in talks with several Russian companies to establish this skyscraper."In 2015 and 2016, Cohen and Sater teamed up in an attempt to put up a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen said discussions on the plan lasted until June 2016, which was after Trump had clinched the GOP nomination for president.Cohen was in touch with the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin's press secretary over the matter, which reportedly included a plan to offer Putin a $50 million penthouse in the tower.
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Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
― Thomas Jefferson
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”
― George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.”
― Tiffany Madison
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Ya think.😂
Here's a perfect example of what happens when Don the Con testifies under oath.
I'm sure Trump never wants to see Tim O'Brien again after their last encounter.😂
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything..
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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These protesters are the most unpatriotic people in America. And what's worse, there is nothing grassroots about these protests at all. It may look homegrown, but it's not. They are being funded, guided and created by billion dollar corporations, and the conservative political groups that they own. But let's be clear, these protests are small, and they represent a very small minority of people in this country.
The protesters that show up armed to the teeth and dressed like insurgents should be treated for what they are....terrorists. They are truly the dregs of humanity. Like Trump, most of them have never served in the military, and they never will. Because they're too fat, too lazy, too selfish, too incompetent, and too cowardly. But that won't stop them from dressing up like insurgents and showing off their weapons of mass carnage, and stumbling around in public wrapped in a cloak of phony patriotism.
Like Trump, these counterfeit patriots are indifferent to the harm, stress, and potential devastation they are placing on our medical infrastructure by helping to spread this virus. It's like their minds have been infected with some sort of mental virus that blocks out logic, reasoning and critical thinking. The concept of serving a cause greater than themselves is completely foreign to them. If they can't eat it, grope it, or shoot it, then they don't want it.
Do they really believe that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 60 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? Our greatest generation from WW2 have to be spinning in their graves. I'm actually glad that most of them are not around to see this. The men and women of our greatest generation had true grit. Trump protesters are filled with true sh!t.
If they really want to protest something, they should be out protesting for more protective gear for nurses, doctors, and first responders. Or how about protesting for more testing nation wide. But once again, they're too selfish, and too unpatriotic. For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should for once give some consideration to growing the F. UP.
Marine veteran
Semper Fi..
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The NRA / National Russian Association has willfully obscured where its money goes, permitted multiple conflicts of interest and engaged in dubious payout arrangements, all while crying out to its members for more donations.
The investigation into the NRA found that hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned off to top NRA executives and vendors, and that public relations firm Ackerman McQueen, which has worked with the gun group since the 1970s, was essentially running the ship. Tax filings for 2017 reveal that the NRA paid Ackerman McQueen more than $40 million that year.
The NRA and Ackerman McQueen have become so intertwined that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Oliver North, the former Iran-Contra operative, who served as the NRA’s president, was paid roughly $1 million a year through Ackerman, according to two NRA sources. According to interviews and to documents obtained — federal tax forms, charity records, contracts, corporate filings, and internal communications — a small group of NRA executives, contractors, and vendors has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, through gratuitous payments, sweetheart deals, and opaque financial arrangements.
Memos created by a senior NRA employee describe a workplace distinguished by secrecy, self-dealing, and greed, whose leaders have encouraged disastrous business ventures and questionable partnerships, and have marginalized those who object. “Management has subordinated its judgment to the vendors,” the documents allege. “Trust in the top has eroded.”
Marc Owens, former head of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt enterprises, stated that the “litany of red flags is just extraordinary.”
“The materials reflect one of the broadest arrays of likely transgressions that I’ve ever seen,” Owens said. “There is a tremendous range of what appears to be the misuse of assets for the benefit of certain vendors and people in control. Those facts, if confirmed, could lead to the revocation of the NRA’s tax-exempt status.” And without its tax-exempt status, the NRA would likely not survive.”
This latest hit can be added to a long list of problems for the NRA. In 2017, the group reported a loss of $55 million in income as membership plummeted.
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Trump: "I happen to know more about vaccines than any doctor. In fact, I have my own people, the best people by the way, working on a coronavirus vaccine at TUMC, Trump University Medical Center. We should have the vaccine ready within the hour, if not sooner. Plus my vaccine will come with a bonus....it also cures gout. However unfortunately, some minor side effects of the vaccine may include hallucinations, loss of teeth, permanent blindness, elephantiasis, and acute death."
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Trump sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of Trump's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day.
The truth of the matter is, if Trump had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with Trump's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. Trump had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card Trump had left, and he played it.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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According to Trump and his supporters, VP Harris can simply reject all the votes for him in 2024 if he decides to run, giving Biden an automatic 2nd term. 🤣😅
According to Trump and Rudy, President Biden can enlist a group of fake state electors, and have them forge official election documents for the 2024 election.🤣
Plot twist!!! So while Trump and his supporters were screaming "stop the steal" Trump and his people were actively engaged in efforts to steal the election with forged documents and fake state electors.
Question: Why isn't fox reporting any of this? 🤣🤣
On January 6, Trump believed that staging a coup/insurrection was his best and last chance to bring down our democracy, so that he could remain in power. He had only one card left, and that was theViolence Card, and he played it. His idol felt the same way back in 1923.
Germany November 9, 1923: AdolfBelieves the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, he stages the Beer Hall coup. It fails.
In the aftermath of the failed coup,
AdolfWas convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison.
They should have never let him out of prison. It would have saved at least 60 million lives.
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Arthur Haley
Clinton and Obama never insulted our veterans, our PoWs, and they never insulted Gold Star family members. Obama visited our troops in Iraq as a Senator in 2007. He then visited our Troops in Afghanistan as Commander in chief just 3 months after Taking office. He went on to visit our troops 4 times as president. Trump has been in office 2 years, and hasn't visited our troops once. Trump flew to Saudi Arabia, and did the sword dance during his 1st trip abroad as president, and yet he didn't take the time to visit our troops right next door in Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, or Jordan. Last but not least, Obama never insulted our military and generals, by claiming to know more about fighting wars, and fighting ISIS than they do.
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Trump's name calling is appalling for a 73 year old man. He's still a 10 year old playground bully---calling other kids names in order to mask his insecurities, and feel better about himself.
“Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong,” Bowden wrote last year in Vanity Fair, recalling his time profiling Trump. “He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression.”
-- Mark Bowden, author of Blackhawk Down
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true..
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine. In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to abstract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Trump will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 50 thousand American lives..
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@MMGJ10
The origins of the term Liberal can be traced back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of liberty ("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
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On July 23, 2019, Trump said this: "I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."😲
This is clearly a man who sees himself as a dictator. Since his campaign, Trump has been trying to tell us that he doesn't believe in democracy or our Constitution. He said it when he bragged about shooting someone on 5th Ave. He said it when he bragged about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Trump, and his supporters, are part of a cult, a cult of pathological ignorance, mixed with indifference, human indecency, corruption, counterfeit patriotism, and self-righteous bigotry.
As a Marine veteran, I could not be more proud of these women, because they are a great example of why served and sacrificed for my country.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Sen Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and other republicans on Capitol Hill,
have been unmasked as Russian operatives for disseminating Russian conspiracy theories, and for aiding and abetting Putin's efforts to interfere in the 2020 election..
Last month, four lawmakers who make up the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight, the group of congressional and intelligence committee leaders who are privy to top-secret intelligence, demanded a briefing for all members of Congress focused on foreign interference in the 2020 election, based on their assertions that lawmakers are being targeted by those meddling efforts. They also have urged Trump to publicly reveal additional information about the nature of the foreign-influence campaign. Intelligence officials told House lawmakers last week that the Russians are seeking to boost Trump in the 2020 campaign.
The public version of the letter was vague about those threats, but the classified addendum to the letter specifically names Sen Ron Johnson’s investigation as a vehicle for “laundering” Russian propaganda for the foreign influence campaign aimed at denigrating Biden.
The addendum states that the Ukrainian lawmaker linked to the Kremlin, Andrii Derkach, sent information packets about Biden to Johnson, Grassley and other Trump stooges who have pushed similar Russian conspiracy theories, as part of Putin's disinformation campaign on America.
NCSC Director William Evanina, along with other senior national security officials, briefed lawmakers in multiple classified sessions in late July and August. His statement explicitly accused the Ukrainian politician, Derkach, of undermining Biden through weaponized leaks. Derkach is known to have met late last year with Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
The packets were sent by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who met with Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani in Ukraine last December. Andrii Derkach, who was formerly aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, is also an alumnus of Moscow’s FSB academy, formerly known as the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. Andrii Derkach’s father Leonid was a KGB operative who later became the head of Ukrainian intelligence, and who was fired in 2004 shortly before Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
The packets were sent late last year to Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declined to answer a colleague's question about whether he had received derogatory information about Joe Biden from Andrii Derkach.
During that closed-door meeting in late July — a transcript of which was made publicly available — Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of Russian propaganda were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham. Nunes refused to answer the question.
Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received" by Nunes. 😲
That evidence, according to committee officials, is in the form of a DHL shipping receipt that was sent to the Intelligence Committee’s majority office shortly after the package was sent to Nunes..
"If any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation-state, or anybody acting on behalf of a nation-state, about influencing or interfering with an election then that's something the FBI would want to know about,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on June 12, 2019 — a day before Trump rebuked him and said he would probably accept such help.
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With all the chaos going on in that city that night, only two peopleDied. And they were ki//ed by a 17 year old carrying an illegal weapon. Rittenhouse proved that he was by far, the biggest threat that night. And Rittenhouse wasn't the only person with a gun that night, but for some reason, he was the ONLY person to shootSomeone. The cops didn't even shootAnyone that night.
So Rittenhouse claims he went to Kenosha to provide medical aid, with an AR-15.
Question: Who goes to a town to render medical aid with an AR-15?
Answer: A menace to society, that's who.
Make no mistake, Rittenhouse will end up on trial again for homicide. Because he will definitely killAgain.
He was finally able to live out his Call of Duty fantasies, but with a real gun, and with real people's lives this time.
He took 2 lives, and got away with it. So why not take some more.
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Trump once said, “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do!” yet when he was pressed to name his favorite verse, he made one up that does not even exist. In an interview, Trump said that he's never asked God for forgiveness, because he's never done anything wrong. Trump has absolutely nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus Christ. He breaks every commandment daily, has proven he knows nothing of the Bible, and still gets over 87% of the Evangelical Christian vote. To say that evangelicals hold him to a lesser standard would be incorrect, since that would imply that they hold him to any standard at all..
Trump is simply an irredeemable human being. He seems to possess every human flaw known to mankind, as well as everyone of the $even deadly sins.
1. L.UST: a strong inordinate and inappropriate passion or longing, especially for Ivanka and for assaulting random women.
2. G.LUTT0NY: an excessive and ongoing eating of food or drink. An inordinate desire to consume way more than one requires.
3. G.REED: an excessive and insatiable pursuit of money and material goods by any means necessary.
Charity cures greed by putting the desire to help others above storing up treasure for one’s self. Trump created a fake charity foundation, and used it for his own financial gain..
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been gr.eedy, gr.eedy, gr.eedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so gr.eedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a gr.eedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
4. S.L0TH: an excessive laziness or the failure to act and utilize one’s talents.
5. W.RATH/ANGER: a strong anger and hatred towards others.
6. ENVY: the intense desire to have an item that someone else possesses. The desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
7. PRIDE: an excessive view of one's own self, and one's own abilities, without regard for others. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity..
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We already know that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. That's why he has fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These people will not tell him the truth. They will instead tell him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear are lies and false narratives.
It's times like this when America needs, and misses, the calm, collective, intuitive, informative, honest, and reassuring words of President Obama.
Our current president believes that windmills cause cancer. Let that sink in for a moment.
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“Another way to control thoughts is through the use of loaded language, which, as Lifton pointed out, is purposely designed to invoke an emotional response. When I look at the list of thought-controlling techniques—reducing complex thoughts into clichés and platitudinous buzz words; forbidding critical questions about the leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate or evil—it is astounding how many Trump exploits.”
“Cult members learn a new vocabulary that is designed to constrict their thinking into absolute, black-and-white, thought-stopping clichés that conform to group ideology. (“Lock her up” and “Build the Wall” are Trumpian examples. Even his put-downs and nicknames—Crooked Hillary, Pocahontas for Elizabeth Warren—function to block other thoughts. Terms like “deep state” and “globalist” also act as triggers. They rouse emotion and direct attention.)”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How Trump Uses Mind Control On His Followers
“A lie once told remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth,” the infamous N@ziPropagandist Joseph Goebbels memorably proclaimed.”
Trump and Q have learned dangerous and valuable lessons from Goebbels.
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Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life."
LOL!!😂😲😂😆
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump? I THINK NOT.....
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fraudulent.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
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Even Nixon knew he didn't have immunity. That's why he asked Ford for a pardon.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
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Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters that year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
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A descendant of Robert E. Lee stepped down as pastor of a small NC church after his comments supporting racial justice sparked a backlash.
The general's distant nephew, the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, issued a statement saying he resigned from Bethany United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem after the congregation decided to put his tenure to a vote.
Some church members were not comfortable with Lee’s remarks during the MTV awards when he introduced the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville while protesting against white supremacy.
“We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism, and hate,” he said on the music network. “As a pastor, it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America's original sin.”
Although Lee issued an apology to church members for causing them pain with his remarks, he said he continues to “strongly support” removal of monuments to his ancestor and other Confederates...
To me, this is proof that some Christians only talk the talk. But there are some who actually walk the walk like this pastor. Kudos to you Reverend Lee.
At the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln could have had Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee, all of his generals, and all the leaders of the Confederacy, hung for treason. And if you review history, that's usually what happens to the side that loses in a civil war. But Lincoln didn't do that. Instead he had mercy on them, and worked towards peace and reconstruction.
Flying the Confederate rag is a clear statement of contempt for the American flag. Not only does the Confederate flag represent treason, it also represents surrender and defeat. And if slavery is America's original sin, then the Confederate flag represents the defense of that original sin.
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“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
Trump and co-conspirators have learned despicable, yet valuable lessons from Goebbels.
Trump's failed coup on January 6, was very reminiscent of AdolfH's failed coup.
November 9, 1923: AdolfH believes the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, he stages the Beer Hall Putsch, or coup. It fails.
In the aftermath of the failed coup, AdolfH was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison.
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Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. He simply doesn't care.
There will be no guilt, no apologies, no shame, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath like Trump.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a narcissistic sociopath.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises..
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Bannon, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way...
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities..
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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Parnas should have listened to Michael Cohen's warning about getting close to Trump. Just imagine that you're a loyal MAGA hat wearing Trump cultist. And for more than a year, you worked for Trump by partnering with Rudy to help carry out Trump's bribery scheme in Ukraine. You even put yourself in legal jeopardy for Trump by illegally funneling tons of Russian money into his super-PAC, and republican campaigns.
Parnas received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
So then you get caught, arrested, and indicted. Then you turn on the TV one day, to see your cult leader, the man you loved and admired, the man that you risked everything for, announce to the world, that he's never met you, and has no idea who you are. 😲 How would you feel? 😄
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. What else do they have in common? They are all men that Trump admires and looks up to.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that Trump chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force on everyone else what he believes, and punish those who don’t.
Trump cultists always brag about their love and support for our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
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I like Presidents who release their taxes to the public. 😅
Biden stated on October 31, 2020 in a rally:
"I’ve released 22 years of my tax returns. You can go online and look. Donald Trump hasn’t released one.”
• Biden’s tax returns from 2019 to 1998 are available in different places online. That amounts to 22 years worth of the financial documents.
• Trump has not released his tax returns, citing a pending audit.
In a Halloween-day pitch to voters in Flint, Mich, Joe Biden called out Trump over his long-concealed tax returns, which revealed
that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in both 2017 and 2016.
"Why should you pay more in taxes than Donald Trump?" Biden said at the event. "He paid $750 in taxes the one year we know of. I’ve released 22 years of my tax returns. You can go online and look. He hasn’t released one."
Biden’s tax returns for the previous eight years, covering the rest of his two terms as vice president, can be found in archived press releases from the Obama White House. Those included tax returns released for: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008.
The 22 years of Biden tax returns are also available as part of an archivemaintained by Tax Notes.
Trump is the only president or major-party presidential nominee in decades to keep his returns hidden from the public.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Those days are long gone.
Allowing Trump to run for election in 2024, would've been like allowing Nixon to run for election again in 1976.
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"The buck stops with me."
-- President Biden, 08/20/2021
As president, Biden takes responsibility for the chaos of the Afghan withdrawal.
'No, I don't take responsibility at all'."
--Trump 03/13/2020
Trump deflects blame for his coronavirus testing debacle, and the soaring number of infections.
Personally, I like presidents who don't dodge drafts or responsibility.
History teaches that there has been a long-running battle with fear of the truth. People mistakenly fail to admit the truth, and in so doing, help to perpetuate recorded falsehoods. And if it’s not fear, then it’s distortion of the truth to promote a personal or political cause.
Loyalty to the truth should be the ultimate goal of the historian and the reader.
What can the individual learn from history — as a guide to living? Not what to do, but what to strive for. And what to avoid in striving. The importance and intrinsic value of behaving decently. The importance of seeing clearly—not least of, seeing yourself clearly.
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Parnas should have listened to Michael Cohen's warning about getting close to Trump. Just imagine that you're a loyal MAGA hat wearing Trump cultist like Parnas. And for more than a year, you worked for Trump by partnering with Rudy to help carry out Trump's bribery scheme in Ukraine. You even put yourself in legal jeopardy for Trump by illegally funneling tons of Russian money into his super-PAC, and republican campaigns.
Parnas received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
So then you get caught, arrested, and indicted. Then you turn on the TV one day, to see your cult leader, the man you loved and admired, the man that you risked everything for, announce to the world, that he's never met you, and has no idea who you are. 😲 How would you feel? 😄
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COVID-19: "I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance, and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, or flag waving. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. Currently there is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I recognize no one's authority. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I've had success in other countries, but America is making me great again."💪😆
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
--John Dean
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
--John Dean
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle."
--John Dean
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The wheels have fallen off Republican claims (LIES) that Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating increased growth and government revenues over the next decade. Reminds me of Cheney's claim that the Iraq war would pay for itself. Republican voters fell for that one too.
“Not only will this tax plan pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” Treasury Sec Steven Mnuchin famously boasted (LIED) in September 2017.
The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time last year, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American.
The Treasury Department reported the debt hit $22.012 trillion, a jump of more than $30 billion in just this month.
The national debt has been rising at a faster rate following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax-cut package after a little more than a year. The nation has added more than $1 trillion in debt in the last 11 months alone.
Trump has quickened the rate at which the debt is growing by widening the deficit to finance his $1.5 trillion package of sweeping tax cuts for himself, his wealthy friends, big banks, and corporations.
Trump promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves by spurring on economic activity, but revenues have since stalled. Federal spending by the Trump administration is around 6.6 percent higher than it was before. In 2017, the national debt grew by 4 percent, according to CBO data, which excludes intragovernmental holdings. By the following year, Trump's second in charge, this had accelerated to 7 percent.
It's a similar story with the deficit. When Trump was elected in 2016, the size of the deficit measured as a portion of GDP was 3.2 percent. By the end of 2018 this had increased to 3.9 percent. The deficit is expected to hit 4.2 percent in 2019. It is on course to reach a nominal value of $1 trillion by the end of the year.
That increase comes despite the economy doing well, so yes, it can be attributed directly to his tax cuts for the wealthy, which clearly aren't paying for themselves, as most professional economists warned. Trump's tax cuts was nothing more than corporate welfare, OR, a tax cut for the swamp.
Trump thinks about the national debt as he does his own personal debt. A 2016 Fortune magazine analysis revealed Trump's business is $1.11 billion in debt. That includes $846 million owed on five properties. This is not surprising considering that Trump famously bragged about being the "King of Debt" along with the fact that Trump has filed for bankruptcy 6 times, and has relied on Saudi Royals, and Russian Oligarchs to come to his rescue and bail him out numerous times over the years.
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"From the start, authoritarians stand out from other kinds of politicians by appealing to negative experiences and emotions. They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation’s saviors. Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears, they present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety
fromRacial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies."
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present
"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, a ttacking the leader is seen as a ttacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people orTer rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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Republican voters started leaving the GOP in droves shortly after Trump's insurrection on the Capitol on January 6. Several states reported a shift in voter registrations, with many voters deciding to leave the Republican Party.
An analysis of January voting records found that at least 140,000 Republicans decided to leave the party across 25 states. A recent report from NBC News found more than 12,000 Republican voters in PA leaving the party after January 6, while NC and AZ saw at least 8,000 and over 9,000, respectively.
Kimrey Rhinehardt was one of the many NC voters that decided to leave the GOP following the Capitol riot, describing it as "the straw that broke the camel's back."
"What happened in D.C. that day, it broke my heart," said Juan Nunez, a 56-year-old an Army veteran from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. "It shook me to the core." More than 10,000 Republicans have left the party in AZ, where the state GOP has moved to censure Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain for perceived disloyalty to the former president.
"The Arizona GOP has just lost its mind," said Heidi Ushinski, a 41-year-old Arizona voter who switched her affiliation to the Democratic Party.
Lifelong Repub Michael Taylor, the mayor of Sterling Heights, Michigan, had already voted for Biden in the Nov. 3 election before changing his registration after the state GOP helped push conspiracy theories that fed the insurrection.
"There was enough before the election to swear off the GOP, but the incredible events since have made it clear to me that I don't fit into this party," Taylor said. "It wasn't just complaining about election fraud anymore. They have taken control of the Capitol at the behest of the president of the United States, and if there was a clear break with the party in my mind, that was it."
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As a Marine veteran, I am not surprised or shocked by this at all. Meanwhile Trump was busy throwing America and our intelligence agencies under the bus in Helsinki. Every American should be outraged over Trump's blatant and unapologetic treasonous behavior.
When Trump is asked about this by a reporter, he will do what he has always done, defend Putin, and attack the media, the imaginary deep state, our Generals, and our intelligence agencies....guaranteed.
Putin is America's enemy, and not because we want him to be, he's America's enemy because that's what he has chosen to be. Trump is a Russian asset, and not because that's what we want him to be, he's a Russian asset simply because that's what he has chosen to be. We should treat them both accordingly with the choices that they have made..
Semper Fi..
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Trump should just stop talking all together, because he doesn't help, he only hurts, and has never solved a single problem in his entire life. He doesn't solve problems, he only creates problems, or he exacerbates them. Trump himself is a systemic problem for the country, on multiple levels. He portrayed the pandemic as a hoax, and believes he knows more than medical experts in their own fields. To put it mildly, he is a walking talking, living breathing fk up.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview..
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us, that I can assure you.” —Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting.
This is what you get when you have an illegitimate president who doesn't believe in facts or science, but instead immerses himself in buffoonery like magic and sorcery.
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal" admits that the book was “full of falsehoods.” Schwartz said.
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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So far Trump's presidency has amounted to nothing more than a 3 year long smash and grab for him and his pointless kids...Jared included.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂😲😆
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Once again, Trump ruins and sullies everything he touches. It's like ebola and the coronavirus had baby, and named it Trump.
Just the other night, he sullied the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he had to follow that up by sullying a prayer breakfast. He has now sullied our military, the DoJ, the State Dept, the White House, and the country as a whole.
Evil, malice, antipathy, wrath, and indignation follows him wherever he goes.
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Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing.
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Trump is basically the Bernie Madoff of American Presidents.
Trump and his family are literally running a criminal enterprise out of the white house.
The notion that Trump was actually concerned about corruption in Ukraine, or corruption in general, is laughable.
Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now. 😔 Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, because Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible..
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
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Rand Paul isn't even qualified to speak to Dr. Fauci without permission. Especially when you discover that Rand Paul isn't even a real doctor himself.
Rand Paul earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. After that, he completed his general surgery internship at Atlanta-based Georgia Baptist Medical Center, followed by a residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center. Despite his medical training, Paul does not hold a bachelor's degree. He attended Waco, Texas-based Baylor University to study biology and English, but left a few courses short of a diploma after he was accepted into medical school.
Rand Paul is not even a board-certified ophthalmologist, as he reportedly claimed. Paul's certification comes from a board that he created HIMSELF. 😂 But he hasn't been certified by an organization recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties for years.
The now-defunct board he created was not recognized by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, so Randy was not certified by a board recognized by the state since 2005, and since Paul's board dissolved in 2011, he has had no certification from an active body.
Basically, Dr. Dre is more of a doctor than Randy.😄
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LaurenBobo, who ran on a "law-and-order" platform, has had several dust-ups with police. This jailbird has a rap sheet unusually long for a member of Congress.
And her track record of thumbing her nose at the law continued after she tussled with Capitol Police officers over her refusal to walk through newly installed House metal detectors.
Back in June 2015, Boebert was cuffed for disorderly conduct at a country music festival near Grand Junction, Colo., after police said she attempted to interfere in the arrest of minors busted for underage drinking and encouraged the accused to run off.
While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies’ reports. She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
“Lauren continued yelling and causing the underage drinkers to become unruly,” an arresting officer said in a statement at the time.
Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015.
A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs.
In September 2010, Boebert was arrested after a neighbor accused Boebert’s two pit bulls of attackingHer dog. Boebert pleaded guilty to a single count of “dog at large."
Boebert’s future husband, Jayson, also had brushes with law enforcement. In January 2004, he was arrested after exposing his himself to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 ) was also there. Jayson Boebert pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure, earning himself four days in jail and two years probation.
In February 2004, he was booked on a domestic violenceCharge, against Lauren. He “did unlawfully strike, shove or kick … and subjected her to physical contact,” a spokesman for the Garfield associate county court clerk stated.They had been dating at the time. Jayson Boebert ultimately served seven days in jail.
In May 2004. during an altercation with Jayson at his home, she scratched his face and chest and trashed his residence, according to a police report. She was slapped with third-degree assault, criminal mischief and underage drinking charges. A rep for the Garfield County Combined Court said they could not reveal any information about the case’s final disposition.
This is what "law & order" and conservative Christian values looks like. 🤣🤣
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Republicans will soon ban math from being taught in schools.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
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“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion, reminded soldiers that ‘TheNazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine Corps General James Mattis,
June 3, 2020...
Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful
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For Trump, the presidency is just another con or game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation, and his fake university.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing..
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
● JULY 10: At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt..
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● Sept 9: Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● Sept 9: The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
● Sept.11: Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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Conservative Liberal
Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing. Because Republicans don't want to govern, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about...
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The Republican National Committee has conveniently removed an inconvenient webpage from 2020 in which it praised Trump for signing a "historic peace agreement with the Taliban."
The page had been removed with the web address redirecting to a 404 error page featuring the quip: "It looks like you're as lost as Biden is."
Featured as part of a section titled "President Trump Is Bringing Peace In The Middle East," the page described how Trump had "continued to take the lead in peace talks."
In the now-deleted GOP webpage, it is stated that Trump negotiated a deal for the withdrawals by May 2021 "in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the organization's current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at the request of the US while Trump was in office.
As recently as April, Trump was also voicing his support for withdrawal, stating that "getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do."
"Nineteen years is long enough, in fact, far too much and way too long," he said.
The Trump White House agreed to a May 1 troop withdrawal. Biden had to decide whether to honor a deal that included the Taliban but not the Afghan government.
Under the agreement, the militants also agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in the areas they control.
Speaking at the White House, Trump said the Taliban had been trying to reach an agreement with the US for a long time.
He said US troops had been eliminating terrorists in Afghanistan "by the thousands" and now it was "time for someone else to do that work, and it will be the Taliban and it could be surrounding countries".
"I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we're not all wasting time," Trump added. "If bad things happen, we'll go back with a force like no-one's ever seen."
The deal was signed by US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar with Secretary of State Pompeo as a witness.
In a speech, Pompeo urged the militant group to "keep your promises to cut ties with al-Qaeda".
Baradar said he hoped Afghanistan could now emerge from four decades of conflict.
"I hope that with the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan the Afghan nation under an Islamic regime will take its relief and embark on a new prosperous life," he said.
Meanwhile Defence Secretary Mark Esper was in Kabul alongside Afghan President Ashraf Ghani - whose government did not take part in the US-Taliban talks.
Esper said: "This is a hopeful moment, but it is only the beginning. The road ahead will not be easy. Achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan will require patience and compromise among all parties."
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A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake..
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. And over the last 3 years, he fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire.
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure within White House national security council, and in typical Trump fashion, he got rid of it simply because he didn't understand it, and didn't care enough to even try to understand it.
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"Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one."
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever—and possibly get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Democracies depend on norms — unwritten rules about how leaders and citizens should behave. One norm is forbearance — the idea that political power should be used with restraint rather than weaponized and taken to its lawful limits. Such norms have little standing in today’s Republican Party.
There was, for example, no constitutional barrier to prevent Wisconsin’s outgoing Republican governor, Scott Walker, in cohoots with the state’s Repub Legislature, to strip the governor’s office of power before the incoming Dem governor could take office in 2019. But it violated the longstanding norm of American politics that the outgoing party accept the change in power that comes with losing an election.
North Carolina’s Republican Legislature pulled the same stunt in 2016, when the state’s voters elected a Democratic governor. Republican state legislatures, have also pushed gerrymandering beyond ethical limits. In Wisconsin’s 2018 election, Republican candidates received only 45 percent of the popular vote but won 63 percent of the state Assembly’s seats. In a 2019 5-to-4 Supreme Court ruling, the 5 Republican appointees on the court held that Wisconsin’s rigged system did not violate voters’ constitutional rights.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was designed to end the voter suppression that had long plagued America’s elections. It worked as intended, until Republicans began devising schemes to keep minorities from voting. In 2017, North Dakota Republicans enacted a law that requires voters to have written proof of a residential address before they are eligible to vote. The law targets Native Americans who live on rural tribal lands, which don’t have street names and numbers on all of their roads. Here, too, the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees in a 5-to-4 decision allowed the policy to stand.
The idea of disenfranchising minority voters was hatched by the Republican-controlled legislatures of Indiana and Georgia. Enacted in 2006, Indiana’s law required residents to have a government-issued photo ID, such as a driver’s license or passport, in order to register to vote. Republican legislators knew who they were targeting. Minorities, young adults, and people of low income — all of whom tend to vote Democratic.
Since then, roughly 30 Republican-controlled states have enacted voter-ID laws. Some were forced to reenact their law after a court struck down the first attempt.
Although Republicans say that voter IDs are intended to prevent voter fraud, there is no evidence for the claim, and their real purpose is clear. As longtime Republican political consultant Carter Wrenn said: “Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?” Republican lawmakers in Florida and Pennsylvania slipped up and publicly said that their aim was to suppress the Democratic vote.
But Republicans are playing with fire, because voter suppression lengthens the memory of those suppressed. The votes of Black Americans are now all but lost to the GOP. Latino voters vote 2 to 1 Democratic. Asian-Americans, who not that long ago sided with the Republican Party, are now one of the Democrats’ most loyal voting groups.
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Trump’s blatant endorsement of lawlessness, has only encouraged brute lawlessness from his supporters.
“Bullies, narcissists and sociopaths exist in every walk of life and in every town and city in every country, If encouraged by a pathological leader, this minority will enthusiastically step forward to act beyond the law, to target opponents, and violentlyAssert their pathological values. If this process has the support of a critical mass of the general population, as Trump has, history suggests that societies can find themselves powerless to stop further descent into darkness."
--Ian Hughes
"Disordered Minds is based on research across a range of disciplines including history, psychology, politics and human nature. Over the course of my research, each of these disciplines yielded its own vital lesson."
"The lesson from history is already well known, even if it was in danger of being forgotten. The lesson is that at times of social and economic crisis, strongman leaders preaching simple solutions to complex problems can readily rise to power. These demagogues typically exhibit a rigidly narcissistic belief in their own infallibility, a paranoid fear of enemies at home and abroad, and a psychopathic ruthlessness which they apply to crush opponents and reshape the world according to their own disordered logic."
"The lesson that emerged for me from psychology is that these dangerous characteristics are not evenly distributed across the population but are instead concentrated in a relatively small proportion of the populace who suffer from certain disorders, namely psychopaths and those with narcissistic and paranoid personality disorders. Psychopaths suffer from an absence of conscience and a corresponding ability to treat others with casual brutality and disdain. Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder have distortions in perception and cognition which continually reinforce their belief in their own superiority. Anyone who dares challenge their superior status will immediately become the target of their unbridled narcissistic rage. Finally, people with paranoid personality disorder have a cognitive dysfunction that makes them believe, falsely, that others are always out to harm them."
"These dangerous disorders are not uncommon. Psychopaths and those with narcissistic personality disorder are thought to make up around 1-2 per cent of the population. The prevalence of paranoid personality disorder is thought to be much higher, at around four percent of the population. These numbers are such that we are likely to interact with someone with one of these disorders several times every day. In a country with the population of the United States, about 20 million people will have a dangerous personality."
"The lesson for democracy that I learned while researching Disordered Minds, is that, because of their tenacity and exaggerated self-belief, people with dangerous personalities often have a greater chance of gaining power than people with normal psychology. And when they do achieve office, they are compelled to dismantle democracy from within. Democracy, after all, places constraints on the power of leaders. Individuals with dangerous personality disorders are psychologically incapable of functioning within these constraints and duly set out to demolish them."
Once in power, they undermine the rule of law and make the law whatever they say it is. They discredit opponents and suppress dissent. They subvert the integrity and effectiveness of the electoral process. They violate the human rights of minorities and those they perceive to be acting against them. They discredit the very notion of truth and then navigate the narcissistic fog of confusion they create with much greater skill than their opponents."
Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities are Destroying Democracy by Ian Hughes
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Just put yourself in Lev Parnas' shoes for a moment. Just imagine that you are a loyal Trump cultist. You became a loyal MAGA hat wearing Trump cultist. You partnered with Rudy, and went to Ukraine to help carry out Trump's bribery scheme. You even put yourself in legal jeopardy for Trump by funneling tons of Russian money into his super-PAC.
Parnas received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
So then you get caught, arrested, and indicted. Then you turn on the TV one day, to see your cult leader, the man you loved and admired, the man that you risked everything for, announce to the world, that he's never met you, and has no idea who you are. 😲 How would you feel? 😄
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Muddy Water
I'm saying that Trump's grifting and breaking the emoluments clause should definitely be investigated.
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but the Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records.
Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle, according to the latest examination of spending by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Most of that has been spent by the Trump campaign ($1.3 million), the Republican National Committee ($123,000) and the Great America political action committee ($104,000), records show, the center reported.
The Washington Post explained in a story in July how such Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
But 48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
Spending will continue to grow as the election nears. Senate Republicans are hosting a two-day “Save the Senate” retreat at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel early next month, according to The Intercept. Room rates during that time will be nearly triple the average, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The top preferred businesses by spenders were Trump’s Washington hotel, followed by his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, according to the center. Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami was in fifth place for the amount of incoming campaign expenditures.
Traitor Trump is making a fortune while fleecing America and violating the Constitution. And his supporters defend this by saying he donates his presidential salary of 400k a year, so that makes it okay for him to fleece the American people out of tens of millions of dollars since he's been in office. His presidential salary amounts to slave wages compared to what he's actually making illegally by using the office of the presidency. If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you're probably a Trump cultist.
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We will never see someone like Trump volunteering his time, money or energy to do something like this. Especially after he created a fake charity foundation that he and his odious kids used for their own financial benefit.
In a 1996 Manhattan ribbon-cutting ceremony for a charity called the Association to Benefit Children. The association was celebrating the grand opening of a nursery school that would serve children with AIDS. Trump unexpectedly appeared at the event and took a seat on on stage alongside top donors, even though he had never donated to the charity. The seat he took belonged to Steven Fisher, a developer who had donated a hefty sum to help the charity build the nursery.
“Nobody knew he was coming,” Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais, told the Post. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down.” Trump had never donated to the charity.
Trump played the part of a big donor convincingly. Photos from the event show Trump smiling, right behind Giuliani, as the mayor cut the ribbon.” Trump later performed the macarena with Giuliani, Kathie Lee Gifford, and crowd of children, and then slipped out of the function without donating one red cent to the charity.
The time Trump's now defunct charity foundation gave $264,631 to fix a fountain outside one of his hotels. The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
The time Trump grabbed the spotlight at an event honoring an employee. For years, Trump relied on longtime employee Barbara Res to convince contractors to donate to charity galas sponsored by then-wife Ivana. But when she got an award, Trump didn’t buy any tables at the gala or sponsor the event as was customary for the employers of the honorees. He bought a $100 ticket to the event and then managed to convince someone to give him the microphone. He spoke for 15 minutes and made it seem like he had been a big contributor to the event.
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Conservatives like referring to liberals AsCommunists, when in reality it's nothing more than pure projection. Conservatism is practically in lock step withCommunism.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
For example, controlling the reproductive rights of women is an old and well documentCommunist tradition.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him. He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."
-- David Frum
And that's exactly what we're seeing now.
Vote 💙 like your very right to vote and our democratic republic depends on it. Because it literally does.
If the Republican party were to ever achieve their goal of turning America into anAuthoritarianDystopia, the very first thing they're going to do, is take away your right to bear arms. They won't have any other choice. Just look at every other authoritarian regime throughout history. They didn't allow their people to haveGuns. Because that would be an existential threat to their power over you. Just look atChina, NorthKorea, theSovietUnion, and evenRussia today. Your right to vote and your right to free speech will be the next thing they take. And don't make the mistake of thinking that you'll be spared simply because you vote republican.
I'm sure this is something that supporters of the attempted coup have never considered or even contemplated.
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be with his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence along the narrow path, leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying in the Senate trial, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress is rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that the Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Everyone has that person in their life who "always plays the victim." When something goes wrong it's "never their fault."
They're the type of person who does something wrong then tries to paint you as being the real problem for calling them out. Because their bad deed was just them making things even.
These people can be impossible to deal with because they're never wrong. This mentality also stunts their developmental growth, because when you're never wrong, you don't have to change a thing.
According to research, the VictimMentality or, as they call it, "Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood," or TIV, is a stable construct that people can carry with them throughout their lives.
It's defined as "an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships." That's why your friend with the victim mentality always plays the victim and everything that happens in the world is an affront to them.
Researchers say there are four main components to TIV:
Need for recognition – whereby individuals have a high level of need for their victimization to be seen and recognized by others
Moral elitism – seeing oneself as morally pure or "immaculate," and seeing those who oppose, criticize or "victimize" oneself as completely and totally immoral and unjust
Lack of empathy – having little empathy or concern for the suffering of others, because your own victimhood is so much greater than the suffering of others. Also includes an entitlement to act selfishly or harmfully towards others, without recognizing their pain or experience
Rumination – a strong tendency to brood and remain extremely fixated on times, ways, and relationships where they experienced victimization and being taken advantage of.
A person who has TIV may be very vocal about their victim status whether it's caused by societal issues, a personal problem, or something they've fabricated. They believe their status affords them moral superiority to others and allows them to behave in ways that are unassailable.
People with TIV are also more likely to try to SeekRevenge on those who've aggrieved them.
This type of person is defined by, and clings to, their perceived trauma and weaponizes it against others. Scott Kauffman of Scientific American says that people can develop TIV without even "experiencing severe trauma or victimization."
"HI, my name is DJT, but you can call me Victim. Many big strong men with tears in their eyes are saying this." 🤣😅
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The 14 characteristics of fascism:
• Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
• Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
• Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
• Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
• Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to ToAbortion is high, as is homophobiaAnd anti-gay legislation and national policy.
• Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
• Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
• Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
• Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
• Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
• Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
• Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
• Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
When it comes to fascism, Trump and the GOP checks all the boxes.
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Trump is essentially a 73 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He is basically an indecent human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind..
Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85 and terminally ill, was in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Trump sole control over his dying father's estate..
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves freedom loving"patriots."
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Vote 💙 The future of our democracy depends on it.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. Conservatives tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession.
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
Vote💙
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A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties...
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part...
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. Trump was 4 billion dollars in debt, and American banks had stopped loaning him money after multiple bankruptcies. Trump was financially ruined until the Russians bailed him out. "They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News.
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Deep down Trump has always despised America and our democratic republic. He has nothing but contempt for our Constitution, and the " idea" of America. Trump has always favored despotic dictatorships. It's the reason why he speaks so highly of tyrants like Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi, Duterte, and MBS. And anyone who has been paying attention, knows that Trump has never hidden his true feelings about any of this. When someone repeatedly tells you, and shows you who they are, it would behoove you to believe them.
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The biggest mistake of a democratic country is to underestimate the power of a democratically elected pro-fascist leader, because it is always easier to destroy a castle from within!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
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Most parents will teach their kids that they shouldn't tell lies, and will even punish them when they do lie. In Trump's case, I think his parents not only encouraged him to lie, they rewarded him when he did lie. That's a lot of rewards. That would explain why Trump behaves as if consequences don't apply to him.
During a ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders that the legislation “provides pensions for those who are suffering from cancer and other illnesses stemming from the toxic debris they were exposed. Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. ”He then told an outrageous lie when he said, “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
It sounds like Trump wants to claim victim status too. He can't stand to see anyone other than himself being viewed as a victim. He probably wants to receive money form the 9/11 compensation fund by claiming he was there with the 1st responders, which he clearly wasn't.
Trump has told similar egregious lies about his whereabouts on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😂😲😄
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
During a 2015 rally, Trump claimed he watched the 9/11 attacks from a window in Trump Tower.
“Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that,” he said.
There’s just one problem — Trump Tower is more than four miles away from ground zero.😄
If Trump will lie about being at ground zero with 1st responders, it means he will lie about any and everything, and he does.
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Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it is that Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic, and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and his presidency? Nothing....other than heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump doesn't solve problems, he creates them.
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Let's be honest, deep down, we all know that he said it.
We all remember what Trump said about John McCain and our PoWs. It's all on video. But I'm sure that won't stop Trump from denying that he ever said that either.
So riddle me this, how is it that every other world leader made it to the cemetery for the WW1 memorial service in France, but Trump couldn't!? Hmmm.😞
So Trump says the entire thing is a hoax, just like his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels was a hoax. Nope...no, bad example.
So just like his letter of intent to build a tower in Moscow was a hoax. Nope...no, bad example.
So just like Don Jr's Trump Tower meeting with Russian officials was a hoax. Nope....no, bad example.
So just like the coronavirus was a hoax. Nope, another bad example.
Good grief, I give up. Smh 😔 Of course Trump said it!!
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When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all the boxes.
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily, and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed..
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First Trump betrayed America, then he betrayed the Kurds, then he betrayed Ukraine, all the while betraying his oath of office.
As a Marine veteran, it warms my heart to know that there are still some true American patriots out there who are still willing to resist, still willing to stand-up and speak truth to power. Patriots who still believe in putting country first. Patriots who still believe in serving a cause greater than themselves. Patriots like Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Lt.Col. Vindman, David Holmes, Jennifer Williams, and others. To all of these patriots, and others out there like them, I salute you.
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Researchers say there are four main components to TIV:
Need for recognition – whereby individuals have a high level of need for theirVictimization to be seen and recognized by others
Moral elitism – seeing oneself as morally pure or "immaculate," and seeing those who oppose, criticize or victimizeOneself as completely and totally immoral and unjust
Lack of empathy – having little empathy or concern for the suffering of others, because your ownVictimhood is so much greater than the suffering of others. Also includes an entitlement to act selfishly or harmfully towards others, without recognizing their pain or experience
Rumination – a strong tendency to brood and remain extremely fixated on times, ways, and relationships where they experiencedVictimization and being taken advantage of.
A person who has TIV may be very vocal about theirVictim status whether it's caused by societal issues, a personal problem, or something they've fabricated. They believe their status affords them moral superiority to others and allows them to behave in ways that are unassailable.
People with TIV are also more likely to try to SeekRevenge on those who've aggrieved them.
This type of person is defined by, and clings to, their perceived trauma andWeaponizes it against others. Some people can even develop TIV without even experiencing severe trauma orVictimization."
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Only an illiterate imbecilic like Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it is that Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic, and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and his presidency? Nothing....other than heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump doesn't solve problems, he creates them..
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Republicans have created an America of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. We the people, have been officially replaced by Citizens United, a ruling placed on us by Republicans, which is designed to rule over us.
Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Oleg Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, allowed American corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money.
The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie, president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.
The Super PAC, Make America Number 1, is funded by Trump's largest donor, Robert Mercer. His Renaissance Technologies hedge fund donated $15.5 million to the PAC.
Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, assumed control of Make America Number 1 in September 2016 and is now tainted by her role in the communications between Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that Jared Kushner, hired for $5.9 million to handle the digital portion of the Trump campaign...
Citizens United must be overturned. It represents the biggest crime ever perpetrated on the American people. It was created by republicans and powerful corporations, for the sole purpose of finally controlling our government for their own financial gains, all while undermining the will of the people..
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The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act..
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote..
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Here's the thing, Conservatives, and especially extreme right wing Christian conservatives, absolutely love Israel, but they do not like Jews. They never have, and they never will. The love that conservatives have for Israel, has nothing to do with the Jewish people, it has to do with Jerusalem. This fact isn't lost on Jews here in America. It's why American Jews vote Dem overwhelmingly. American Jews marched with blacks during the Civil Rights movement, and they are well aware of how conservatives feel about them. It was a right-wing Trump supporter who shot up the synagogue in Pittsburgh. Don't ever confuse conservatives' love for Israel, to mean that they love Jews, because they absolutely do not. I promise you, racists like the Franklin Grahams and Farwells, have always hated Jews.
There are 27 Jewish members of Congress, 25 of them are Democrats, and only 2 are Republicans. There are only 9 Jewish members serving in the Senate, and yep, you guest it, they are all Democrats...
Dems have carried the Jewish vote in 24 consecutive presidential elections, dating back to 1924. In six of the last seven presidential elections, the Jewish vote was more than 70 percent Democratic (the one exception was in 2012, when Barack Obama won 69 percent of the Jewish vote). Hillary trounced Trump among Jews by a 71/24 margin. 2018 exit polls showed 79 percent of Jews voting Democratic in the midterms..
American Jews are naturally suspicious of the white Christian nationalism Trump keeps flirting with, which is historically associated with anti-Semitism. After all, a lot of the fervent support for Bibi and a Greater Israel in evangelical circles, is grounded in hopes that the Middle East will be consumed in an apocalyptic war that will inaugurate the end times that evangelicals dream of, and give Jews two options: conversion to Christianity or be condemned to eternal he//.
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Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from fox, the current president, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy. It should be reported that these traitors are all willing partners in Russia's disinformation campaign on America. And they should be treated as a threat to America, because that's exactly they are. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America.
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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@deborahlukovich8006
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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Former White House chief economic advisor Gary Cohn lashed out at some of his former colleagues, charging in a radio interview that the U.S. is losing the trade war as administration officials pursue a strategy that hasn’t worked.
Cohn, who was Trump’s first director of the National Economic Council, specifically pointed his finger at Peter Navarro, who serves as director of the National Trade Council, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for drawing the country into a misdirected tariff battle.
“Tariffs don’t work. If anything, they hurt the economy because if you’re a typical American worker, you have a finite amount of income to spend. If you have to spend more on the necessity products that you need to live, you have less to spend on the services that you want to buy.”
Cohn said he also had several high-profile disagreements with the administration, including one point where he nearly resigned following Trump’s comments on the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
Among the other revelations from his time in the White House, Cohn said a tipping point for him leaving was a meeting Navarro and Ross secretly set up with heads of the steel and aluminum industry to notify them that the administration was planning to levy tariffs on imports of the metals.
“What happened in the White House is we got to a point, unfortunately, where one or two people decided that they were going to no longer be part of a process and a debate,” he said.
When asked to confirm if it was Navarro and Ross who set up the meeting, Cohn said, “Yes. Those are the two people. When the process breaks down, then you’re, sort of, in my mind, living in chaos. I don’t want to live in a chaotic organization.”
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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Trump: "If you only count the votes that were for me, I win easily -- by a landslide."
August 17 2020.
Trump: "The only way "WE'RE" going to lose this election, is if it's rigged, remember that."
The election wasn't rigged, the mind's of Trump's followers were rigged..
JimJones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"He was a master of manipulation, but you saw him with this dark hair, the sunglasses, and the way that he spoke -- he was a great orator -- and it moved you, it inspired you because he was so passionate. And so I was just enthralled," said former Peoples Temple member Leslie Wagner-Wilson.
As time went on, former members said Jones became more extreme.
In 1974, Jones leased more than 3,800 acres of isolated land in the jungle from the Guyanese government. By 1978, nearly 1,000 followers had moved to the Guyana compound. Having been forced to give up their passports and money upon arrival, some former members said they were cut off from the outside world.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
A cult environment like "Qanon" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing." The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
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"There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated,"
Trump can be heard saying to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Trump threatened Georgia’s secretary of state in an attempt to bully him into "finding" the votes that would overturn the state’s presidential election results. In the call Trump told Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger that he was taking “a big risk” by refusing to violate the Constitution by falsifying verified election results that showed Biden winning by 11,779 votes.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
First of all, the people of Georgia and the American people weren't angry, because the majority Georgians voted for Biden. Trump was trying to project his anguish and agony over losing onto them.
Trump also told Raffensberger and his general counsel, “I just want to "find" 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
On January 6, Capitol Hill Police Officers stopped the steal that Trump had planned.
Our nation owes them a debt of gratitude.
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A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake..
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. And over the last 3 years, he fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire.
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure within White House national security council, and in typical Trump fashion, he got rid of it simply because he didn't understand it, and didn't care enough to even try to understand it
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@KatiePerry112559
I use to live in Lakewood CO.
Republican Mike Turner announced his support for a ban on the sales of military style weapons following theDeadly
MassShooting in downtown Dayton Ohio on August 4, 2019 after he discovered his daughter was almost one of the casualties.
“I believe these are necessary steps forward in protecting our country and a testament to American values, which include protecting human life," Turner said in a statement
Turner, a Dayton native, said he would also support legislation placing restrictions on high-capacity magazines as well as so-called red-flag laws, which allow police and family members to “quickly identify people who are dangerous and remove their ability to harm others.
Turner made this statement after he found out that his teenage daughter was across the street from the shooting that night and she had just missed being out on the street when the shootingStarted by just seconds.
So now all of a sudden he cares. He should have cared back in 2012 when 20 babies were the victims in the Sandy Hook shooting. We all should have cared.
I'm a gun owner, and a Marine combat veteran. I don't own an assault rifle, because my days of going on patrols, raids and assaults are over. I live in the suburbs now, so why on earth would I need a weapon that was designed for mass carnage on the battlefield? I'm a practical person, so if I go out and buy a hammer, it's because I intend on hammering something.
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Regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Yes, Joe won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Joe won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
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When it comes to Trump, all roads lead to Putin.
By spreading Russian propaganda, attacking the FBI and America's other intelligence agencies, Trump and fox, are doing Putin's dirty work for him. And make no mistake, it constitutes a threat to America's national security.
The FBI has always been the biggest threat to Russian agents attempting to operate on American soil..
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, Comey, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. And they all got a big laugh out of it, at America's expense. Let that sink in for a moment.
On July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Trump threw America and the men and women in our intelligence agencies under the bus once again when he sided with Putin.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
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Just imagine if a career criminal and con-man became president, and he systematically dismantled the DoJ, and then turned it into his personal tool to use as a get out of jail free card for himself and his criminal cohorts. It's the kind of thing we thought only happened in 3rd world banana republics, controlled by despots
Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump? I THINK NOT.....
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Trump has already found his replacement for Fox, it's called One America "News" Network. This propaganda machine is actually more craven than Fox. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.” 😂
In all of Rouz’s OAN segments, he is introduced as a “One America correspondent,” with no disclosure of his work for Russia’s state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.
“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”
Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putin’s election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.
One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.
Over time, the network became increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda. When Rouz joined, the network had recently shed a number of anchors and other staffers who’d bristled at the change.
Though it’s available in only a handful of cable markets, OAN’s viewership includes some influential figures, including Traitor Trump himself. Trump has already fallen for at least two fake stories after seeing them on OAN.
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On Fox, Rudy said he's not worried about Trump throwing him under the bus, because he has "insurance." Well clearly that can only mean one thing, Rudy is admitting to having evidence of Trump's criminality.😂
And make no mistake, Trump's other longtime partner in crime, Roger Stone, will definitely try to cut a deal. Because there is absolutely no way a coward like him is going to go to prison if he can help it. His only chance of preventing that from happening is giving up Trump.
This is usually what happens with any criminal organization when the feds are closing in on them. Trump's den of thieves has quickly turned into Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. We are witnessing the treacherous behavior of criminals when they start hedging their bets. Nonstop chaos, upheaval, back-stabbing, unbridled buffoonery, cowardice, and betrayal is about to ensue.
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Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fraudulent.
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency, said Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
On December 13th, 2016, at Russian Ambassador Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had to Trump's people —“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Russian Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
Hayden was also convinced the Trump Tower meeting and Kushner’s secret meetings with the Russian Ambassador was a classic “soft approach” by Russian intelligence. Hayden argued that the meeting “is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like,” and that it may have been the “green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election.”
Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach.
No. 1 “Would they take the meeting? So, then you get the willingness.. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. Not only did they not report the meeting, they lied about the meeting when asked. Kushner even lied about the meetings on his security clearance application. So, while Kushner and Don. Jr claimed that the meetings were irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
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What we've learned so far from Bolton’s book is that obstruction of justice is not the exception in Trump's White House, it's the #1 rule. And apparently, it only gets worse from there. Asking countries like Russia, China and Ukraine for quid pro quos to help him get reelected seems to be the #2 rule.
Trump unwittingly admitted to obstruction of justice in his May 2017 interview with Lester Holt. In the interview, Trump said he fired James Comey because he wouldn't shutdown the Russia investigation. I say unwittingly because Trump doesn't believe he obstructed justice, because he doesn't actually believe in the concept of justice to begin with. And he certainly doesn't believe in law & order.
Trump: "I do solemnly swear, that I will faithfully desecrate the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, pervert, offend, and violate the Constitution of the United States. So help me Putin...OR Gyna....if you're listening."
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants. The articles of impeachment were tailor made for a wannabe dictator like Trump.
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.”
― DaShanne Stokes
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. We will be back to where we were before the Declaration of Independence. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974..
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to DT, McConnell, McCarthy, Cruz, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Hawley, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
DT is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fasc.ism, wild conspiracy theories, rac.ism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. DT is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Why should anyone believe Trump when he can't even tell the truth about whether or not he ever met Putin before the election?
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
LOL!!!....😄😂. Trump tells lies that a 5 year old would tell.
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First Trump betrayed America, then he betrayed the Kurds, then he betrayed Ukraine, all the while betraying his oath of office.
As a Marine veteran, it warms my heart to know that there are still some true American patriots out there who are still willing to resist, still willing to stand-up and speak truth to power. Patriots who still believe in putting country first. Patriots who still believe in serving a cause greater than themselves. Patriots like Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Lt.Col. Vindman, David Holmes, Jennifer Williams, and others. To all of these patriots, and others out there like them, I salute you.
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The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Psychologist Frank DiPrima:
Trump's Professor, William T. Kelley taught marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence:The Management of Marketing Information...
Professor Kelley stated that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*dd@m student I ever had.”
Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*dd@m student I ever had.” Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity, but long before he was considered a political figure. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told the story that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything
Professor Kelley’s view seems to be shared by other University of Pennsylvanians, from the Daily Pennsylvanian, stating:
Biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. They officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy..
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don, was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
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The January 27 transcript of Trump's phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto had insisted publicly his country would not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full..
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Pompeo: " I know a lot of you have questions about Iran, Iraq and the Middle East, but first before we get started I'd like to say Happy New Year, even though we're already one full week into the new year. I also want to send out my personal condolences to the Prince family. Yes, I know prince passed away back in 2016, but I was a huge fan of his, and I thought that now would be the perfect time to express my deep felt thoughts on what Prince meant to me. Because of Prince, I bought my first little red corvette, and yes it was much too fast. While I have the time,,I'd also like to give my condolences to the Patriots, and Tom Brady, for their first round loss in the playoffs. I would also like to add that thanks to switching to Geico, I was able to save thousands of dollars on my car insurance, which is nice. And with all of that being said it appears we've run out of time for any further questions. Thank you."
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Solstice of Snow
You literally just answered your own question.
Like Trump, these counterfeit patriots are indifferent to the harm, stress, and potential devastation they are placing on our medical infrastructure by helping to spread this virus. The concept of serving a cause greater than themselves is completely foreign to them. If they can't eat it, grope it, or shoot it, then they don't want it.
Do they really believe that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 90 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? Our greatest generation from WW2 have to be spinning in their graves. I'm actually glad that most of them are not around to see this. The men and women of our greatest generation had true grit. Trump protesters are filled with true sh!t.
If they really want to protest something, they should be out protesting for more protective gear for nurses, doctors, and first responders. Or how about protesting for more testing nation wide. But once again, they're too selfish, and too unpatriotic. For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should for once give some consideration to growing the F. UP.
Marine veteran
Semper Fi..
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It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, The UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab. All anyone has to do is take a step back and open your eyes, and you'll see that what Trump and his family are doing is happening right in front of our faces.
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So I guess that means that Trump is part of the Chinese misinformation campaign.
Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did they do the right thing? So far, Trump has failed. And Trump has never failed to fail, because failing has always been the easiest thing for him to do.
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another.
So to bring order and harmony to the chaos, he create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront. Building on the Ebola experience, President Obama set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council, and another in the Department of Homeland Security—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health, and the CDC, and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.
But that’s all gone now. In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down. This was the directorate charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of shock. Because experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
In the spring of 2018, Trump pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated..
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If American banks don't even Trust Trump, so why should the American people? We're talking about a man who has never paid back a loan in his life.
Win or lose in November, one thing won’t change for Trump: Over the next few years, his company must settle a series of TREMENDOUSLY large debts. Before the end of a theoretical second term, his company will have to refinance—or, in a far less likely scenario, pay off—nearly a half-billion dollars in loans linked to some of his most prized assets, including Trump Tower. These debts are maturing at the worst time for Trump, whose hotels and resorts have been plagued by declining revenues. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic pummeled the hospitality industry, forcing the full or partial closure of most of his hotel and resort properties.
On financial disclosure forms, Trump has reported holding 14 loans on 12 properties. At least six of those loans, representing about $479 million in debt, are due over the next four years. Some are guaranteed by Trump himself, meaning a creditor could come after his personal—not corporate—assets if he defaults. If he holds onto the White House, the refinancing of these debts could take his conflicts of interest to absurd new heights. How will the public know if these deals are on the up and up or whether Trump is receiving sweetheart terms from a bank that wants an in with the president? And what might a lender desire in return for helping Trump out of a financial jam?
Trump’s biggest creditor is Deutsche Bank, which in the late 1990s took a gamble on Trump whose history of corporate bankruptcies made him untouchable by most other lenders. Deutsche’s commercial lending division learned the hard way one reason why other banks considered Trump persona non grata: If pushed by his creditors on payments, Trump shoves back. In 2008, after he defaulted on a loan for his Chicago hotel and condo development, he filed a multibillion-dollar suit accusing Deutsche and others of contributing to the recent financial meltdown, which he blamed for his inability to repay the loan.
Nevertheless, Deutsche’s private banking division, which caters to wealthy clientele, continued to lend to Trump, giving him $125 million, spread over two loans, to finance the purchase and renovation of his Doral golf resort in 2012. Both are floating rate loans, meaning the interest rate fluctuates based on market conditions, which lending experts say usually indicates they are interest-only loans. If so, Trump probably hasn’t paid down much if any of the principal and will owe something close to the whole $125 million when the loans come due in 2023.
In 2014, Trump took out a separate floating loan from Deutsche’s private bank to bankroll the development of his luxury hotel in Washington, DC. The balance of this $170 million debt is payable in 2024. That year, Trump will also owe Deutsche between $25 million and $50 million in connection with his Chicago hotel and complex.
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Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
The question now is why would Manafort continue to lie for Trump? Why would Manafort, who has a law degree from Georgetown and years of experience around white-collar crime, behave like this? What incentive does he have to spend most or all of his remaining years in prison rather than betray Trump? One way to make sense of his behavior is the possibility that Manafort is keeping his mouth shut because he’s afraid of being killed.
That speculation might sound hyperbolic, but there is plenty of evidence to support it. In February, a video appeared on YouTube showing Manafort’s Russian employer, Deripaska, on his yacht with a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich. In the video, from August 2016, Deripaska could be seen speaking with a high-ranking Kremlin official. The video was such a source of embarrassment to Moscow that it fought to have it removed from YouTube. Vashukevich, who was then in a Thai jail after having been arrested there for prostitution, announced that she had heard Deripaska describe a plot to interfere in the election and that she has 16 hours’ worth of audio recordings from the yacht to support her charges. In a letter to America authorities, her associate wrote, “We risk our lives very much.”
Vashukevich’s name has disappeared from the news media. In all probability, either the FBI or Russian intelligence has gotten to her. Whatever has happened to her, her testimony suggests both that Russia is still hiding secrets about its role in Trump’s election and that someone who knows Deripaska well believes he would and could kill her for violating his confidence.
Russia murders people routinely, at home and abroad. In the nine months after Trump’s election, nine Russian officials were murdered or died mysteriously. At least one was suspected to have been a likely source of information for the British agent Steele. The attorney for the firm that hired Steele told the Senate last August, “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier.”
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.
The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.
Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 100 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences.
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
May 6: Following a concerted push to reopen schools beginning in late April, Trump lied again when he suggested that children aren't susceptible to the coronavirus.
Trump: "We realize how strong children are, right? Their immune system is maybe a little bit different. Maybe it's just a little bit stronger, or maybe it's a lot stronger," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American was NOT true. And at least 100 thousand American citizens have died because of his lies.
Allan Lichtman, the historian known for accurately predicting presidential elections, said that Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history..
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election? Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power. Former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, called Trump a "vessel of God." Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.” 😲
Jesse Lee Peterson is a right-wing "pastor," certified nutter, and talk show host, who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” When Rep. Elijah Cummings died last October, Peterson declared on his radio show, “He dead”—like Trump enemies John McCain and Charles Krauthammer, Peterson noted. “That’s what happens when you mess with the Great White Hope. Don’t mess with God’s children.” 😲
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
Fun fact: The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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What Americans want to know, is who's going to investigate Trump's reckless and irresponsible handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Donald "I believe in magic not science" Trump, will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 14 thousand American lives..
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
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Trump is the classic "confidence man."
Confidence man: a person who tricks other people in order to get their money : con artist.
A confidence man is a man who persuades people to give him their money or property by lying to them.
A confidence game, also known as a con, scam, grift, or flim flam, is an attempt to win the trust and confidence of a victim, known as the "mark," in order to defraud them. Although general expectation is that con artists are untrustworthy, their particular ability is actually to be able to gain the trust of their victims. They play on people's selfish desires, fears, and greed.
The term "confidence man" ( later shortened to con-man) first came into use in 1849, when the New York Herald published a story about the arrest of William Thompson, entitled, "Arrest of the Confidence Man." Thompson would approach strangers on the street, talk a while with them, and then ask if they had "confidence in him to trust him with their watch until to-morrow.” The victims would then give Thompson their expensive watches, believing him to be an acquaintance they didn't remember.
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The lawyer for Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy said his client is prepared to testify under oath that aides to Devin Nunes, scrapped a trip to Ukraine this year when they realized it would mean notifying Dem Chairman Adam Schiff.
Lev Parnas would tell Congress that the purpose of the planned trip was to interview two Ukrainian prosecutors who claim to have evidence that could help Trump’s reelection campaign, said Parnas’ attorney, Joseph Bondy.
When Nunes’ staff realized that going to Ukraine themselves would mean alerting Schiff to their treachery, they instead asked Parnas to set up the meetings for them over phone and Skype, which he did, according to Bondy.
The Nunes team’s scrapped trip to Ukraine has not been previously reported, nor have the meetings that Bondy said his client arranged in place of the overseas trip. The meetings took place in late March, and Derek Harvey, a senior investigator for Nunes, represented the congressman, according to Bondy.
Parnas says he began working with Harvey after Nunes and his staff traveled to Vienna in late November to meet with another potential source of political dirt on Dems: former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
Parnas wanted to testify before the House Intel Committee about the Vienna trip. Since then, Nunes has threatened to sue both CNN and The Daily Beast, which also reported on Parnas’ story.
The revelations about the planned trip to Ukraine this spring, suggest that Nunes’ efforts to dig up dirt on Biden and Dems did not end with the Vienna trip. They also implicate Nunes and his staff in the very same events the committee is currently investigating. Specifically, the monthslong effort by Trump, Rudy and others to get Ukrainian officials to help them dig up dirt on Biden, and to validate debunked far-right conspiracies, about Ukraine and the 2016 election.
During the public hearings of the impeachment inquiry, Nunes used all of his allotted time to attack Dems, the media, churlish cows,😆 and to repeat the same unfounded claims about Dems and Biden. At no point did Nunes EVER mention that he or his staffers met with the three Ukrainian officials, some of whom were mentioned by name during testimony.
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Trump's plan to deal with the coronavirus was simple.
First, pretend that the virus doesn't exist, and call the whole thing a hoax. And if that doesn't work, blame it on some guy coming in from Jyna. And if that doesn't work, use magic to make the virus disappear. And if magic doesn't work, try to trick the American people into injecting Lysol into their bodies. And if that doesn't work, tell your people to slow the testing down. And if that doesn't work, simply give up, and go back to playing golf and pretending that the virus doesn't exist. And when that fails to work again, just blame Dr. Fauci for your criminal negligence, abject failures, and your dereliction of duties.
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Andrew Wilson
On June 8, 2010, Uranium One announced it had signed an agreement that would give “not less than 51%” of the company to JSC Atomredmetzoloto, or ARMZ, the mining arm of Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency.
At the time, Uranium One’s two licensed mining operations in Wyoming amounted to about “20 percent of the currently licensed uranium in-situ recovery production capacity in the U.S.,” according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In-situ recovery is the extraction method currently used by 10 of the 11 licensed U.S. uranium producers.
The deal required multiple approvals by the U.S., beginning with the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. Under federal law, the committee reviews foreign investments that raise potential national security concerns.
The Committee on Foreign Investments has nine members, including the secretaries of the treasury, state, defense, homeland security, commerce and energy; the attorney general; and representatives from two White House offices (the United States Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy).
The committee can’t actually stop a sale from going through — it can only approve a sale. The president is the only one who can stop a sale, if the committee or any one member “recommends suspension or prohibition of the transaction,” according to guidelines issued by the Treasury Department. So clearly, Trump was lying as usual when he falsely claimed that Hillary gave away 20% of America's uranium, or he simply didn't know what he was talking about, which is also very common for him. The uranium wasn't Hillary's give, nor did she have the power to give it to anyone. Clinton could have objected — as could the eight other voting members — but that objection alone wouldn’t have stopped the sale of the stake of Uranium One to Rosatom.
It is also important to note that other federal approvals were needed to complete the deal, and even still more approvals would be needed to export the uranium. First, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to approve the transfer of two uranium recovery licenses in Wyoming from Uranium One to the Russian company. The NRC announced it approved the transfer on Nov. 24, 2010. But, as the NRC explained at the time, “no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.”
Uranium One, which is now wholly-owned subsidiary of Rosatom, sells uranium to civilian power reactors in the United States, according to the Energy Information Administration. But U.S. owners and operators of commercial nuclear reactors purchase the vast majority of their uranium from foreign sources. Only 11 percent of the 50.6 million pounds purchased in 2016 came from U.S. domestic producers, according to the EIA.
As for production, the company was responsible for only about 11 percent of U.S. uranium production in 2014, according to 2015 congressional testimony by a Department of Energy contractor. More recently, Uranium One has been responsible for no more than 5.9 percent of domestic production, according to a September 2017 report by the U.S. International Trade Commission.
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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For some strange reason, Kavanaugh, and Lindsey Graham, seem to be under the impression that he is somehow entitled to hold a seat on the Supreme Court. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kavanaugh is not entitled to a goddamn thing. However, the more than 320 million people in this country, are in fact entitled. We are entitled to have the very best people on the Supreme Court. That means that anyone, who's character, integrity, judgment, morals, and temperament is in question, has no business being a member of only 9 people who will hold sway and judgment over 320 million people.
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A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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Anyone that has known Trump, or anyone that has done their homework on Trump, knows that the question of whether or not he's a r.a.c..is.t, isn't even up for debate. Trump is at LEAST a r.a.c.i.s.t, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Instances of big,otry involving Trump span more than four decades. Trump was twice sued by the federal government for refusing to rent apartments to black people. The Justice Department’s 1973 lawsuit against Trump Management Company focused on 39 properties in NYC. The government proved that employees were directed to tell African American lease applicants that there were no open apartments. Company policy, according to an employee quoted in court documents.
In the early 1990s, Trump attempted to block the building of new casinos in Connecticut and NY that could cut into his casino operations in Atlantic City. In October 1993, Trump appeared before the House Subcommittee on Native American Affairs of the Committee on Natural Resources. The subcommittee was chaired by Bill Richardson. Trump was there to support an effort to modify legislation that had given Native American tribes the right to own and operate casinos. George Miller from California and the chair of the Committee on Natural Resources, was also present.
Tadd Johnson, of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Bois Forte Band, served as the Democratic counsel on the subcommittee. Rick Hill is a former chair of the National Indian Gaming Association and of the Oneida Tribe in Wisconsin. Pat Williams was a member of Congress from Montana.
BILL RICHARDSON: "He said he didn’t think that Native Americans deserved the legislation, because there was a lot of corruption around Native American casinos. I remember asking him after the hearing, “Well, what’s the evidence?” He said, “The FBI has it.” I said, “You’re making the accusation; why don’t you bring the evidence?” He said, “No, you should ask the FBI.” I said, “You’re making the charge of corruption and you’re not backing it up—that is unacceptable.”
TADD JOHNSON: "Trump was wearing pancake makeup, which I hadn’t seen before, at least not on somebody testifying in Congress. He was very evasive, and he made all these allegations about organized-crime activity but could produce no single incident, no tangible evidence, nobody we could talk to. A lot of what he was saying were just fabrications."
BILL RICHARDSON: "The second allegation he made that was very disturbing at that hearing was to examine some Native American tribes’ application as Indian tribes—they were trying to get the subcommittee to basically declare their tribes or their group of individuals Native Americans. Trump mentioned Native Americans who had recently opened casinos and said to George Miller, “They don’t look like Indians to me.” He said that. It was so outrageous."
RICK HILL: "Miller challenged him. He said, “You know how racist what you’re saying is? How racist that is to judge people by what we think they look like and ignore their inherent rights as a person?”
PAT WILLIAMS: "I was stunned by the openness of Trump’s anger toward anyone who would compete with him—and particularly if they were people of color."
TADD JOHNSON: "I remember watching the faces of the Native American people in the back. There were some tribal elders who had come in from Minnesota, and were giving looks that could ki//."
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Trump: "I will nevet take responsibility for anything. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president, and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House..
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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The witnesses against Paxton were some of his closest friends, associates, employees and appointees. They were all Republicans. The vote in the Texas House to impeach was overwhelming. But Paxton has shown that he is willing to abuse his power and do favors for his friends and political allies, and that is something 16 Texas Senators value highly in their AG.
Paxton faced a laundry list of charges largely centered around using his office to do political and legal favors for donors, obstructing federal investigations, hiring unqualified outside counsel to carry out his wishes, and seeking to involve some of the top officials in his office in his schemes. Not only did some of his most loyal appointees and friends refuse to go along with his various corrupt schemes, they also reported Paxton to the FBI and testified against him in the impeachment trial.
The most salacious part of the charges was Paxton's long-term affair with a woman while portraying himself as a conservative, christian "family values" politician. What made that part of the case even more compelling was that Paxton's wife was a State Senator sitting on his impeachment jury. A House impeachment manager previously detailed how Paxton used his office to get his mistress a job so she could be closer to him, and had a contractor install a $20,000 granite countertop in his kitchen while being paid by Nate Paul, who was bribing Paxton for a variety of political and legal favors.
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Unfortunately for the American people, Republicans have created an America of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. We the people, have been officially replaced by Citizens United, a ruling placed on us by Republicans, which is designed to rule over us..
The Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, allowed American corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money.
The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie, president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.
The Super PAC, Make America Number 1, is funded by Trump's largest donor, Robert Mercer. His Renaissance Technologies hedge fund donated $15.5 million to the PAC.
Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, assumed control of Make America Number 1 in September 2016 and is now tainted by her role in the communications between Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that Jared Kushner, hired for $5.9 million to handle the digital portion of the Trump campaign...
Citizens United must be overturned. It represents the biggest crime ever perpetrated on the American people. It was created by republicans and powerful corporations, for the sole purpose of finally controlling our government for their own financial gains, all while undermining the will of the people..
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@raccoonlittlebear6476
This is what I'm afraid of. And you should be too.
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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By attacking the FBI, and America's other intelligence agencies, Trump is doing Putin's dirty work for him. And make no mistake, it constitutes a threat to America's national security.
The FBI has always been the biggest threat to Russian agents attempting to operate on American soil.
Semper Fi...
The FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" was a counter-espoinoge operation against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010.. By July 2015,
Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley had been living for two decades
in Canada and then in Europe before they ever set foot in the United States
to start spying for Russia here. We now know that the FBI was on to them
as spies as soon as they got here.
The FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" was against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010. Andrey Bezrukov, and Yelena Vavilova, were highly trained in terms of espionage, but also in terms of language and accent and mannerisms, which would allow them to blend in.
In the 80s, they arrived in Canada as a couple. They had false identifies that had been stolen from real Canadians. The identities were stolen from a little boy in Montreal in the 1960s,
whose name had been Donald Heathfield and sometime in the 1960s, that
little child had died in infancy. There had also been a little girl named
Tracy Lee Ann Foley who had also died in Montreal in the 1960s in
childhood.
Decades later in the 1980s, these two Russian agents, with their stolen identities, started a fake life in Toronto. They lived in Toronto through the ’80s and into the ’90s. In the ’90s,
Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley, had two sons.
After their sons were born in Canada in the ’90s, the family moved sometime
in the mid to late ’90s to France where the father, Donald Heathfield, went
to grad school. They were both fluent in French and English.
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Trump's failed coup will go down in history as the most transparent coup attempt ever.
Bannon openly bragged about the coup on his podcast the day before the coup. It's now a part of history
The day before the coup attempt, Bannon made comments on his podcast stating that "all he// is going to break loose tomorrow. It's gonna be moving. It's gonna be quick. And all I can say is strap in, the War Room, a posse. You have made this happen and tomorrow it's game day."
“We’re now on the cusp of really reversing this, decertifying this, and that is because of you, this audience that has responded to everything. It’s now put us at the point that it’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point ofAttack. Right? The point of attackTomorrow. It’s going to kick off; it’s going to be very dramatic.”
“It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be extraordinarily different. And all I can say is: Strap in. Let’s get ready. So many people said, ‘Man, if I was in a revolution, I would be in Washington.’ Well, this is your time in history.”
Bannon said this to his listeners on January 5th.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fraudulent.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
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Trump loves to brag about how he only pickes the very best people. Trump also said the same thing about the people he handpicked for Trump University. He bragged that he hand-picked only the best to teach at Trump University. But dozens of those he picked had checkered pasts, including serious financial problems and even convictions for cocaine trafficking and indecent acts with a child. The lawsuit against Trump found that he and his fake real-estate seminars were a massive fraud, designed to "upsell" students into buying course packages costing as much as $35,000. Many of those hired to teach did not have college degrees and were not licensed to broker real estate. At least four had felony convictions.
Ron P. Broussard Jr. was hired to the Trump University staff in 2007, even though he was never licensed as a real estate agent or broker, Broussard was listed as "staff" or "coordinator" for at least five Trump seminars titled "Fast Track to Foreclosure." Records show the former Army sergeant was convicted at court-martial in 1994 for indecent acts with a child. The child was an 8 year old daughter of a fellow soldier. He served five years in the military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. He's currently a registered sex offender.
Timothy C. Gorsline taught at least eight Trump University seminars in 2008 He pleaded no contest a decade earlier to felony cocaine possession, according to an electronic database of Florida court records. Copies of Gorsline's resume at Trump University showed that when asked if he had been convicted of a felony, Gorsline marked an X indicating "Yes."
Damian D. Pell, who helped teach at least 23 Trump University seminars from 2008 to 2010, pleaded guilty in Florida to a felony charge of trafficking cocaine. Court and arrest records show that Pell's car was pulled over by Sheriff's deputies in June 1999. Authorities recovered 62 grams of powder cocaine from his car, and 1,200 grams in a subsequent search of his home — a haul with a street value in excess of $154,000.
Spencer J. Raffel, who staffed a Trump University event in 2008, had a felony conviction in FL for grand theft, according to court records. He was sentenced to serve three years of probation in 1989. Court records also showed that Raffel, 52, had a multi-decade history of failing to pay debts, including defaulting on real estate loans, during the same period he was helping teach students how to profit from properties in foreclosure.😲
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued in 2013, alleging that the university was a "fraud from beginning to end," geared toward pressuring students into buying ever more expensive seminars, course materials and mentoring services of little educational value. Regulators say Trump University staff often targeted senior citizens or those already in dire financial straits, encouraging them to max out their credit cards to pay for classes they couldn't afford.
In his 2005 video, Trump said his hand-picked instructors would give his students a better education than top-level university business schools.
"Honestly, if you don't learn from them, you don't learn from me. If you don't learn from the people we're going to be putting forward — these are all people that are hand-picked by me — then you're not going to make it in terms of the world of success," Trump said.
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Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
" TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.
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What part about Trump being a con-man don't some people understand?
In August 1989, just two months after Trump launched his Trump Shuttle Airline, one of his Boeing 727s made a crash landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The shuttle was to fly white-collar passengers between New York, Washington and Boston. The passenger jet had malfunctioning nose gear that failed to deploy. The nose and underbelly of the plane scraped and dragged along the runaway upon landing with sparks flying. The pilots had to perform an emergency dumping of fuel to avoid a greater catastrophe. It's all on video.
Trump purchased the airline for 365 million, and in 3 years, it never turned a profit.😄
And when Trump was asked by reporters about the crash landing in Boston, he said, and I quote: “It was the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen." 😲
Back in 1986 and likely for many years before, Trump colluded in tax evasion with Bulgari Jewelry Store in NY, a high-end posh location with tony clientele right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here's how the scam worked:
Trump would go into the store with his wife, his girlfriend, his...whatever (to use his vernacular). He would then buy her an expensive necklace or wristwatch. Normally, such a transaction would face the NY and state sales tax, which would be pretty high on luxury jewelry.
In an illegal attempt to evade the tax, Trump "asked" the store to instead ship the jewelry to an out of state location, where no NY sales tax could be collected. In fact, the store would merely send an empty jewelry box to the location, while Trump and his lady friends walked out the door with the jewelry that very day.
The state and city tax collectors eventually caught onto this scheme, and Trump promptly testified against his erstwhile tax evasion colluding partners at the jewelry store in order to save his own skin.😲
The empty box scam is just one example of Trump's history of illegal tax evasion. Another story can be told about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida by local reporter Frank Cerabino.
Trump bought the property from the estate of breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. He got it for a relative bargain at $7.5 million, something he bragged about in The Art of the Deal. Yet he refused for years to pay local property taxes on the actual value of the property, $11.5 million at the time he bought it. He tried to have it both ways--buy the property for a steep discount and also pay property taxes at that same under-valued price.
Try that with your town's property tax assessor sometime and see what he says.😲
This is who Trump is in a nutshell. He's always been a con-man, and that's all he will ever be.
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The famous Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco, list the 14 traits of fa scism in his 1995 essay “Ur-Fa scism." Eco grew up under Mussolini’s fa scist regime.
• The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every Fa scist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Na zi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
• The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fa scism can be defined as irrationalism.”
• The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
• Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
• Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fa scist or prematurely fa scist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fa scism is ra cist by definition.”
• Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fa scism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
• The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fa scist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
• The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
• Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fa scism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
• Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
• Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fa scist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult ofDeath.”
TimothyMcVeigh saw himself as a hero.
• Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandardSexual habits, from chastity to homo5exuality.”
• Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
• Ur-Fa scism speaks Newspeak. “All the Na zi or Fa scist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS.
Is Trump responsible for what happened on January 6th?
Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Thomas Fletcher
On June 8, 2010, Uranium One announced it had signed an agreement that would give “not less than 51%” of the company to JSC Atomredmetzoloto, or ARMZ, the mining arm of Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency.
At the time, Uranium One’s two licensed mining operations in Wyoming amounted to about “20 percent of the currently licensed uranium in-situ recovery production capacity in the U.S.,” according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In-situ recovery is the extraction method currently used by 10 of the 11 licensed U.S. uranium producers.
The deal required multiple approvals by the U.S., beginning with the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. Under federal law, the committee reviews foreign investments that raise potential national security concerns.
The Committee on Foreign Investments has nine members, including the secretaries of the treasury, state, defense, homeland security, commerce and energy; the attorney general; and representatives from two White House offices (the United States Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy).
The committee can’t actually stop a sale from going through — it can only approve a sale. The president is the only one who can stop a sale, if the committee or any one member “recommends suspension or prohibition of the transaction,” according to guidelines issued by the Treasury Department. So clearly, Trump was lying as usual when he falsely claimed that Hillary gave away 20% of America's uranium, or he simply didn't know what he was talking about, which is also very common for him. The uranium wasn't Hillary's to give, nor did she have the power to give it to anyone. Clinton could have objected — as could the eight other voting members — but that objection alone wouldn’t have stopped the sale of the stake of Uranium One to Rosatom.
It is also important to note that other federal approvals were needed to complete the deal, and even still more approvals would be needed to export the uranium. First, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to approve the transfer of two uranium recovery licenses in Wyoming from Uranium One to the Russian company. The NRC announced it approved the transfer on Nov. 24, 2010. But, as the NRC explained at the time, “no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.”
Uranium One, which is now wholly-owned subsidiary of Rosatom, sells uranium to civilian power reactors in the United States, according to the Energy Information Administration. But U.S. owners and operators of commercial nuclear reactors purchase the vast majority of their uranium from foreign sources. Only 11 percent of the 50.6 million pounds purchased in 2016 came from U.S. domestic producers, according to the EIA.
As for production, the company was responsible for only about 11 percent of U.S. uranium production in 2014, according to 2015 congressional testimony by a Department of Energy contractor. More recently, Uranium One has been responsible for no more than 5.9 percent of domestic production, according to a September 2017 report by the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Now that you have the facts, you can stop with all the lies about uranium one. You can also correct anyone who tries to lie to you about uranium one.
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Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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When are Trump’s supporters going to finally realize that a sociopath like Trump does not see others around him as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, Bannon, Rudy, Powell).
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The biggest threat to America is not Iran. The biggest threat to America is the very desperate, panicked, deranged, cornered, and currently impeached man-baby in the Oval Office.
Only someone as criminally incompetent as Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
Under the deal, the Atomic Energy Agency would have cameras installed to provide 24-hour monitoring at the Natanz facility, and inspectors will have daily access to the facility for 15 years. Within a year, there would be 130 to 150 inspectors in Iran.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice.
He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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The January 27 phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto has insisted publicly his country will not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full.
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Even Nixon knew he didn't have immunity. That's why he asked Ford for a pardon.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the WatergateScandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
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Trump's campaign spent a lot of its money on holding events at Trump’s properties, which puts campaign money directly into Trump's pockets. He's using his campaign money the same way he used money from his now defunct fake charity foundation, for his own financial profits.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials PROFITEERING from federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decision making to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or PROFITING from the federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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Even Nixon knew he didn't have immunity. That's why he asked Ford for a pardon.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
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Fox was forced to contend with a major new poll that has President Biden leading Trump 50-44%.
The pollster, Quinnipiac, is widely regarded as conservative.Quinnipiac has Biden up on Trump six points, 50 to 44,” said Peter Doocy."
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner added that “Biden also has won over the majority of female voters at this point, independents, and voters with college degrees.”
Nikki Haley, was quick to pounce on this poll as she was interviewed by anchor Martha McCallum.
“He can’t win independents, he can’t win suburban women, and there’s a lot of other Republicans he’s not getting,” she said. “Think about the fact: he did not get 43% of the vote in New Hampshire. In the poll yesterday from Quinnipiac, he’s down 7% to Biden.” 😅🤣
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From day one most Americans rightfully predicted that Trump's presidency was going to be one of the worst in modern history, but I don't think anyone ever imagined it would be an unmitigated catastrophe of this magnitude. And to add insult to injury, Trump announced that he's not responsible for anything that has happened. I'm assuming it's because deep down, he only considers himself to be a "pretend president." Trump has taken many things in life, but responsibility has never been one of them. But what he will do, is blame others for his clear and obvious failures.
Because of Trump, America has had the worst response to the pandemic than any country in the world. So far, more than 140 thousand Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. And many of those lives were needlessly lost due to Trump's indifference, gross incompetence, lack of leadership, criminal negligence, and dereliction of duty. I can still remember Trump telling us that everything was under control, and all we had to do was inject ourselves with disinfectants, and the virus would just magically disappear. Well today, we can all acknowledge that the virus did not disappear, but thousands of Americans did.
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Multiple Obama-era officials have said they left the Trump administration with a 2016 “pandemic playbook” that detailed exact steps to take in the event of an infectious disease outbreak.
Ronald Klain, the White House Ebola response coordinator from October 2014 to February 2015, tweeted out a link to a document titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”
The document is a 69-page National Security Council guidebook developed in 2016 with the goal of assisting leaders “in coordinating a complex U.S. Government response to a high-consequence emerging disease threat anywhere in the world.” It outlined questions to ask, who should be asked to get the answers and what key decisions should be made.
Nicole Lurie, another Obama administration official, confirmed the existence of the NSC pandemic playbook and also said similar documents were created for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The playbook listed types of infectious disease threats that could emerge. “Novel coronaviruses” were among pathogens flagged as having potential to cause heightened concern.
“We absolutely did leave a plan. It was called a playbook,” said Lisa Monaco, former homeland security adviser to President Obama. The goal, she said, was to share the lessons learned during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks.
Susan Rice: "The Obama administration left Trump with a 69 page playbook that I like to call, "Pandemics For Dummies."
And that's exactly where President Obama and his security counsel messed up. They should have left Trump with an audio book version called "Pandemics for illiterate dummies." 😄
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Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years..
Since the 1930s, the modern conservative movement has tried to restrict majority rule at every turn — because they know a mass democratic movement poses an existential threat to their power.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society..
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of stateTerror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted toTerror when internalized domination has not worked.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly meansAttacking someone by falsely claiming that they areAttacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly.
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world...
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Trump is infamous for ruining casinos and small business owners during his reign of destruction in Atlantic City.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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In her book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
Trump's own sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't)
Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when Easter is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am not religious, but that won't stop me from going to places of worship. The flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. And there is no cure for me, and that's the problem."
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017 — and Mueller is seeking to find out why. The tycoons were given “unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle”—and investigators in special council Robert Mueller’s probe are interested in their attendance at the parties.
Rick Gates was heavily involved in planning the inauguration, with a Yahoo News report in 2016calling him the “shadow chair” of the event. There have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it all went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised an astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear. The chair of GW Bush’s 2nd inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “Trump had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events that we had, and yet they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. Counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Back in June ABC News reported that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.
It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. Mueller is exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration. Sometime around March of this year, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
Blavatnik is a Soviet-born, UK-based billionaire who is a US citizen. He is also partnered with Vekselberg, in Russia’s aluminum industry. Together, they built the largest aluminum company in Russia by merging with Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Deripaska is also a player in Mueller's investigation — he employed Manafort, and Manafort tried to get in touch with him during 2016.
Alexander Mashkevitch, a Kazakh mining billionaire, was on the guest list for the “candlelight dinner,” and happens to have been in the Seychelles around the same time as Erik Prince.
And Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended Don Jr’s infamous Trump Tower meeting, were in town too — they attended an inauguration night party thrown by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who’s widely viewed as the biggest supporter of Putin’s regime in Congress.
Several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent over $100 million for what they got. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, it is Rick Gates, who is now working with Mueller's investigation. So whatever Rick Gates knows, Robert Mueller now knows too.
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"COVID-19 is certainly revealing some uncomfortable truths about America. For example, everyday brings a new reminder that we are a country of extreme-haves, and extreme have-nots. And I'm not talking about money - we all knew that. I'm talking about people having accurate information. In this pandemic, "accurate" information has made toilet paper seem plentiful.
America, the country that has the most Nobel Prizes in science, also has the most willfully ignorant people per capita when it comes to understanding science.
How else can we explain electing a low-information bu.ffoon, who wheezes medical tips on our TVs about poisoning ourselves with disinfectants.
And maybe the most clueless aspect of that supposedly "sarcastic" advice is that Trump thinks we can still find disinfectants at stores. I guess we're finding that a pandemic isn't the ideal thing to happen to a country that believes science is just an opinion. Just something you roll the dice and decide whether you believe, instead of something you actually try to understand. And whether it's evolution, vaccines, or viruses, Americans are far busier dismissing inconvenient science as politically motivated, than they are learning about how it will effect their lives. Because NOT believing in Darwinism, IS Darwinism.
Because America is a country that cares more about the financial health of its corporations, than the actual health of its citizens. After all, who got most of the bailout cash? Corporations!!
And who is behind the "grassroots" push to prematurely reopen America? Corporations, and the (republican) politicians corporations pay. But science doesn't watch foxnews, so it doesn't know that it's just a DNC "hoax" or some other childish QAnon conspiracy.
Republican Governors believe that sacrifices have to be made for corporate profits. And that your grandmother, may just be one of them. And because Donald " I don't take responsibility at all" Trump, is passing the buck to Governors to make decisions, so Donald won't be blamed.
America's approach to this pandemic is ad-hoc, conflicting, and piecemeal. Exactly the type of uncoordinated response that helps spread a pandemic. South Korea's response was like a well conducted symphony. America's is like an open mic night at improv.
We have states with policies founded on epidemiological research, surrounded by states with policies founded on Twitter hashtags. Oddly enough, viruses don't respect state lines. Or your beliefs in how deadly they are. The worst states spread the virus, and prolong the pandemic for the rest of us.
This pandemic has proven two things: You're only as healthy as the most stupid person in America; and his name, is Donald J Trump.
Trump: "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Definition of a sore loser: A person who becomes very upset or angry when he or she loses a game, contest, etc.
You'll all be happy to know, that Merriam-Webster has officially replaced this 14 word definition, with just a picture of Trump with his mouth open, with a pained expression of agony on his face.😫
Because a picture is worth a thousand words.
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Recently on March 31, Trump said that he knew all along that the coronavirus was very serious, and that thousands of Americans could die from it.
Trump: “I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, I knew it could be maybe good." 😲
I'm sorry, but what does that even mean?!?!
In January, Trump said that the virus wouldn’t spread in the US (because of his faith in magic) even while experts were warning otherwise.
In February, Trump said — without zero evidence — that the virus would just go away in April without any measures taken. Apparently this was a hunch from his tremendous bowels.
And in March, he downplayed how bad the virus itself was for people who contracted it, comparing it to the flu and suggesting that strict social distancing measures were unnecessary.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine,” Trump said in an interview.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April,” Trump said at a White House event.
Feb. 19: “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said in an interview.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” Trump tweeted.
Feb. 26: “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” Trump White House news conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” Trump White House news conference.
Feb. 28: “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. This is their new hoax,” Trump said at a campaign rally.
March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Trump tweeted.
March 24: “We’ve never closed down the country for the flu. So you say to yourself, ‘What is this all about?’ ” Trump said at the Fox News town hall, again wrongly comparing COVID-19 to the flu.
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It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. That's why he has fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire. Not only will they avoid telling him the truth, they will refrain from correcting him whenever he makes false and dangerous declarations about the coronavirus.
They will instead focus on telling him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear are lies and false narratives that match the alternative facts in his head. Whenever Trump says "the square peg goes into the round hole" he wants them to agree with him. And if you tell him that he's wrong, and that the square peg doesn't go into the round hole, he will accuse you of being a never Trumper, and of plotting against him.
Trump: "One day this Coronavirus will dissappear. Like a miracle, it's going to just dissappear. I use to suffer from debilitating bone spurs. I'm talking tremendous bone spurs. And then one day, POOF....those bone spurs just disappeared. Poof.....no more bone spurs. Bye bye bone spurs."
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How do you know when America's democracy is under siege? It's when our president believes he is above the law, and brags about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
Semper Fi...
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
On January 6, Trump tried to tell the American people that we can no longer keep it. He was wrong!!!
In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said he thought the Chinese president’s power grab was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
On January 6, Trump tried to do exactly that. He failed.
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President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it, because he doesn't believe in science or facts, so he didn't understand it..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018..
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump..
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful at lying because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him. He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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When are Trump’s supporters going to finally realize that a sociopath like Trump does not see others around him as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, Bannon, Rudy, Powell).
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Traitor Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Ukraine scandal began in the spring of 2019, with a series of contacts between Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy, and Ukrainian officials. In mid-July, Trump decided to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine that had already been appropriated by Congress. The White House offered no explanation, except to blame “interagency delay.” A week later, Trump spoke by phone to the recently elected Ukrainian president, Zelensky. The memorandum released by the White House describing that call—which is consistent with the accounts of the whistleblower complaint that first brought this scandal to light—reads like a classic shakedown.
According to the memo, after exchanges of flattery, Trump states that “we do a lot for Ukraine” and that “we spend a lot of effort and a lot of time,” before he complains that the relationship is not always “reciprocal.” Zelensky then raises the question of military aid to Ukraine, to which Trump immediately responds, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” and proceeds to ask Zelensky to investigate two unfounded conspiracy theories: one involving the server containing emails stolen from the DNC during the 2016 election, and the other involving the thoroughly debunked claim about then-VP Biden, his potential reelection opponent. Trump asks Zelensky to work with Giuliani and AG Barr to investigate his potential opponent and so aid his own reelection campaign. There can be no misunderstanding that Traitor Trump was abusing his official power in the conduct of foreign policy to get a foreign government to investigate his political rival.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
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Anything China said is irrelevant, when you consider the FACT that our intelligence agencies tried to warn Trump about what was going on in Wuhan dating back to November. And Trump did what he always does, he completely ignored them. So even if China tried to hide what was happening, Trump was presented with the truth, and he did nothing.
Trump did the exact same thing when our intelligence agencies warned him about Russian cryber espionage and interference in our elections. He completely ignored them, and sided with Putin the perpetrator instead. Make no mistake, Trump is directly responsible for the needless loss of thousands of American lives.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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In May of 2018, When China's President Xi Jinping, who is the leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump praised him for it. Just let that sink in for a moment.
In remarks at Mar-a-Lago, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un, the dictator who continues to threaten America with nuclear war, for his authoritarian control over his people.
Trump: "He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018:
At a rally, Trump confesses to the love he has for Kim Jung Un, the most brutal dictator in modern history.
Trump: "I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said. “And then we fell in love, okay. No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
These are the inexplicable and indefensible words of a sitting US President. And no amount of lies, spin, or deflections will ever justify them, or erase them.
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The GOP is ready to throw away our 244 year old democratic republic for a corrupt, mentally impaired con-man. A republic that for 244 years, hundreds of thousands of American men and women have served, fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice to see that it is preserved. Just let that sink in for a moment.
Trump said that our men and women in uniform, and America’s fallen in Arlington, are suckers and losers. Well if we allow Trump to steal this election, which he has already admitted to trying to do, and turn America into the dictatorship he dreams of, then his reprehensible comments about our fallen, our veterans, and our active duty service members, will become true. Because it would mean that they all served, sacrificed, and died for nothing...
Trump: "The men and women who serve in our military are nothing more than suckers & losers. And to prove it, I'm going to destroy the America that they fought and died for. And republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Lindsey Graham, are going to help me do it."
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia..
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In a 2017 interview, he put it more bluntly: “I think Trump is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after NYT reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but BEFORE he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump.
Trump knows, that Brennan knows, that he's a compromised Russian asset.
One big unanswered question is why were Trump and his people having so many interactions with Russian officials and Russian operatives during the campaign? They were having more interactions with Russians than Americans.
On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia...
A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. We now know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers had or were at least aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself, Don Jr, Manafort, Flynn, Jared, Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone, just to name a few. But what's worse, is the fact that they all lied about these contacts. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover them up, every single one of them..
The question every American should be asking is why were there so many contacts(272) between Trump’s people and Russian officials and operatives, and why did Trump and his people lie about those contacts?
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"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those theyHate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. His ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019.
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Let's be clear, Flynn didn't lie to Pence or Trump about his contacts with the Russians, it was Trump and Pence who lied to the American people, because they knew all along about his contacts with the Russians. He was literally acting on their behalf.
When Trump fired Michael Flynn, in Feb 2017, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official and then lied to Pence and others about the interactions. But emails among top transition officials, show that Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents showed that Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
After learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia.
On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 100 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences..
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
May 6: Following a concerted push to reopen schools beginning in late April, Trump lied again when he suggested that children aren't susceptible to the coronavirus.
Trump: "We realize how strong children are, right? Their immune system is maybe a little bit different. Maybe it's just a little bit stronger, or maybe it's a lot stronger," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American was NOT true. And at least 100 thousand American citizens have died because of his lies.
Allan Lichtman, the historian known for accurately predicting presidential elections, said that Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history..
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Trump said he would drain the swamp. His supporters bought it. Then he proceeded to drain the swamp directly into his white house. He has brought into his administration, more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will only enrich their businesses.
Trump said he'd be the most transparent president ever. His supporters bought it. Trump has now told more than 15k documented lies since taking office, making him the most prolific liar in history, and for any foreseeable future imaginable.
He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. His supporters bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, criminally incompetent White House in America history. It's an administration spinning in a vortex of lies, pandemonium, betrayal, unbridled buffoonery, treason, upheaval, nepotism, skulduggery, moral turpitude, and sanctioned lawlessness.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of WhiteSupremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian DomesticTerrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS.
Is Trump responsible for what happened on January 6th?
Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Trump said he would drain the swamp. His supporters bought it. Then he proceeded to drain the swamp directly into his white house. He has brought into his administration, more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will only enrich their businesses.
Trump said he'd be the most transparent president ever. His supporters bought it. Trump has now told more than 15k documented lies since taking office, making him the most prolific liar in history, and for any foreseeable future imaginable.
He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. His supporters bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, criminally incompetent White House in America history. It's an administration spinning in a vortex of lies, pandemonium, betrayal, unbridled buffoonery, treason, upheaval, nepotism, skulduggery, moral turpitude, and sanctioned lawlessness.
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, isa dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papersin 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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Trump never misses an opportunity to display the utter contempt he has for America and the American people. Trump’s utter and complete failure as a human being has come full circle, and is now complete, and on full display. Let's face it, he is simply a mistake of human nature....an anomaly....a glitch in the human genome. Trump is less of a person, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind. He is a perfectly irredeemable moral abomination, who has never done one decent thing in his life, not even by accident.
Trump: “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” Trump wrote. “75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”
Trump was parroting lies and propaganda from One America, a far-right network that's actually more craven than Fox. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Like Pelosi said, when it comes to Trump, all roads lead to Putin.
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Saudi Prince Mohammed bragged to confidants and to the Emirati Crown Prince, that he has Jared Kushner in his pocket.
Jared Kushner made an unannounced trip to Riyad in October of last year, catching some intelligence officials off guard. Kushner and Saudi Royal Prince Mohammed are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy.
After the meeting, Crown Prince Mohammed told confidants that he has Kushner in jis pockets, and that Kushner had discussed the names of Saudis disloyal to the crown prince, according to three sources who have been in contact with members of the Saudi and Emirati royal families since crackdown ordered by the Prince Mohammed.
Kushner had access to Trump's daily security briefing, a highly sensitive intellig(ence update meant to be seen by only the president and his top advisers, before being stripped of his top-secret security clearance.
Before losing that access, Kushner was particularly interested in information about the Middle East, citing several former White House and US government officials.
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The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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The problem Trump is having is that everyone is not going to go along with his lies and schemes. Everyone isn't going to be willing to throw their careers and reputations away for him. Everyone isn't willing to be his shoeshine boy like Barr, Moscow Mitch, Graham, and Nunes. People like Lt.Col. Vindman, Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassadors Bill Taylor, and Marie Yovanovitch, are examples of Americans who serve a cause greater than themselves. The moral character, courage, and integrity of true patriots like these, will always be obstacles to traitors, cowards, and to the evil that men do....
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"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Today, Trump and Republicans are telling the American people that we can no longer keep it.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.
Lev Parnas" lawyer sent a letter to Moscow Mitch stating that he is ready to give testimony, as well as provide documents, that will prove that GOP Super PAC America One, Rudy, Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mulvaney, Bill Barr, Nunes, Pence, and Desperate Housewife of Capitol Hill 👉Lindsey Graham, were all part of Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine...
Is it any wonder why Republicans were so vehemently against introducing witnesses and evidence into the Senate trial. They were covering up their own crimes. But it will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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America owes the Capitol Hill Police Officers a debt of gratitude. They very well may have single handedly saved our democracy. The Capitol Hill Police were woefully outnumbered on January 6th. For more than 3 hours, they engaged in hand to hand combat with extremists who were determined to bring down our democratic republic. But they put up an heroic stand, and in the end, they prevailed.
It looked like the 300 Spartans who defended the narrow pass (hot gates) at the Battle of Thermopylae.
Four police officers committedSuicide in the days and months after the riot.
The first was U.S. Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, 51, who had been guarding the Capitol for 15 years and was on duty at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He took his own life three days after the riots.
Several days later, D.C. Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, 35, who was injured in the riots on Jan. 6, also committedSuicide.
Smith’s wife, Erin, told the Washington Post her husband related to her the fear and panic he experienced the day of the assault on the Capitol, and that he was afraid he mightDie.
In defending the Capitol, Smith was struck on the helmet by a metal pole thrown by rioters. Later that night, his wife said he went to the police medical clinic, where he was prescribed pain medication and put on sick leave.
Smith’s wife said he “wasn’t the same” in the days after the riot and seemed to be in constant pain. After visiting a police clinic on Jan. 14 and being ordered back to work, SmithShot himself on the way to work, the Post reported.
The familiesof Liebengood and Smith both sought to have them recognized as “line of dutyDeaths," which would afford their families enhanced benefits.
In a letter sent to Rep. Jennifer Wexton of Virginia, Liebengood’s widow wrote, “After assisting riot control at the Capitol on January 6th, USCP scheduled Howie to work lengthy shifts in the immediate days following. He was home for very few hours over the course of four days. Although he was severely sleep-deprived, he remained on duty- as he was directed- practically around the clock from January 6th through the 9th. On the evening of the 9th, he took hisLife at our home.”
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Almost every president have occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 30,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully execute the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama..
• Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
• Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
• Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to his apologist Mark Meadows.
• Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
• Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-nazi5 while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
• Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
• Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
• Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
• Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
• Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
• Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
• Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
• Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
• Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
• Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
• Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is deviant despotism.
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There is no one more unpatriotic and un-American than a Republican.
Vote 💙 like your very right to vote, and our democratic republic depends on it. Because it literally does.
If the Republican party were to ever achieve their goal of turning America into an authoritarianDystopia, the very first thing they're going to do, is take away your right to bear arms. They won't have any other choice. Just look at every other AuthoritarianRegimes throughout history. They didn't allow their people to haveGuns. Because that would be an existential threat to their power over you. Just look atChina, NorthKorea, theSovietUnion, and evenRussia today. Your right to vote and your right to free speech will be the next thing they take. And don't make the mistake of thinking that you'll be spared simply because you vote republican.
I'm sure this is something that supporters of the attempted coup have never considered or even contemplated.
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be with his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence along the narrow path, leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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The National Rifle Association appears to have shot itself in the foot.
A massive new report by The Trace, in conjunction with The New Yorker, alleges that the gun lobbying group has willfully obscured where its money goes, permitted multiple conflicts of interest and engaged in dubious payout arrangements, all while crying out to its members for more donations.
Reporter Mike Spies viewed internal documents and state filings for his story. His investigation found that hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned off to top NRA executives and vendors, and that public relations firm Ackerman McQueen, which has worked with the gun group since the 1970s, is essentially running the ship. Tax filings for 2017 reveal that the NRA paid Ackerman McQueen more than $40 million that year.
The NRA and Ackerman McQueen have become so intertwined that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Oliver North, the former Iran-Contra operative, who now serves as the NRA’s president, is paid roughly $1 million a year through Ackerman, according to two NRA sources. According to interviews and to documents obtained — federal tax forms, charity records, contracts, corporate filings, and internal communications — a small group of NRA executives, contractors, and vendors has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, through gratuitous payments, sweetheart deals, and opaque financial arrangements.
Memos created by a senior NRA employee describe a workplace distinguished by secrecy, self-dealing, and greed, whose leaders have encouraged disastrous business ventures and questionable partnerships, and have marginalized those who object. “Management has subordinated its judgment to the vendors,” the documents allege. “Trust in the top has eroded.”
Marc Owens, former head of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees tax-exempt enterprises, told The Trace that the “litany of red flags is just extraordinary.”
“The materials reflect one of the broadest arrays of likely transgressions that I’ve ever seen,” Owens said. “There is a tremendous range of what appears to be the misuse of assets for the benefit of certain vendors and people in control. Those facts, if confirmed, could lead to the revocation of the NRA’s tax-exempt status.” And without its tax-exempt status, the Trace report suggested, the NRA would “likely not survive.”
This latest hit can be added to a long list of problems for the NRA. In 2017, the group reported a loss of $55 million in income as membership plummeted. More recently, a HuffPost investigation found that an NRA official was in contact with a prominent Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist in an attempt to cast doubt on the facts of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that left 17 people dead. The NRA declined to say whether it fired that official.
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"I think my rhetoric brings people together," Donald said that last year, just four days after a 21-year-old MAGA supporter posted an anti-immigrant message online and then opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, taking the lives of 22 people, and injuring dozens of others.
A nationwide review conducted has identified at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
After a La.tino gas station attendant in Gainesville, Florida, was suddenly pu.nched in the head by a MAGA supporter, the victim could be heard on surveillance camera recounting the attacker’s own words: “He said, ‘This is for Trump.'"
When police questioned a Washington state man about his threats to mu.rder a local immigrant, the suspect told police he wanted the victim to "get out of my country," adding, "That’s why I like Trump."
Reviewing police reports and court records, the review found that in at least 12 cases perpetrators hailed DJT in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting innocent victims. In another 18 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant's violent or threatening behavior.
The review could not find a single criminal case filed in federal or state court where an act of violence or threat was made in the name of Obama or Bush.
The 54 cases identified are remarkable in that a link to DJT is captured in court documents and police statements, under the penalty of perjury or contempt. These links are not speculative – they are documented in official records. And in the majority of cases, it was the perpetrators themselves who invoked DJT's name in connection with their case, not anyone else..
Trump and his followers are exactly what Voltaire was talking about when he said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. The congressional oversight committee hearings are next. And they will be hearing testimony from those who were in the loop. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.. The truth will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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Trump: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a full grown baby, I spoke like a man-baby, I thought like a man-baby, I reasoned like a man-baby."
“Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong,” Bowden wrote last year in Vanity Fair, recalling his time profiling Trump. “He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression.”
-- Mark Bowden, author of Blackhawk Down
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true..
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
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The lawyer for Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy said his client is prepared to testify under oath that aides to Devin Nunes, scrapped a trip to Ukraine this year when they realized it would mean notifying Dem Chairman Adam Schiff.
Lev Parnas would tell Congress that the purpose of the planned trip was to interview two Ukrainian prosecutors who claim to have evidence that could help Trump’s reelection campaign, said Parnas’ attorney, Joseph Bondy.
When Nunes’ staff realized that going to Ukraine themselves would mean alerting Schiff to their treachery, they instead asked Parnas to set up the meetings for them over phone and Skype, which he did, according to Bondy.
The Nunes team’s scrapped trip to Ukraine has not been previously reported, nor have the meetings that Bondy said his client arranged in place of the overseas trip. The meetings took place in late March, and Derek Harvey, a senior investigator for Nunes, represented the congressman, according to Bondy.
Parnas says he began working with Harvey after Nunes and his staff traveled to Vienna in late November to meet with another potential source of political dirt on Dems: former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
Parnas wanted to testify before the House Intel Committee about the Vienna trip. Since then, Nunes has threatened to sue both CNN and The Daily Beast, which also reported on Parnas’ story.
The revelations about the planned trip to Ukraine this spring, suggest that Nunes’ efforts to dig up dirt on Biden and Dems did not end with the Vienna trip. They also implicate Nunes and his staff in the very same events the committee is currently investigating. Specifically, the monthslong effort by Trump, Rudy and others to get Ukrainian officials to help them dig up dirt on Biden, and to validate debunked far-right conspiracies, about Ukraine and the 2016 election.
During the public hearings of the impeachment inquiry, Nunes used all of his allotted time to attack Dems, the media, churlish cows,😆 and to repeat the same unfounded claims about Dems and Biden. At no point did Nunes EVER mention that he or his staffers met with the three Ukrainian officials, some of whom were mentioned by name during testimony.
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Firing true patriots who have sworn and oath to protect this country from all enemies, foreign, and domestic, is something Trump has done before.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute..
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A letter of intent forwarded by Russian-born businessman Felix Sater to the Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, outlines the terms of a licensing agreement to purchase property to build a "Trump World Tower Moscow."
Sater sent the letter of intent - dated October 13, 2015, and signed by a Russian investor named Andrey Rozov - to Cohen for then-candidate Donald Trump's signature.
Emails exchanged between Cohen and Sater - who have known each other since they were teenagers - weeks later indicated that they were preparing to celebrate not only Trump's election victory, but also the potential Russia deal.
Sater boasted of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the emails, which were obtained by The New York Times, telling Cohen that he would "get all of Putins team to buy in" on the Moscow deal.
Slater email to Cohen: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," Sater wrote, according to The Times. "I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected."
Two months later, Cohen emailed Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, asking for his "assistance" in pushing the deal through, according to emails submitted to congressional investigators
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The truth of the matter is, if Trump had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with Trump's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. Trump had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card Trump had left, and he played it.
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Phony patriotism has been on the rise since Trump became president.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past last year, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Duterte, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, MBS, Xi Jinping, and Al-Assad all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, loyalty, and dogmatic obedience to them and them alone. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Time and time again, Trump keeps telling us exactly who and what he is. But unfortunately some people still refuse to believe him, or even listen to what he's saying.
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Deep down, Trump has always despised America and our democratic republic. He has nothing but contempt for our Constitution, and the " idea" of America. Trump has always favored despotic dictatorships. That's why he speaks so highly of tyrants like Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi, Duterte, and MBS. And anyone who has been paying attention, knows that Trump has never hidden his true feelings about any of this. When someone repeatedly tells you, and shows you who they are, it would behoove you to believe them.
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, isa dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papersin 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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As a Marine veteran I realized after Helsinki, that if Trump has to choose between America and Russia, America doesn't stand a chance. His track record has proven that he will choose Russia everytime.
So Putin invades the sovereign country of Ukraine, engages in nerve agent attacks against our ally in England, shoots down a commercial airliner over Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers, including 80 children, he interferes in our presidential elections, and now we've learned that he has placed a bounty on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. In 2019, John Bolton told colleagues that he briefed Trump on the matter in March 2019.
Trump had access to the information earlier, in February. It appeared in the president’s daily brief on Feb. 27. The investigation has homed in on a car bombing in April 2019 that k!lled three Marines. That attack occurred the month after Bolton reportedly briefed Trump about the bounties.
Felicia Arculeo, whose son Cpl. Robert Hendriks, 25, died in the attack, told CNBC that she wanted an investigation into the claims that the victims were targeted by Taliban fighters who were offered bounties by Russian military intelligence agents. Sgt. Benjamin Hines, 31, and Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, were the other Marines k!lled in the attack, which came days before they were due to return home from Afghanistan.
And now after all of that, Trump wants to reward Putin's tyrannical and hostile behavior, by lifting sanctions on Russia, and bringing it back into the G-7. And since Trump received the first briefing about the Russain bounties in Feb, he has been laughing it up with Putin in multiple phone calls on Mar 30, April 9, 10, 12, 25, May 7, and June 1. And even NOW, Trump has never uttered one word of condemnation towards Putin. Not......one..
Let all of that sink in for a minute. Take your time.
Semper Fi..
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Trump is terrified that Roger Stone won't be able to do a long stretch in prison, and will decide to cut a deal instead, and reveal all of Trump's crimes. Stone could corroborate Rick Gates' testimony that Trump did in fact collude with WikiLeaks..
Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Steve Bannon’s contacts with Stone during the 2016 campaign was one of the featured parts of Stone’s trial.
"I think we did, yes,” said Bannon, when asked during Stone's trial whether the Trump campaign viewed Stone as its “access point” to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Stone’s denials of having any contact with WikiLeaks was undercut by testimony from people like Bannon and a trail of emails and phone records. One message from Aug. 16, 2016, shows Stone telling Bannon on the day he took over as campaign CEO about the prospect that WikiLeaks would drop more damaging documents for the Clinton campaign.
“I have an idea … to save Trump’s @55,” Stone wrote.
Bannon testified that he heard repeatedly from Stone — before he even took over as Trump campaign chief — about his access to WikiLeaks. And Stone kept on talking about the potential of more detrimental materials through the late summer and early fall, at a time when Clinton had the lead in the polls.
Bannon’s contacts with Stone included an Oct. 4, 2016, exchange after a much-hyped Assange news conference, which fueled the hashtag "October?surprise" but it turned out to be a bust.
“It was a big dud, yes,” Bannon said.
But a few days later, WikiLeaks dumped emails stolen from the Clinton campaign just minutes after The Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape. Bannon described that chain of events as the “Billy Bush weekend” — a reference to Trump bragging about grabbing women by the p..
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People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
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On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Boris Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said..
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A UN official has said that Russian forces are stealing and destroying grain in Ukraine, which may result in food shortages there and around the world. Warnings of famine carry an echo of the Holodomor, when the Soviet Union's decision-making resulted in the deaths of some 5 million people across the U.S.S.R., at least 3.9 million of whom were Ukrainian.
Holodomor, man-made famine that convulsed the Soviet republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933. It was part of a broader Soviet famine (1931–34) that also caused mass starvation in the grain-growing regions of Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan. The Ukrainian famine, however, was made deadlier by a series of political decrees and decisions that were aimed mostly or only at Ukraine. In acknowledgement of its scale, the famine of 1932–33 is often called the Holodomor, a term derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor).
The origins of the famine lay in the decision by Stalin to collectivize agriculture in 1929. Teams of Communist Party agitators forced peasants to relinquish their land, personal property, and sometimes housing to collective farms, and they deported so-called kulaks—wealthier peasants—as well as any peasants who resisted collectivization altogether. Collectivization led to a drop in production, the disorganization of the rural economy, and food shortages. It also sparked a series of peasant rebellions, including armed uprisings, in some parts of Ukraine.
Farms, villages, and whole towns in Ukraine were placed on blacklists and prevented from receiving food. Peasants were forbidden to leave the Ukrainian republic in search of food. Despite growing starvation, food requisitions were increased and aid was not provided in sufficient quantities. The crisis reached its peak in the winter of 1932–33, when organized groups of police and communist apparatchiks ransacked the homes of peasants and took everything edible, from crops to personal food supplies to pets. Hunger and fear drove these actions, but they were reinforced by more than a decade of hateful and conspiratorial rhetoric emanating from the highest levels of the Kremlin.
The famine was accompanied by a broader assault on Ukrainian identity. While peasants were dying by the millions, agents of the Soviet secret police were targeting the Ukrainian political establishment and intelligentsia. The famine provided cover for a campaign of repression and persecution that was carried out against Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian religious leaders. The official policy of Ukrainization, which had encouraged the use of the Ukrainian language, was effectively halted. Moreover, anyone connected to the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic—an independent government that had been declared in June 1917 in the wake of the February Revolution but was dismantled after the Bolsheviks conquered Ukrainian territory—was subjected to vicious reprisals. All those targeted by this campaign were liable to be publicly vilified, jailed, sent to the Gulag (a system of Soviet prisons and forced-labour camps), or executed. Knowing that this Russification program would inevitably reach him, Mykola Skrypnyk, one of the best-known leaders of the Ukrainian Communist Party, committed suicide rather than submit to one of Stalin’s show trials.
Because the famine was so deadly, and because it was officially denied by the Kremlin for more than half a century, it has played a large role in Ukrainian public memory, particularly since independence. Ukrainian poet Ivan Drach was the first to speak publicly about the famine, in 1986, after the Chernobyl disaster, citing it as an example of how damaging official silence can be. Monuments commemorating the Holodomor have been erected by the Ukrainian government as well as by the Ukrainian diaspora, and Holodomor Remembrance Day is observed around the world on the fourth Saturday of November. Ukraine has also invested in research on the famine.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency..
There were multiple warnings throughout December for the NSC and the White House. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House, but they went unheeded. The first case of COVID-19 reached the U.S. on Jan15. The WHO declared it a pandemic on March 11. Trump declared the U.S. outbreak a national emergency on March 13.
On Jan. 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first briefed Trump on the threat of the virus in a phone call. Trump made his first public comments about the virus on Jan. 22, saying he was not concerned about a pandemic and that "we have it totally under control."
On Jan. 27, White House aides met with then-acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney to try to get senior officials to take the virus threat more seriously. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, warned it could cost Trump his re-election.
On Jan. 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House in a memo addressed to the National Security Council that COVID-19 could take more than half a million American lives and cause nearly $6 trillion in economic damage.
On Jan. 30, Azar warned Trump in a call that the virus could become a pandemic and that China should be criticized for its lack of transparency. Trump dismissed Azar as alarmist and rejected the idea of criticizing China. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency.
On Feb. 5, senators urged Trump in a briefing to take the virus more seriously and asked if additional funds were necessary. The administration made no requests at the time for emergency funding.
On Feb. 14, a memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with the National Security Council that recommended the targeted use of quarantine and isolation measures. Officials planned to present Trump with the memo when he returned from India on Feb. 25, but the meeting was canceled.
On Feb. 21, the White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives.
On Feb. 23, Navarro doubled down on his warnings in another memo, this time addressed to the president, stating that up to 2 million Americans could die of the virus.
On Feb. 25, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Nancy Messonnier publicly warned of the virus threat and said "we need to be preparing for significant disruption in our lives.” Trump reportedly called Azar fuming that Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily and caused the stock market to plummet.
On Jan 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal negligence of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. So far, more than 23 thousand American lives have been lost, and many of them needlessly, as a direct consequence of Trump's moral ineptitude, sociopathic behavior, and criminal negligence, and for that, he must be held accountable.
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Meanwhile, Trump is protecting Saudi Arabia after their leader had an American resident murdered in an Embassy in Turkey.
Keep in mind, the Saudis have put a ton of money into Trump and Jared's pockets. Trump is a man of no beliefs, ideals, or convictions, and he has the moral compass of a weather vane, and Saudis bought Trump a long time ago. Can't really blame the Saudis though, especially when Trump put himself on sale, with a 2 for 1 special ( Trump &Jared) Who could pass up a deal like that?
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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Trump's administration buried a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places. The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day." Once again Trump is dismissive of scientific facts because they get in the way of the BS he's trying to sell to the country. Instead of sharing this vital information which can literally save lives, he hides it.
Trump's cult has bought into his commitment to willful ignorance. Trump feeds them lies and misinformation on a daily basis, and they accept it without questioning the validity of anything he says. And at the same time, they will say that they are protesting for their "freedom." What they don't realize is that no man or woman can ever truly be free without factual information....without the truth. Without the facts and the truth, they are nothing more than tools for the person feeding them lies.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
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Trump: "But if you only count the votes that were for me, I won by a tremendous landslide." 😅🤣
This is how he thinks.
Let's be clear, the only reason Trump won in 2016 was because millions of Americans didn't vote. The voter turnout in 2016 was only 54%. Voter turnout in 2020 was exceptionally high at 66.8%. If voter turnout had been 66% in 2016, Trump would have lost that election as well. And this is why Republicans are engaging in voter suppression.
DJT openly admitted on fox that making it easier for more Americans to vote would hurt the Republican party.
DJT: “The things they had in there were krazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox.
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason..
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they wants, which is to be an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Today Trump openly admitted that he wants to dominate over the American people. This is the dictator that most of us knew was waiting to show itself since the day Trump was sworn in.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads."
As America was expanding in the 1780s, the founding fathers realized that open access to secure and private communication among its dispersed citizens was critical to forming political groups and holding free elections without fear of retribution. The U.S. Constitution empowered Congress “to establish post offices and post roads." The founding fathers provided the necessary infrastructure to “bind” the growing nation together through communication and commerce. Thereby, the Post Office Department (now the U. S. Postal Service) was born.
Trump: "They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
This was Trump, the sitting US President, openly admitting to blocking additional funding for the United States Postal Service in order to make it more difficult for American citizens to vote.
Let's face it, Trump doesn't believe you should have the right to vote unless you're voting for him. And that's not an exaggeration, he actually believes that. We have never seen anything like this from a sitting president.
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Trump is, and has always been, an agent of chaos. Trump doesn't solve problems, he IS the problem, just ask Atlantic City. Being a problem solver would actually require Trump's to first know history, combined with an understanding of perspectives. It would require him to be capable of reasoning and critical thinking.😂
He would have to be fully aware of his own weaknesses and limitations, combined with a willingness to listen and learn from experts with years of experience. Trump would also have to finally acknowledge that magic is not real. Last but not least, in order for Trump to become a problem solver, he would need to have the moral courage, and the moral compass to do what is right. Trump has proven that he clearly has none of the tools nor the desire to solve problems. And that is why he chooses to be an agent of chaos, because even a 2 year old child can be an agent of chaos.
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Trump is giving a middle finger to the American people, and to our democratic republic..
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a deranged tyrant, hellbent on destroying America.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Trump is the most prolific pathological liar in American history.
A pathological liar like Trump, is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way.
Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies. Trump does this constantly at his rallies. He tries to play the victim and the hero at the same time.
Pathological liars are great storytellers. Their lies tend to be very detailed and colorful.
Even though obviously over-the-top, the pathological liar may be very convincing.
Along with being made the hero or victim in their stories, pathological liars tend to tell lies that seem to be geared at gaining admiration, sympathy, or acceptance by others.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
Trump also claimed that he lost 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend that he lost on 9/11.
A pathological liar tells lies and stories that fall somewhere between conscious lying and delusion. They sometimes believe their own lies. It’s difficult to know how to deal with a pathological liar who may not always be conscious of their lying. Some do it so often that experts believe they may not know the difference between fact and fiction after some time.
Like when Trump said that his father was born in Germany.😂 Everyone knows that his father was born in NY. When asked questions, they may speak a lot without ever being specific or answering the question.
Most people lie at one time or another. Previous research has suggested that we tell an average of 1.65 lies every day. Most of these lies are what are considered “white lies.”
Pathological lies, on the other hand, are told consistently and habitually. They tend to appear pointless and often continuous. It's been reported that Trump tells at least 12 lies per day.😲
Identifying a pathological liar isn’t always easy, unless his name is DonaldTrump. The following are some signs to help identify a pathological liar:
They often talk about experiences and accomplishments in which they appear heroic, they're also the victim in many of their stories, often looking for sympathy, their stories tend to be elaborate and very detailed, they respond elaborately and quickly to questions, but the responses are usually vague and don’t provide an answer to the question, they may have different versions of the same story, which stems from forgetting previous details, or previous lies..
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In Sept, one month before Lev Parnas was indicted on campaign finance charges, his wife received a $1 million wire transfers from a bank account in Russia. The the source was a lawyer for Dmytro Firtash, according to a court filing by U.S. prosecutors.
Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who made a fortune in the natural gas trade, and is perhaps the most enigmatic figure in the scandal related to Trump's impeachment.
A billionaire with close ties to the Russian mob, Firtash is facing bribery-related charges here in the U.S. and fighting extradition from Vienna. He once attempted to buy the famous Drake Hotel in NY with the now imprisoned Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager. He's seen by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and Western governments as a corrupt instrument of Russia.
Firtash provided documents to Giuliani that he used to further his discredited claim that Joe Biden engaged in wrongdoing in Ukraine. The question over Firtash's role in the effort to smear Biden deepened when Parnas said the oligarch's involvement came from an explicit quid pro quo. In exchange for Firtash's help in their effort to damage Biden, Parnas assured the oligarch they (Rudy, Trump, and Parnas) would make his U.S. legal troubles disappear.
In other words, according to Parnas: Guiliani, was so eager to help Trump and hurt Biden, that he turned to a man Ukrainian activists call their country's most dangerous oligarch — and offered the equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card.
"Some folks might wonder what Mr. Giuliani was thinking. The better question is whether he WAS thinking," said Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor and senior FBI official. "This is so foolhardy and so reckless, that it is difficult to fathom what he was doing or how he thought it could succeed."
Firtash lived up to his end of the alleged bargain: His lawyers provided a now-discredited affidavit from a Ukrainian prosecutor accusing Biden of wrongdoing. But Giuliani's team did not deliver.
According to Parnas and a senior U.S. official, Firtash's lawyers, Giuliani associates Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, were unable to convince Attorney General William Barr to intervene in the Firtash case. The alleged scheme, one former U.S. official said, was stunning in its audacity.
"Think of it this way," said the official, who has deep knowledge of Ukraine's politics and Firtash's history. "You have the president's personal lawyer trying to get the president's official lawyer, the attorney general, to get the Justice Department to drop charges against an oligarch supported by Russia. That's what was happening."
"Firtash is at dead center of the greatest corruption operation in Ukraine's history," said a former senior U.S. diplomat who served in the region. "He managed the flow of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine and beyond and it kept Ukraine dependent on Russia's gas supplies."
Anders Aslund, a former Swedish diplomat who has studied Ukraine's economy for years, said Firtash is more of a purveyor of bribes than a proper businessman. "He has essentially been used by the Russians to buy political power in Ukraine," said Aslund. "He's the person who has spent the most money on behalf of the Kremlin on Ukraine's politicians."
In 2013, as the Obama administration was pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine, federal prosecutors in Chicago indicted Firtash, charging him with a scheme to bribe Indian officials to obtain a lucrative mining deal to sell titanium to Boeing for the 787 Dreamliner. He was arrested in Vienna in March 2014, and released on $174 million bail and has been contesting his extradition to the U.S. ever since.
The $174 million bail, said to be the largest in Austrian history, was paid by the Russian billionaire Vasily Anisimov, who is also under U.S. sanctions.
Richard Grenell, Trump’s pick for the Director of National Intelligence, has absolutely zero experience in intelligence or national security. But what Grenell does have however, are shady connections to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, who are connected to the Russian mob, and the Kremlin. Normally, something like this would be more than enough to prevent him from even getting a low level security clearance. And this is the man that Trump's wants to trust with the entire treasure trove of Amercan intelligence and classified information??? 😲
In interviews, Lev Parnas described a meeting he and Rudy had in London where they met two associates of indicted Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, one of whom was on his legal team. The Washington Post reported on that meeting, and a Firtash lawyer confirmed that a meeting with Giuliani happened. Parnas said he was in the meeting, and that Giuliani used it to try to get material from the oligarch that would bolster his attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Trump.
Firtash is wanted in this country on multiple felony corruption and bribery charges. DOJ prosecutors say Firtash is an "upper-echelon associate" of Russian Organized Crime.
After the meeting, two of Giuliani’s allies joined Firtash’s legal team. Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova began representing Firtash in the summer of 2019, and worked to score political gifts for Trump from Firtash. Parnas said they also tried to leverage their Trumpworld connections to help Firtash.
“During the situation that was going on with the Firtash case, Victoria called Ric Grenell because he was the ambassador to Germany and Vienna was in the same orbit there,” Parnas said. “She basically asked him, if he sees any pressure coming from DOJ to extradite Firtash, if he could let us know. She told me that Grenell said he would.”
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October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump after Julianne Assange was arrested: "I don't know anything about Wikileaks, that's not my deal in life."😲
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At a rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."😂
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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It's clear that Trump sees himself as a dictator like Putin and Kim Jung Un. During the shutdown, he said that thousands of Americans are okay with going without pay for months, or even years, just for him, because apparently they love him so much. And suffering for him would be an honor. The same way the people of NK are honored to suffer for their dear leader, Trump believes Americans are willing to do the same for him.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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Adam Schiff has experience with prosecuting, and putting away traitors to this country.
In the late 80s and early 90s as a District Attorney in Cali, Adam Schiff successfully prosecuted the case of a Russian spy named Svetlana Ogorodonikov, and an FBI agent named Richard W. Miller, who was seduced by Svetlana Ogorodnikov, and agreed to sell classified information to the Soviet government. Eventually, this man—Richard W. Miller, a 47-year-old Los Angeles-based counterintelligence agent on the Bureau’s Soviet squad—would become the first FBI agent ever convicted of espionage.
Agent Miller would eventually agree to turnover highly classified information to the Russians for large sums of money. It took Schiff 3 trails, and 6 years, but he eventually won the conviction against Agent Miller and the Russian spy, and they were both sent to prison.
During those years, Schiff stated that he learned a lot about Russian tradecraft, and how the Russians operate, who they target, and the vulnerabilities they look for. During his work on the case, Schiff was also in frequent contact with FBI agents investigating Miller—giving the future congressman an intimate look at, and respect for, the Bureau’s counterintelligence mission against threats from from Russia, and it's mission of protecting the national security of this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
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In the month of October alone, Trump has told at least 1100 lies. That's an average of 30 lies a day. I couldn’t lie that much even if I tried. I couldn't lie that much on a dare, not even on a triple dog dare could I lie that much. Because at some point, I would slip up and tell the truth about something. That many lies makes Trump an illegitimate president. In no way should an elected official get away with lying to the American people on such a massive scale. I don't know of any profession, that would tolerate someone who is that untrustworthy.
If you are lower to middle-class, and you're voting Republican, you are basically cutting your own throat. Mitch McConnell announced a few weeks ago, that republicans are planning to cut social security, Medicaid and Medicare, in order to pay for the massive tax cut that they gave to the most wealthiest corporations and people in the country. If that's not enough for you to realize that you shouldn't vote republican, then you deserve to lose your social security. You deserve to lose everything you have.
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For decades, Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia is connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which Trump has been compromised.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took outt full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid..
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mafia...
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin..
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A cult of personality, or a cult leader like Trump, arises when an individual uses the media, propaganda, the big lie, spectacle, counterfeit patriotism, demonstrations and rallies, to create an idealized, heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery,
praise.
The term came to prominence in 1956, in Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, given on the final day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the speech, Khrushchev criticized the lionization and idealization of Stalin, and by implication, his Communist sidekick Mao Zedong. Mao's cult of personality, like Stalin’s, portrayed him as larger-than-life and endowed with unrivaled wisdom. Cults of personality fell out of favor in the 1950s after Khrushchev's speech, but Trump's handler Putin, has revived the practice, guiding a wave of nostalgia for Stalin as he advocates for Russian nationalism and anti-West sentiment.
A main feature of Stalinism was its cult of personality. Whereas Lenin had claimed that the workers suffered from false consciousness and therefore needed a vanguard party to guide them, Stalin maintained that the Communist Party itself suffered from false consciousness
and therefore needed an all-wise leader—Stalin himself—to guide it. The resulting cult of personality portrayed Stalin as a universal genius in every subject, from linguistics to genetics.
The best modern-day example of a cult of personality comes to us from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un, the despotic dictator that Trump admires so much.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background. And when architects design new apartments and shops, he is given credit for doing so.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
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On Dec 23, at turning point USA, Trump gave what could be considered his most stupefying soliloquy to date.
“I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. (Don Quixote disagrees) I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?"
--Trump
Trump at a rally in Milwaukee, Jan 14, 2020
"I'm also approving new dishwashers that give you more water so you can actually wash and rinse your dishes without having to do it 10 times — four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN.😄
"Anybody have a new dishwasher? I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for that. It's worthless. They give you so little water. You ever see it? Air comes out. So little water."
"Sinks, toilets, and showers — you don't get any water. You go into a shower — and I have this beautiful head of hair. I need a lot of water," (to wild cheers from the crowd) "And you go into the shower, right? You turn on the water. Drip. Drip. Drip. I call the guy: 'Is something wrong with this?' 'No, sir, it's just the restrictor.'"
"We're getting rid of the restrictors!!! You're going to have full shower flow!!" Once again, his crowd of cultists goes wild!!😂
I dare any Trump ccultist to try and explain to me exactly what it was that Trump was trying to say, or what salient point he was trying to make. I dare you....😄
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When it comes to Trump and the GOP, all roads lead to Russia.
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy, and Devin Nunes, received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, even though they have attended events at his properties, and they have posed in multiple photos with Trump.
Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot disclose to the government.
Parnas is the founder of "Fraud Guarantee" 😂 a consulting firm with no “identifiable customers” that paid Rudy $500,000. The mysterious payment from Russia should not be a surprise considering that all roads lead to Putin and Russia when it comes to Trump.
Prosecutors say Parnas and Igor Fruman donated larger sums of money to Republicans in an effort to enlist them in their effort to oust then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified that she was recalled after a smear campaign by Rudy. Along with their work with Rudy, Parnas and Fruman are accused of meeting at Trump’s Washington hotel to discuss a Ukraine gas deal linked to Yovanovitch’s removal.
In October, Republican Kevin McCarthy said he plans to donate the $111,000 that was given to the House Republicans' main fundraising committee by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas. 😲
McCarthy, a sycophantic defender of Trump, said the money from Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, would be given to charity. A handful of Republican campaign committees received nearly $500,000 from Parnas and Fruman.
Prosecutors say that they “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
Fruman and Parnas also created Global Energy Producers, an LLC to hide their funding sources and conceal their names on large contributions, the indictment says.
FL. Gov. Ron DeSantis said he plans to return nearly $50,000 he received, according to a report by The Miami Herald. Parnas attended fundraisers for DeSantis in 2018. 😲
I think it's safe say that not only do the Russians own Trump, they also own the GOP as well. It's going to be interesting to find out just how much Russia paid Trump and republicans to sellout and betray America. And make no mistake, we will find out.
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I wish that there was a way we could somehow flatten the curve of Trump's lies, better known as Bull sht Mountain.
Trump is now bragging about the ratings of his daily live news conferences on the coronavirus, and suggested that the large viewer numbers — rather than the multiple lies he has told during them — are fueling discussions in the media about ending the practice of broadcasting them live and unfiltered.
Trump: “Because the ratings of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the NYT, the Lamestream Media is going crazy" Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. Apparently this is all a game to him.
What Trump's utterly oblivious, self-absorbed, Ineffectual pompous a$$ doesn't realize is that the American people aren't tuning in because of him, we are tuning in because we want to keep up-to-date on the coronavirus and the US’s policies on it. The American people are watching the press briefings to hear from the coronavirus task force, which includes top public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and others on the task force.
Trump has made dozens of false claims during the briefings, which have directly led to the loss of lives, including overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, to falsely saying that anyone who wants to be tested for coronavirus infections can be, to claiming that the coronavirus will magically disappear, to claiming that there are no shortages of coronavirus tests, to claiming that America has tested more people than any country in the world, to claiming that the coronavirus was no different than the flu.
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Trump likes to consider himself as a first responder as well, and he wants you to appreciate him for it.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
Trump has told similar egregious lies about helping first responders on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲 Super Narcissist strikes again.
Once again, there is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent time at or even near ground zero.
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Conservatives like referring to liberals as communists, when in reality it's nothing more than pure projection. Conservatism is practically in lock step with communism.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
Conservatives have even taken a page right out the communist playbook. Controlling the reproductive rights of women is an old and well document communist tradition.
Because if a government can prevent you from having anAbortion, it can also force you to have one. That's what happens when the choice has been taken away from you. It doesn't get more communist than that.
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Having a sociopath like Trump as your leader/president during a life or death crisis, is probably the worst case scenario imaginable. A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake.
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. That's why he has fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire. Not only will they avoid telling him the truth, they will refrain from correcting him whenever he makes false and dangerous declarations about the coronavirus.
They will instead focus on telling him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear are lies and false narratives that match the alternative facts in his head. Whenever Trump says "the square peg goes into the round hole" he wants them to agree with him. And if you tell him that he's wrong, he will accuse you of being a never Trumper, and of plotting against him
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing, because Republicans aren't interested in governing, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about...
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The GOP will never recover from Trump . it's pretty much a wrap, just like Trump University and his fake charity foundation. Because when moral courage, and intestinal fortitude really mattered, the GOP failed. Today's republican party has been weighed, and measured, and was found wanting. And republicans in Congress will not be able to blame Trump. He's simply doing what he's done his entire depraved life. The GOP will have no one but themselves to blame. It's very similar to the fable of "The Scorpion and the Frog." Republicans knew all along exactly who and what Trump was.
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a river. It's too treacherous to cross, so the scorpion nicely asks the frog to carry him across on its back. This makes the frog a little suspicious. It asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.” That sound reasoning relaxes the frog's nerves. So he allows the scorpion to climb aboard and they shove off across the flowing water.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little dance on the drowning frog's back.
"I could not help myself, said the scorpion, It is my nature."
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.
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I think it's crucial that every American is fully aware of the type of pathological liar, malignant narcissist, and sociopath we're dealing with when it comes to Trump..
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
In 1989, Trump raised $365 million to purchase the Eastern Shuttle, which provided business travelers with quick flights between NY, Boston, and DC. Within 18 months, the airline lost over $125 million.
In August 1989, just two months after Trump launched his Trump Shuttle Airline, one of his Boeing 727s made a crash landing at Boston’s Airport. The passenger jet had malfunctioning nose gear that failed to deploy. The nose and underbelly of the plane scraped and dragged along the entire length of the runaway upon landing with sparks flying. The pilots had to perform an emergency dumping of fuel to avoid a greater catastrophe. It's all on video.
One of the passengers on that flight — who recalls sliding out the aircraft and into a pile of foam — was Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist who worked for Jeb Bush and his super PAC to try to defeat Trump.
“Afterward,” Murphy said, “all I got was a form letter and a drink coupon.”
And when Trump was asked by reporters about the crash landing in Boston, he said, and I quote: “It was the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen." 😲
This is the type of dangerously irresponsible sociopath America is dealing with.
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On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit. Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the US. A major Brexit supporter, Steve Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign captured the interest of investigators in the UK and the US.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances. In Britain, revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’s annual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange a lunch for the UKIP leaders with the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize..
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So while the nation has been busy dealing with a viral pandemic, Moscow Mitch has been quietly slithering around making phone calls to senior federal judges and urging them to step aside ahead of the 2020 election. Moscow Mitch has started to personally reach out to federal judges to pressure their retirement while Trump is still in office.
Moscow Mitch has been contacting judges to “sound them out on their plans and assure them that they would have a worthy successor if they gave up their seats soon,” aided by other Republicans who are making similar overtures of their own.
A source familiar with the Kentucky leader's thinking described how McConnell is personally reaching out to judges appointed by past Republican presidents.
"Yes, he has made calls," said a longtime McConnell confidant who asked for anonymity in order to speak freely. McConnell is making the requests because he wants time to replace the judges with new conservative-minded jurists."
In February, Trump and McConnell placed its 51st circuit court judge on the bench, falling only a few nominations short of what President Obama did over the course of two terms. Moscow Mitch has been able to help Trump appoint 193 federal judges, including two Supreme Court justices, to the bench since 2017.
This is why the 2020 election will easily be the most important election in our lifetime. This election is not about Biden or Bernie. This election is about Trump, and removing him from office...PERIOD. Failure to do so would mean watching Trump and Moscow Mitch do the unthinkable, placing another one of his unqualified cultist on the Supreme Court, along with stacking courts across the country with more extremist Federal Judges. This election is about preserving our democracy, and our Constitutional Republic. So we simply can't afford to F this one up, because there won't be any "do-overs."
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So last year we learned that on Trump's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to Trump's failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland. All so that Trump could line his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that Trunp wanted to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
Now we've recently learned that Trump asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland..
This is a level of corruption that we have never seen before, or even imagined. Its naked, gratuitous, egregious and overt corruption on steroids. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, for Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history. Trump's face belongs on the Mt Rushmore of corruption....all by itself. At this point, they should just wrap the entire White House with yellow police tape, and declare the whole thing a crime scene.
And win or lose in November, one thing won’t change for Trump: Over the next few years, he must settle a series of TREMENDOUSLY large debts. Before the end of a theoretical second term, his company will have to refinance—or, in a far less likely scenario, pay off—nearly a half-billion dollars in loans. These debts are maturing at the worst time for Trump, whose roach hotels and resorts have been plagued by declining revenues. And that was before the pandemic pummeled the hospitality industry.
On financial disclosure forms, Trump has reported holding 14 loans on 12 properties. At least six of those loans, representing about $479 million in debt, are due over the next four years. Some are guaranteed by Trump himself, meaning a creditor could come after his personal—not corporate—assets if he defaults. If he holds onto the White House, the refinancing of these debts could take his conflicts of interest to absurd new heights. How will the public know if these deals are on the up and up or whether Trump is receiving sweetheart terms from a bank that wants an in with the president? And what might a lender desire in return for helping Trump out of a financial jam?
Trump’s biggest creditor is Deutsche Bank, the bank preferred by Russian mobsters and Oligarchs. In the late 1990s, Deutsche Bank took a gamble on Trump, whose history of bankruptcies made him untouchable by most other lenders. Deutsche’s commercial lending division learned the hard way one reason why other banks wouldn't touch Trump with a ten-foot pole: If pushed by his creditors on payments, Trump shoved back. In 2008, after he defaulted on a loan for his Chicago hotel and condo development, he filed a multibillion-dollar suit accusing Deutsche and others of contributing to the recent financial meltdown, which he blamed for his inability to repay the loan.
Nevertheless, Deutsche’s private banking division, which caters to wealthy clientele, continued to lend to Trump, giving him $125 million, spread over two loans, to finance the purchase and renovation of his Doral golf resort in 2012. Both are floating rate loans, meaning the interest rate fluctuates based on market conditions, which lending experts say usually indicates they are interest-only loans. If so, Trump probably hasn’t paid down much if any of the principal and will owe something close to the whole $125 million when the loans come due in 2023.
In 2014, Trump took out a separate floating loan from Deutsche’s private bank to bankroll the development of his luxury hotel in Washington, DC. The balance of this $170 million debt is payable in 2024. That year, Trump will also owe Deutsche between $25 million and $50 million in connection with his Chicago hotel and complex.
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This past Sunday, Trump made a church visit on Franklin Graham’s “Pray for Donald Trump Day” Sunday. Trump made the unannounced visit to northern Virginia’s McLean Bible Church after four and a half hours at his golf course in nearby Sterling and on his way back to the White House. He spent 15 minutes there, and was prayed for by pastor David Platt, who referred to evangelical Franklin Graham’s call for pastors around the country’s to honor Trump on June 2.
On May 26, Graham called on fellow pastors and fellow cultists to pray for Trump on Sunday.
“I and many other Christian leaders across the country are asking you to take a moment during that day to pray for President Donald Trump,” Graham said in a video. “I don’t believe any president in the history of this nation has been attacked more than Donald Trump.”
“Many of you may have seen that there were calls to, particularly on this Sunday, pray for our president,” Platt said. “We don’t want to do that just on this Sunday. We want to do that continually, day in and day out. So I want to ask us to bow our heads together now and pray for our president.”
Now for the worst part. White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said in a statement: “President Donald J. Trump is visiting McLean Bible Church in Vienna, VA, to visit with the pastor and pray for the victims and community of Virginia Beach.”
But here's the problem with that, in the five minutes of remarks the pastor gave in Trump’s presence, he never mention Friday’s shooting, the 12 victims, their families, or the several others currently in the hospital, and neither did Trump.....not one word. But I guess that when you're in a cult, the real suffering of others will always take a backseat to the perceived suffering of your dear cult leader.
It just goes to show you, that once again, Big Baby Trump is the eternal and everlasting victim.😔
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Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon..
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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This had the feel of speeches given by one the world's most despotic dictators in history.
Trump criticized Dems who did not applaud during his first State of the Union address. “They were like death and un-American,” he said. “Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?”
Trump is very reminiscent of Stalin in this way. You can see it in him during this SOTU address. He literally pauses for the applause, and he even applauds himself.
During Stalin's reign of terror, he demanded a long and enthusiastic applause, and standing ovations whenever he gave a speech. As a result, the applause and ovations he received became largely panic-driven. People feared that the first person to stop clapping would be the first to be called an enemy of the state, and be hauled off to a gulag. The clapping and ovations would last up to 10 minutes. Failure to applaud could certainly be considered treason. So the sheeple went on and on, clapping and shouting “Long live Comrade Stalin,” “Glory to our beloved Comrade Stalin," clapping to the point of exhaustion, and until the palms of their hands bled.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described what the surreal scene looked like in his book, The Gulag Archipelago:
“The applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly…Nine minutes! Ten!…Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers.”
At last, after eleven minutes of non-stop clapping, the director of a paper factory finally decided enough was enough. He stopped clapping and sat down—a miracle!
“To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down,” Solzhenitsyn says.
That same night, the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years. Authorities came up with some official reason for his sentence, but during his interrogation, he was told: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”
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Trump is playing a dangerous game with our oceans and coastal communities. By massively expanding offshore oil drilling while simultaneously rolling back drilling-safety standards put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Trump is making more major oil spills inevitable.
If a spill happens in the Arctic Ocean — where Trump is trying to invite oil companies into federal waters that were protected by President Obama — treacherous conditions would make cleanup impossible. And wherever the next big oil spill happens, wildlife will die and coastal communities will suffer.
The Gulf of Mexico and its coastline still haven’t recovered from 2010’s Deepwater Horizon blowout, which killed 11 workers, and thousands of marine animals as it gushed more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf for almost three months. Thousands of people on the Gulf, like fishermen, lost their jobs and livelihoods. The country’s worst environmental disaster clearly called for new regulations to prevent it from happening again. Trump is currently rolling back those safety regulations in his reckless pursuit of so-called “energy dominance.” Just as he pretends climate change isn’t real.
After well-blowout prevention devices suffered catastrophic failures on Deepwater Horizon, Obama called for 3rd party inspections of safety equipment. It was a measured, reasonable response to such an epic industry failure. In April Trump signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to “reconsider” several oil rig safety regulations. Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary who forced to resign because of multiple investigations of ethics violations he was under, was in charge of rolling back the safety regulations.
Calls for reversing the Obama-era regulations is part of Trump’s efforts to ease restrictions on fossil fuel companies and generate more domestic energy production. (GREED)
Doing so, the agency asserted, will reduce “unnecessary burdens” on the energy industry and save the industry $228 million over 10 years.(GREED)
The Obama-era rules, written in 2016, tightened controls on blowout preventers, devices that are intended to stop explosions in undersea oil and gas wells, and called for rig operators to have third parties certify that the safety devices worked under extreme conditions. In the Deepwater Horizon spill, a supposedly fail-safe blowout preventer failed after a section of drill pipe buckled.
Environmental groups warned that reversing the safety measures would make the United States vulnerable to another such disaster.
“Rolling back drilling safety standards while expanding offshore leasing is a recipe for disaster,” Miyoko Sakashita, director of the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “By tossing aside the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Trump is putting our coasts and wildlife at risk of more deadly oil spills. Reversing offshore safety rules isn’t just deregulation, it’s willful ignorance.”
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Here are some examples of Trump's so called conservative Christian "values."
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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There’s much speculation as to how Rudy Giuliani “America’s Mayor,” the widely admired civic leader who presided over NYC during 9/11, could have been siphoned into Trump’s underworld. We got a Trump thanks to a compliant, sensationalist media apparatus that breathed life into his phony self-made billionaire myth, just as we owe them for Rudy, who they cast as a post-9/11 American hero.
By the time that the planes crashed into the Towers on Sept. 11, 2001 Giuliani was a master surfer of the wave of public opinion. In the attacks that played out in lower Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, PA, close to 3,000 people were killed — 343 of them uniformed New York City firemen.
Overnight, the media turned Giuliani into a larger than life heroic figure. But the people that were most intimately familiar with the city’s pre-9/11 counter-terrorism preparations knew that it was Giuliani’s failures as Mayor which contributed directly to the horrific body count for the FDNY that day.
On Feb. 26, 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked with a 1,200-pound bomb concealed in a rental truck that exploded in the basement. The blast killed six, injured 1,000 people, and forced 50,000 to evacuate.
In a detailed after-action report published in 1994 by the FDNY, the inability of firefighters and their officers to communicate over their analog radios that day was flagged as a vital issue that needed to be addressed with urgency. In 2008 — when Giuliani was running for president — FDNY Lt. James Wood recounted his experiences during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in an informational video produced by the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF).
While the bombing had taken place during Mayor Dinkins tenure as Mayor, Giuliani was sworn in on Jan. 2 1994. As the IAFF recalls it, the critical report about the defective fire radios gathered dust for several years.
It took until March of 2001 for new digital radios to be deployed, but they were withdrawn weeks later after they were deemed responsible for a near life-ending miscue when a firefighter isolated in a basement fire in Queens radioed a “May Day” call for assistance that none of his co-workers heard over their radios. It was only picked up by another fire company miles away. The new radios were shelved, and the old dysfunctional analogs were put back in service.
The contract for the new radios was a no bid, non-competitive contract that was, as it turned out, just an extension of an existing contract with Motorola, which has a near-monopoly on emergency communications.
According to a report issued by the NYC Comptroller the next month, Giuliani had “willfully” violated “city contracting rules…. endangering firefighters in a reckless bid to buy a new type of hand-held radio that it later had to pull from service,” The Times reported that “the new digital radios were never properly tested before being distributed to firefighters.” As City Comptroller Alan Hevesi documented, “they were purchased through what he described as an improper process that did not allow competing companies to bid for the contract.” At the time, Michael Wolf, who represented Com-Net Ericsson, a Motorola competitor, told the Times he was stymied in his efforts to even get the city to consider his company’s products.
Just six months later, FDNY’s bravest faced the doomsday scenario as they sized up the rescue operation in the Twin Towers on 9/11 that would take so many of their lives. They were equipped with the same analog radios that had failed them so badly when the WTC was bombed back in 1993. As the IAFF video documents and as the 9/11 timeline confirms, at 9:32 am. on 9/11, an FDNY Chief ordered all members in the North Tower down to the lobby. Even though he repeated the order, not a single company responded.
At 9:59 the WTC South Tower collapsed; and at 10 am the order to abandon the North Tower was repeated. Inside the North Tower were 121 firefighters who never heard that order. They perished when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am.
“On 9/11 firefighters went into the North Tower and started ascending the tower, yet they were being called back and they kept going,” said Richard Salem, an attorney who has been representing several of the firefighters’ families who lost loved ones when the North Tower collapsed. “Not one other uniformed officer from any other department, who had functioning radios, perished in that tower other than the FDNY.”
Despicably, Giuliani tried to cover up his own malfeasance by telling the 9/11 Commission that the North Tower firefighters had ignored the radio orders because of “their willingness, the way I describe it to stand their ground.”
Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, who lost his son Jimmy in the North Tower, will tell this tragic story to anyone who will listen. He and other surviving family members shadowed Giuliani during the 2008 primary and carried on a media campaign that was picked up by outlets like the Guardian.
“These radios did not work in the WTC in 1993 and they did not work in 2001." Jim Riches stated. "We got the story out there but when the media christened him ‘America’s Mayor,’ it all went away.”
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LOL!!🤣 This is too funny.
When are some people finally going to realize that Trump is a pureSociopath, andSociopaths don't have friends. They don’t see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, Trump has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, Bannon, Rudy, Powell) etc.
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Trump is simply too petty, too cruel, too corrupt, too selfish, too sociopathic, too dumb, too craven, too lazy, too immoral, too vindictive, too evil, too cowardly, too flawed, too depraved, too malevolent, to ever do the right thing.
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.”
― Tiffany Madison
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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The January 27 phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto has insisted publicly his country will not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full.
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.
The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.
Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from fox, the current president, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy. It should be reported that these traitors are all willing partners in Russia's disinformation campaign on America. And they should be treated as a threat to America, because that's exactly what they are. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America.
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It will not be a legitimate trial without witnesses and evidence. Republicans refusal to allow witnesses and evidence is what's known as a COVER-UP.
Trump and republicans in the Senate wouldn't have a problem with Bolton, Rudy, Mulvaney, or John Eisenberg testifying if Trump was actually innocent. The problem is he's not innocent. He's guilty as charged, and they know it.
The American people demand to hear from Rudy, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Bolton, and the White House lawyer John Eisenberg, who hid the full transcript of Trump's phone call on the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Eisenberg hid the full transcript after Lt.Col. Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid.
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In McConnell's own words..
"January 6th was a disgrace."
“American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about mur.dering the Vice President."
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
"There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President."
"And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth."
"The issue is not only the President’s intemperate language on January 6th."
“It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged ‘trial by combat.’
“It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President."
"The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things."
"This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.
"A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"It was obvious that only President Trump could end this.
“Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the Administration.
"But the President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job.
“Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!
“Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger… even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters… the President sent a further tweet attacking his Vice President.
“And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
NEVER FORGET.
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And Trump has sent thousands of our troops to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil and HIS own personal business interests.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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@user-fp4zn9yj8n
Trumpism is by definition, a shared psychosis.
A shared psychotic disorder is a rare type of mental illness in which a healthy person starts to take on the delusions of someone who has a psychotic disorder. For example, let's say your spouse has a psychotic disorder and, as part of that illness, believes aliens are spying on them. Trump convinced his followers that President Obama spied on him.
People with psychotic disorders have trouble staying in touch with reality and often can’t handle daily life. The most obvious symptoms are hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren’t real) and delusions (believing things that aren’t true, even when they get the facts).
Shared psychotic disorders can also happen in groups of people who are closely involved with a person who has a psychotic disorder (called folie à plusiers, or "the madness of many"). For instance, this could happen in a cult if the leader is psychotic and their followers take on their delusions.
The most obvious example of this is what happens in a cult, if the leader is living with a mental illness and transfers their delusions to the group. In a larger group setting, this might also be termed mass hysteria.
Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
"TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology.
When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
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Any "deal" that Trump makes is guaranteed to end badly.
The Trump White House agreed to a May 1 troop withdrawal. Biden had to decide whether to honor a deal that included the Taliban, but not the Afghan government.
The question everyone should be asking, is why did Trump make a deal with the Taliban, a designated terrorist organization, and why was the Afghan government left out of the negotiations?
It's almost as if Trump and the Taliban plotted against the Afghan government and the people.
Trump was negotiating with the Taliban about whether or not to remove our troops, and NOT with the Afghan government, which was hosting our troops.
The Republican National Committee has conveniently removed an inconvenient webpage from 2020 in which it praised Trump for signing a "historic peace agreement with the Taliban."
The page had been removed with the web address redirecting to a 404 error page featuring the quip: "It looks like you're as lost as Biden is."
Featured as part of a section titled "President Trump Is Bringing Peace In The Middle East," the page described how Trump had "continued to take the lead in peace talks."
In the now-deleted GOP webpage, it is stated that Trump negotiated a deal for the withdrawals by May 2021 "in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the organization's current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at Trump’s request.
Remember when Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David? I do
The UK's defense minister blamed the chaos in Afghanistan on Trump on Monday.
UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace has pointed the finger at Trump.
He told "BBC Breakfast" on Monday: "The die was cast when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation."
"President Biden inherited a momentum, a momentum that had been given to the Taliban because they felt they had now won. He'd also inherited a momentum of troop withdrawal from the international community, the US."
"So I think in that sense, the seeds of what we're seeing today were before President Biden took office. The seeds were a peace deal that was effectively rushed, that wasn't done in collaboration properly with the international community and then a dividend taken out incredibly quickly."
He had previously called Trump's deal "rotten" and said the international community would likely "pay the consequences."
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Trump's meeting with Putin in Helsinki will forever be remembered as "The Great Betrayal."
History has proven that Trump won't hesitate to betray anyone or anything. In the past, Trump has betrayed his wives, his kids, his father, his siblings, his business partners, his employees, contractors, banks, his lawyers, his White House advisers, the country, his oath of office, and last but not least, he betrayed everyone who marched on the Capitol because of the lies he told them.
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In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life,” he added.
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Trump isn't draining the swamp, he's pardoning the swamp, for his own benefit.
But I was really glad that Blagojevich brought up Trump's passionate sense of justice for people of color. 😆
In June 2019, Trump said that he would not apologize for his harsh comments in 1989 about the Central Park Five, the five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted in NY.
More than a decade after the exoneration of the five teens, Trump indicated in an interview just last year, that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their executions.
The teenagers were exonerated by DNA evidence and a confession from the true perpetrator in 2002, 13 years after they were vilified by prosecutors and in the press after being charged and convicted.
On May 1, 1989, as the case was headed to trial, Trump spent $85,000 placing a full-page ad in four newspapers, calling for the young men accused of the crime to be executed.
“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” the ad proclaimed in enormous capital letters. Below, in smaller text, Trump ranted, “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
The Central Park Five have now been found innocent, after serving 7 to 13 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. But just last year, Trump stated that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their executions. So Trump doesn't feel that they were treated unfairly at all, even though they were innocent. Blagojevich however, is very much guilty as charged. But in Trump's diseased mind, Blagojevich is the victim, and was somehow treated unfairly, but the Central Park Five weren't. 😲
As Governor, Blagojevich tried to sell a seat in the Senate to the highest bidder, like hawking a stolen television off the back of a truck. Blagojevich was also convicted of extorting a children's hospital. Blagojevich tried to take back an $8 million contribution the state made to Children's Memorial Hospital, because the hospital's CEO would not make a campaign donation to the governor. Now let that sink in for a moment.
That sounds exactly like something that Trump would do. After all, Trump was caught operating a fake charity foundation for his own financial gain.
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Trump is attempting to scapegoat the WHO, the media, and everyone for his criminal incompetence, and his failure to protect this country from a virus that he was warned about multiple times, starting back in November of last year.
"What President Obama left Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
President Obama left Trump with a fire department, as well as smoke detectors, and Trump simply threw them away.
Trump, being the stable genius that he is, believed it was smarter to wait and put together a fire department, AFTER a five alarm fire starts.
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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Trump criticized Dems who did not applaud during his first State of the Union address. “They were like death and un-American,” he said. “Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?”
Trump is very reminiscent of Stalin in this way. You can see it in him during this SOTU address. He literally pauses for the applause, and he even applauds himself.
During Stalin's reign of terror, he demanded a long and enthusiastic applause, and standing ovations whenever he gave a speech. As a result, the applause and ovations he received became largely panic-driven. People feared that the first person to stop clapping would be the first to be called an enemy of the state, and be hauled off to a gulag. The clapping and ovations would last up to 10 minutes. Failure to applaud could certainly be considered treason. So the sheeple went on and on, clapping and shouting “Long live Comrade Stalin,” “Glory to our beloved Comrade Stalin," clapping to the point of exhaustion, and until the palms of their hands bled.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described what the surreal scene looked like in his book, The Gulag Archipelago:
“The applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly…Nine minutes! Ten!…Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers.”
At last, after eleven minutes of non-stop clapping, the director of a paper factory finally decided enough was enough. He stopped clapping and sat down—a miracle!
“To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down,” Solzhenitsyn says.
That same night, the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years. Authorities came up with some official reason for his sentence, but during his interrogation, he was told: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem and upheaval. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, backwards,
grotesque, insecure, selfish, indecent, malevolent, paranoid, indifferent, sociopathic, inept, and deceitful."
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Recently Captain Sully, the pilot who saved all 155 lives on board his flight, when he landed his plane on the Hudson River, announced that he would be voting BLUE 💙, for the 1st time this election.
Capt,Sully: “For the first 85 percent of my adult life, I was a registered Republican. But I have always voted as an American. And this critical Election Day, I will do so by voting for leaders committed to rebuilding out common values and not pandering to our basest impulses.”
Capt Sully said that he feels the current administration has fostered a culture of “fear, anger and hatred," He stated that “leaders must take responsibility and have a moral compass grounded in competence, integrity and concern for the greater good.”
“Many are cowardly, complicit enablers, acting against the interests of the United States, our allies and democracy; encouraging extremists at home and emboldening our adversaries abroad; and threatening the livability of our planet.”
The result, according to Capt Sully, is a “struggle for who and what we are as a people.” The former pilot feels that the country has lost “unit cohesion,” and that the very fabric of American society is being threatened by the current leaders of the country.
Well, if voting BLUE💙 is good enough for Captain Sully, a man who singlehandedly saved 155 lives, then it's certainly good enough for this Marine veteran. So BLUE it is!!!💙💙💙
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Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem & upheaval. I am a merchant of lies & deception. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, grotesque, selfish, indecent, malevolent, debased, indifferent, inept, sociopathic, and malicious.
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We Build the Wall" began as a GoFundMe campaign in late 2018, designed to raise money directly from the public to build a border wall in the face of congressional opposition. It was started by Brain Kolfage, a military veteran, with support from Timothy Shea. Bannon and Andrew Badolato later came in and took effective control of the campaign's daily grifting operations.
While Kolfage publicly guaranteed that he would not take salary or compensation, and that 100 percent of funds raised would go toward the wall, the indictment alleges he actually took more than $350,000 for personal use and took steps to conceal it.
After finding out last October that their fundraising campaign might be under federal investigation, the defendants took steps to hide their activity even further, including the use of encrypted messaging, the indictment says.
Just two days ago, Kolfage tweeted that he was taking the campaign off of GoFundMe and moving it to a different platform because of GoFundMe's purported support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
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June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
If you agree with Trump, that America should be like NK, and we should treat him the same way the NK people treat Kim Jung Un, then by all means, vote red.
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@jaydoggy456
Placing a 10 year ban on assault rifles in 1994 reduced the number of massShootings in this country significantly. Why? Because we all know that they are the preferred weapon of massShooters.
In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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Trump says he wants to pardon the insurrectionists because they are patriots who are being treated unfairly.
But on Jan 7, the day after the riot, the White House released a video in which Trump read from scripted remarks.
“I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack on the United States Capitol. Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem. America is, and must always be, a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.
“To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country, and to those who broke the law: YOU WILL PAY,” Trump continued. “We have just been through an intense election and emotions are high, but now tempers must be cooled and calm restored. We must get on with the business of America.”
“Congress has certified the results,” he said. “A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th."
Jan. 12. Trump reads a statement about the violence from a teleprompter during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Millions of our citizens watched on Wednesday as a mob stormed the Capitol and trashed the halls of government,” he said. “As I have consistently said throughout my administration, we believe in respecting America's history and traditions, not tearing them down. We believe in the rule of law, not in violence or rioting.”
Jan. 19. During his farewell address, he again spoke about the Capitol from prepared remarks.
“All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated."
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves..
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified."
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016."
Trump, fox, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Kennedy, Jordan, and Rudy, are knowingly
aiding and abetting Russia in it's disinformation campaign on America. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America.
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On more than one occasion, Trump falsely accused President Obama of doing, what he is now doing:
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran. I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic?”
--Trump, Nov 16, 2011
"Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!"
--Trump, Oct 22, 2012
"I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!"
--Trump, Sep 16, 2013
"Remember what I previously said--Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is."
--Trump, Sep 25, 2013
"Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"
--Trump, Nov 10, 2013
We now know that as usual, Trump was only fantasizing about what he would do if he were president.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Donald is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fasc.ism, wild conspiracy theories, rac.ism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior.
I began this book with the assumption that Trump is a malignant narcissist. Actually, watching him and listening to him reminded me of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the cult I joined in college, in that both have a kind of God complex where they’re the only one with the answers, the only one who can fix things. Moon was going to create a theocracy and Trump was going to “drain the swamp.” But the way they carry themselves is similar.
But what really made me think of Trump as a cult was the way the groups who supported him were behaving, especially religious groups who believed that God had chosen Trump or was using Trump. There are actual pro-Trump religious groups, like the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders were saying, “We’re of God. The rest of the world is of Satan, and we need to follow our chosen leaders who are connected to God.”
There was this blind-faith aspect to the whole thing and an unwillingness to look at any inconvenient facts. That’s all very cult-like.
The bottom line is that I see very sophisticated mind-control techniques being used through the media, through religious broadcasters and radio talk-show hosts. It’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil, authoritarian view of reality that is mostly fear-based. And there’s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the image of the leader."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
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Trump and his "Borgia" crime family check all of the boxes when it comes to violating the RICO Act.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) was passed by Congress with the declared purpose of seeking to eradicate organized crime in the United States.
A violation of Section 1962(c), requires (1) conduct (2) of an enterprise (3) through a pattern (4) of racketeering activity.
An "enterprise" is defined as including any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity.
A PATTERN of racketeering activity requires at least two acts of racketeering activity committed within ten years of each other.
The government must show that the racketeering predicates are related, and that they amount to or pose a threat of continued criminal activity. Racketeering predicates are related if they have the same or similar purposes, results, participants, victims, or methods of commission, or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated events.
For the the continuity requirement, the government may show that the racketeering acts found to have been committed pose a threat of continued racketeering activity by proving: (1) that the acts are part of a long-term association that exists for criminal purposes, or (2) that they are a regular way of conducting the defendant's ongoing legitimate business, or (3) that they are a regular way of conducting or participating in an ongoing and legitimate enterprise..
Under the the RICO statute, the government need not prove that the defendant agreed with every other conspirator, knew all of the other conspirators, or had full knowledge of all the details of the conspiracy. All that must be shown is: (1) that the defendant agreed to commit the substantive racketeering offense through agreeing to participate in two racketeering acts; (2) that he knew the general status of the conspiracy; and (3) that he knew the conspiracy extended beyond his individual role.
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NEVER FORGET, Last year during a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Trump has told outrageous lies about helping first responders on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
NEVER FORGET, that on 9/11, just hours after the towers fell, Trump bragged to local TV station WWOR, that his building 40 Wall Steet, was now the tallest building in downtown Manhattan. On a day of such unimaginable loss and tragedy, Trump seemed to be more focused on the bragging rights of now having the tallest building in Manhattan. In his diseased narcissistic mind, that day was all about him But in true Trump fashion, his boast about having the tallest building in Manhattan after the towers fell was a big lie. The nearby 70 Pine Street building is 25 ft, taller than Trump's.
Trump also lied about losing 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend he lost on 9/11.
Trump: "And as soon as I heard the news, I rushed down to the WTC. I didn't even use my chauffeur, I just ran. I ran so fast...as fast as I could, which is pretty fast, from the standpoint of running. You wouldn't believe how fast I ran. I ran so fast that I was the first responder there. The firemen in their big red firetrucks were right behind me. I ran so fast that I passed them on the way to the towers. I saved a lot of people that day. I saved so many lives that day, that some people said I may have saved TOO many lives. A lot of people don't know this, but it's true, it's so true."
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Make no mistake, if Trump thought he could get away with it, he would deal with Acosta the same way his muse, Putin deals with journalists in Russia.
September 2016 Trump praises Putin's 'strong control' over Russia and said he was 'far more' of a leader than Obama, during a commander in chief forum on NBC.
"I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing' -- the man has very strong control over a country. I think when he calls me brilliant I'll take the compliment, okay?' If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.'
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever—and possibly get away with it..
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he could possibly get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
Trump and republicans continue to rage against the Constitution in their ongoing war with our democratic republic. They have made it abundantly clear that we must vote them out of office in order for our democracy to survive.
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Trump is the most prolific pathological liar in American history.
A pathological liar like Trump, is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way.
Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies. Trump does this constantly at his rallies. He tries to play the victim and the hero at the same time.
Pathological liars are great storytellers. Their lies tend to be very detailed and colorful.
Even though obviously over-the-top, the pathological liar may be very convincing.
Along with being made the hero or victim in their stories, pathological liars tend to tell lies that seem to be geared at gaining admiration, sympathy, or acceptance by others.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
Trump also claimed that he lost 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend that he lost on 9/11.
A pathological liar tells lies and stories that fall somewhere between conscious lying and delusion. They sometimes believe their own lies. It’s difficult to know how to deal with a pathological liar who may not always be conscious of their lying. Some do it so often that experts believe they may not know the difference between fact and fiction after some time.
Like when Trump said that his father was born in Germany.😂 Everyone knows that his father was born in NY. When asked questions, they may speak a lot without ever being specific or answering the question.
Most people lie at one time or another. Previous research has suggested that we tell an average of 1.65 lies every day. Most of these lies are what are considered “white lies.”
Pathological lies, on the other hand, are told consistently and habitually. They tend to appear pointless and often continuous. It's been reported that Trump tells at least 12 lies per day.😲
Identifying a pathological liar isn’t always easy, unless his name is DonaldTrump. The following are some signs to help identify a pathological liar:
They often talk about experiences and accomplishments in which they appear heroic, they're also the victim in many of their stories, often looking for sympathy, their stories tend to be elaborate and very detailed, they respond elaborately and quickly to questions, but the responses are usually vague and don’t provide an answer to the question, they may have different versions of the same story, which stems from forgetting previous details, or previous lies..
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The notion that Trump was actually concerned about corruption in Ukraine, or corruption in general, is laughable.
Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing.
The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
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Whitaker will inevitably find himself in the exact same place as other past Trump sycophants, like Manafort, and Cohen, which is sitting in a room, and being questioned by Mueller for hours.
Sessions was the 1st Republican Senator to come out and endorse Trump for president. He even became one of Trump's advisors, and joined Trump's team on the campaign trail. And we all saw how Trump rewarded him. Sessions learned what all the other former Trump sycophants have learned, and what they've all learned is that a sociopath, and narcissist like Trump has no friends, he only has people who have not worn-out their usefulness to him yet. Trump feels no loyalty to anyone other than himself.
Sessions has now taken his place underneath that now crowded and cramped Trump bus. Cohen had to slide over to make some room for Jeff Session, his tiny frame shouldn't take up too much space though. They should all make sure to save plenty of room underneath that bus for Trump's soon to be next victim, Matt Whitaker. He's a rather large sycophant.
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"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal"
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
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Trump sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of Trump's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day.
The truth of the matter is, if Trump had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with Trump's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. Trump had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card Trump had left, and he played it.
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In other words, Trump has found his "JosephGoebbels" / Minister of Propaganda.
“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
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Trump’s utter and complete failure as a human being has come full circle, and is now complete, and on full display. Let's face it, he is simply a mistake of human nature....an anomaly....a glitch in the human genome. Trump is less of a person, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind. He is a perfectly irredeemable moral abomination, who has never done one decent thing in his life, not even by accident.
Trump was parroting lies and propaganda from One America, a far-right network that's actually more craven than Fox. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Like Pelosi said, when it comes to Trump, all roads lead to Putin.
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Keep in mind, the Saudis have put a ton of money into Trump and Jared's pockets. Trump is a man of no beliefs, ideals, or convictions, and he has the moral compass of a weather vane, and Saudis bought Trump a long time ago. Can't really blame the Saudis though, especially when Trump put himself on sale, with a 2 for 1 special ( Trump &Jared) Who could pass up a deal like that?
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory. The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromised Trump and his inner circle by exploiting their hubris, insatiable greed, naivety, and Trump's own megalomaniacal ego. They presented themselves as easy targets.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Donald "I believe in magic not science" Trump, will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 14 thousand American lives..
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
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History will mark Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over this troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
The agreement was not, and could not possibly have been, a "peace" deal, since one of the parties currently at war - the Afghan government - was not a signatory.
What did the US gain in exchange for this withdrawal? Nothing but vague, unenforceable promises that the Taliban would not engage in hostilities against the departing U.S. troops and would "send a clear message" to al Qaeda that it "had no place" in Afghanistan. So eager was Trump to withdraw, we did not even hold out for a clear, firm commitment that the Taliban would not provide aid, safe harbor or weaponry to al Qaeda and like-minded groups. The agreement contained no enforcement mechanisms and included no penalties on the Taliban for failing to comply with its terms.
The fact that Trump entered into negotiations and then an agreement with the Taliban, without even inviting the Afghan government to the table, undercut the power and legitimacy of the government. The citizenry, including those in the national armed services and police, could plainly see that its own government was being ignored, a helpless bystander in critical discussions about the country's future. After we had cut the legs out from under this government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
A genuine peace deal would have made our withdrawal contingent on the progress of peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But it did not. Trump agreed unconditionally to bring down U.S. troop levels to 8,600 by mid-July 2020 and totally withdraw by May 2021.
In August, Trump voluntarily cut troop levels down to 4,500, even more quickly than required by the agreement, even though negotiations had not even begun. This was a clear signal there would be no linkage between withdrawals and peace. Trump had already announced that there would be only 2,500 troops in Afghanistan by the time he left office.
This only emboldened the Taliban. They started taking even more territory, and more quickly than it had in years. As the Taliban's power increased, it had even less reason to engage in peace negotiations with the Afghan government.
To break the Taliban's momentum on the ground this spring, the Biden administration would have had to not only break the Trump withdrawal agreement, but also deploy more troops and get them more deeply involved in the fighting.
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If there is any resemblance of the TrumpMutation of the Republican party to any actual party in the election of 1856, it is not to the Republicans. Nor is it to the Democrats. Rather, it is to the third party in that campaign, the American Party, also known as the Know-Nothings, who also had a concise platform.
The original American Party sought to protect the purity of WhiteNative-born Protestants from the first great wave of immigration to the US, which consisted mostly of the Irish and Germans, and to stigmatizeTHECatholic religion..
"Americans mustRule America,” its platform proclaimed. Only native-born citizens should be allowed to hold any public office, federal, state or municipal." The KnowNothings emerged from the breakup of theWhigparty over the issue of the extension of Sla very in the territories..
Lincoln created the Illinois Repub party in 1856 out of a mixture of contending factions, including abolitionistsWhigs, dissidentAntislavery Democrats, and liberal German immigrants. LincolnDespised Know-Nothingism, which is identical to TrumpismToday.
In 1855, Lincoln wrote that if the movement ever won power it would rewrite the Declaration of Independence: “When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except blks, and foreigners, andCatholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Ru55ia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
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@praisegod7992
If a speeding ticket equates to a rap sheet, then 99% of Americans have rap sheets.
Let me show you what a rap sheet looks like.
Lauren Boebert has a rap sheet that makes the Republican party's "law-and-order" stance comical. Cited and fined in 2010 for having two at-large PitBulls whoAttacked a neighbor’s dog, she was arrested in 2015 for helping underage drinkers avoid arrest.
While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies’ reports. She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015.
A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs.
Back in 2004, her husband Jayson pleaded guilty to indecent exposure after publicly exposing himself to underage girls in a bowling alley while courting the 17-year-old Lauren, who was there.. The same year he was arrested and served seven days for assaulting her; she was later charged with assaulting him in retaliation.
So how does someone like Boebert get elected to Congress? With a lot of help from other farReich Republicans, including Ted Cruz, who gave her at least $70,000, which the Federal Elections Commission says she failed to disclose.
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm just a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House.
So again, don't blame me for this, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham, who knows exactly what I am, but yet continues to defend me. I'm the same person that I've always been, an unscrupulous con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Trump's comments make sense when you understand who and what he is.
He doesn't care about anyone or anything other than himself, and his own desires.
A Trump quote from 2004, in response to a Larry King Live caller asking him how he handles stress during a crisis.
Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. And Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily, and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all the boxes.
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Trump was caught bribing Ukraine into opening up a bogus investigation into Biden and his son, while he and his own family members are engaged in real crimes in the White House.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration. In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂😲😆😄😂
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In 2018, 8 republican lawmakers decided to celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas.
The group celebrated America's Day of independence in Moscow laughing it up with number of key Russians, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two same two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press laughing it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Comey was fired.
What's worse is that we have no way of knowing what was said during their meetings with Russian agents and officials, because the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the gloating Russians.
It may be a coincidence that two of the eight republicans who went to Moscow for some vague reason on the Fourth of July are now mouthpieces for the Kremlin. But fortunately for me, I don't believe in coincidences.
These 8 republicans have all the signs of a GOP/GRU Russian sleeper cell. Consider: Eight Republican lawmakers—and, notably, not a single Democrat—journey halfway around the world to spend America's Independence Day with Putin’s coziest cronies. We don’t really know what happens once they get there, but we do know that the Russians are really good at both psy-ops and kompromat.
It would explain why republicans like Johnson, Kennedy and others have been regurgitating Russian propaganda almost word for word.
It’s like the tv series, "The Americans" but with actual Americans.
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Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but the Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle, according to the latest examination of spending by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Most of that has been spent by the Trump campaign ($1.3 million), the Republican National Committee ($123,000) and the Great America political action committee ($104,000), records show, the center reported.
The Washington Post explained in a story in July how such Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
But 48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
Spending will continue to grow as the election nears. Senate Republicans are hosting a two-day “Save the Senate” retreat at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel early next month, according to The Intercept. Room rates during that time will be nearly triple the average, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The top preferred businesses by spenders were Trump’s Washington hotel, followed by his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, according to the center. Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami was in fifth place for the amount of incoming campaign expenditures.
Traitor Trump is making a fortune while fleecing America and violating the Constitution. And his supporters defend this by saying he donates his presidential salary of 400k a year, so that makes it okay for him to fleece the American people out of tens of millions of dollars since he's been in office. His presidential salary amounts to slave wages compared to what he's actually making illegally by using the office of the presidency. If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you're probably a Trump cultist.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes.
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Fox is another arm of Putin's propaganda network that is working against America.
Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US.
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a stunningly successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding.
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “JOIN our #HillaryClintonForPrison2016” and “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticise Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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One of the most revered leaders of my beloved Marine Corps denounced Trump for his divisive and authoritarian actions against American citizens, and against our Constitution.
Semper Fi..
"I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that ‘The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine General James Mattis
June 3, 2020
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Dershowitz is a perfect example of what Trump's cult of personality has done to Republicans.
Trump and his most loyal sycophants, are using the same tactics that the pig Napoleon used in George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. Every tyrant has his loyal propagandist, and Napoleon had one in his mouth piece known as Squealer in the novel. Dershowitz, Fox, Kellyanne, Hannity, Graham, and others, have been acting as Trump's "Squealer." Squealer was a clever propagandist, who (as the animals said) could turn night into day.
Every time an act of Napoleon's is questioned by the other animals - regardless of how selfish or severe it may seem, Squealer is able to convince the animals that Napoleon is only acting in THEIR best interest. And like Squealer, Trump's propagandists use lies, deflections, projections and gaslighting to turn day into night...to turn black into white. Trump himself even told his followers that they shouldn't believe what they hear or see with their own eyes. He said they should only believe what he tells them.
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Any deal that Trump makes is guaranteed to end badly. And why would he cut a deal that didn't include the Afghan government?
The Trump White House agreed to a May 1 troop withdrawal. Biden had to decide whether to honor a deal that included the Taliban, but not the Afghan government.
The most disturbing thing about the agreement Trump made, was that the Afghan government was left out of it. Trump was negotiating with the Taliban about whether or not to remove our troops, and NOT with the Afghan government, which was hosting our troops.
The Republican National Committee has conveniently removed an inconvenient webpage from 2020 in which it praised Trump for signing a "historic peace agreement with the Taliban."
The page had been removed with the web address redirecting to a 404 error page featuring the quip: "It looks like you're as lost as Biden is."
Featured as part of a section titled "President Trump Is Bringing Peace In The Middle East," the page described how Trump had "continued to take the lead in peace talks."
In the now-deleted GOP webpage, it is stated that Trump negotiated a deal for the withdrawals by May 2021 "in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the organization's current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at the request of Trump.
Remember when Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David?
As recently as April, Trump was also voicing his support for withdrawal, stating that "getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do."
The UK's defense minister blamed the chaos in Afghanistan on Trump on Monday.
UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace has pointed the finger at Trump.
He told "BBC Breakfast" on Monday: "The die was cast when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation."
"President Biden inherited a momentum, a momentum that had been given to the Taliban because they felt they had now won. He'd also inherited a momentum of troop withdrawal from the international community, the US."
"So I think in that sense, the seeds of what we're seeing today were before President Biden took office. The seeds were a peace deal that was effectively rushed, that wasn't done in collaboration properly with the international community and then a dividend taken out incredibly quickly."
He had previously called Trump's deal "rotten" and said the international community would likely "pay the consequences."
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It is jaw-dropping to see just how much contempt republicans have for the American people, and our Constitution. Time and time again, republicans have not hesitated to spit in the faces of the American people.
The majority of Americans were against their massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy, and republicans simply flipped us off, and passed it anyway. For years now, the majority of Americans have said they want common sense gun laws passed to protect their kids, and republicans simply flipped us off, and refused to do anything. 75% of Americans said they want witnesses and evidence introduced in this impeachment trial, and once again, republicans gave the American people the middle finger and said "you should know by now, that we don't care what you want."
Once again, the time has come, that WE THE PEOPLE, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, put an end to the republican party. And it is long overdue. Our republic and democracy as we know it, has never been in more peril than it is right now. In 2020, we must vote out Trump, and as many republicans as possible. The survival of our democracy depends on it.
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Scherry Pierce
It's because Ted Bundy was a sociopath, and so is Trump.
Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath.
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, Trump has victims and accomplices, who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, etc) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blamed Dems for his government shutdown, even after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown.
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Trump is a human pestilence, and he will initiate the ruination of everyone and everything he comes into contact with. It's like ebola and the coronavirus had baby, and named it Trump.
Just look at his failed marriages, his failed casinos and businesses, his failed relationships with his parents and siblings, his failed kids, and look at what has happened to the lives, reputations and careers of his current and former associates, like Cohen's, Stone, Flynn, Gates, Manafort, Rudy, Bolton, Mulvaney, Scaramucci, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Kirstjen Nielsen, and Barr.
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Almost every president has occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly, until now. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 25,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully execute the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama..
Trump has done considerable damage to America's democratic institutions, and brought the nation to the brink of civil catastrophe, and the Republican Party has protected him the entire way. Trump has left America grievously wounded, and now he's asking for another chance to finish her off..
No one should ever get a second chance to destroy our Constitution, and our 244 year old democratic republic.
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I'm sure we all remember the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil incident in the Gulf of Mexico. I still remember watching the 24hr live video stream of thousands of gallons of oil being dumped into the gulf. Well days before the Trump administration unveiled its plans for a massive expansion of offshore drilling, it moved to gut the Production Safety Systems Rule, a set of safety regulations the Obama administration created pertaining to maintenance of offshore platforms. The changes, finalized last month and slated to take effect on Dec. 27, loosen notification and certification rules for oil companies and toss out a requirement that offshore equipment be designed to withstand the most extreme weather and pressure conditions.
In May, Trump took aim at the Well Control Rule, a safety monitoring regulation meant to prevent the kind of Deepwater Horizon incident that killed 11 workers and resulted in some 200 million gallons of crude oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. The rule requires additional inspection and maintenance of blowout preventers, a device designed to automatically seal a well, and stop an uncontrolled release of oil and gas. Stripping the Obama era regulations would loosen the inspection and oversight requirements for this equipment.
Trump's reckless, irresponsible, and controversial drilling plan called “energy dominance” would make available for oil and gas leasing, roughly 90 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, including large swaths of the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Interior Department, led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, who's currently under multiple ethics investigations is leading the charge for Trump's plan.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement estimates that rolling back these safety regulations would save oil companies just shy of $1 billion over a 10-year period. I mean sure, it could lead to another Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It could result in the loss of lives again. It could cost fishermen their entire livelihoods again. But who cares, just as long as billion dollar oil companies can save millions of dollars, that's on top of the millions they're already saving from the massive tax cuts Trump gifted them. Now that's what I call MAGA!!! 😔 Greed over lives....😔
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Trump's remarks, interviews, tweets, blatant LIES, and incoherent ramblings, from Jan. 22 to March 9th.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview.
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us, that I can assure you.” —Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases, 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” —Trump at the White House.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 26: “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” — Trump when asked if “schools should be preparing for a coronavirus spreading.”
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting.
March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” — Trump
tweet.
Two days later, on March 11, the WHO declared the global outbreak a pandemic.
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As it stands now, practically anyone, and anything connected to Trump is now under investigation. His inauguration, his transition team, his Trump crime organization, his fake charity foundation, his fraudulent taxes, his tainted campaign, and his illegitimate presidency, are all under investigation. Most Americans already knew that Trump was totally unfit, and unqualified to be president, but I don't think anything prepared us for an unmitigated disaster of this magnitude. Trump's presidency has been such an unprecedented, and unimaginable debacle, that it can only be defined as a miracle. Because it cannot be explained with logic, reasoning or science.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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Trump has changed, but unfortunately, that change has only been for the worst. Trump is incapable of "learning" therefore he doesn't get better, he only gets worse. Keep in mind, this is a man who has filed for bankruptcy 6 times. Does that sound like a man who learns???
Tony Schwartz, Trump's ghost writer for the "Art of the Deal" said it best:
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
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Reporter: "Mr president you we're with 7 WW2 heroes today, did ever consider wearing a mask."
Trump: " No I didn't. And why are they heroes? I don't know that they are heroes. What have they done that I haven't done? And what about me? I noticed you mentioned them, but you didn't mention me."
There will be no guilt, no apologies, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath like Trump.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a sociopathic narcissist.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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In May of 2018, when Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely. Trump, who admires dictators, and has ambitions of being a dictator himself, said it was a good idea, and dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
NEVER FORGET.....
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Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it is that Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic, and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and his presidency? Nothing....other than heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump doesn't solve problems, he creates them.
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
So shall it be written, so shall it be done.
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KT McFarland corrected a claim she made to the FBI about what she knew during the presidential transition about Russia sanctions after Flynn's guilty plea in the Russia investigation contradicted her lie.
In court papers accompanying his plea agreement, federal investigators disclosed that Flynn had coördinated his contacts with Kislyak with an unnamed senior transition official, who was later identified as McFarland.
McFarland, who served as Flynn's deputy on the NSC, was first interviewed by the FBI in summer 2017. She said at that time she didn't have a precise memory of whether Flynn had spoken to the then-Russian ambassador or what they may have discussed.
But shortly after Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators about his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions, McFarland spoke to the special counsel's office. She had reviewed her notes and documents by then and walked back what she previously said — this time saying that she did remember from a conversation with Flynn that he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak. 😂 Well no sh-.t.
On Dec 29 2016, McFarland wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours earlier by President Obama in retaliation for Russian meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump's victory, and would make it hard for Trump to ease tensions with Russia.
“If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote.
Trump was at Mar-a-Lago on December 29 when McFarland — who was also at Mar-a-Lago — and Flynn spoke by phone about Kislyak.
Trump picked Flynn for the fact that he had close ties to Putin. Flynn's crimes and betrayal have been well reported and documented. In a now infamous video, Flynn is seen applauding and toasting Putin, Trump's benefactor, and America's adversary. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 Moscow dinner Flynn attended was swarming with ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs. In the video, Flynn is seated next to Putin at the head table.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI prompted the DoJ to warn Trump about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, acting AG Sally Yates, personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, Trump decided to reward Sally Yates for doing her job, and for her due diligence in warning him about Flynn, by firing her 3 days later. Let that sink in for a moment..
On Nov 10, 2016, during a White House meeting 2 days after Trump’s election, President Obama ONCE AGAIN tried to help dumb Donald by warning him about Flynn, but Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie also directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn. “If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017..
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America makes up 4% of the world's population, but thanks to Trump and fox, America leads the world with 24% of coronavirus deaths worldwide. "It is what it is."
Trump sealed the fate of the country the moment he said the virus was a hoax. From that moment forward, the catastrophic failed response to the coronavirus was set in stone. It should go without saying, that it is impossible to effectively deal with any problem, whenever you refuse to acknowledge that the problem even exists.
Now Trump wants America to reelect him as a reward for the more than160K American lives lost due to his indifference and criminal negligence. He also wants the American people to reward him for lining his pockets with millions in taxpayer dollars while he's been in office. He actually wants you to reward him, and even praise him, for his craven and abominable behavior.
Mary Trump:
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred Trump could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes.
"His monster had been set free."
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," Mary Trump writes in her new book.
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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Trump's republican sycophants had a choice between serving America and it's Constitution, or serving Trump. They have clearly chosen Trump. So in 2020, it will be time for the American people to make a choice. Will we bow our heads in silent defeat, and surrender to the unconstitutional phuckery that Trump and his republican sycophants have been trying to normalize and force upon us? Or will we stand-up and vote for ourselves, for America's future, for our kid's future, and for the democratic ideals that this country and our Constitution were built on.
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
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Any "deal" that Trump makes is guaranteed to end badly.
The Trump White House agreed to a May 1 troop withdrawal. Biden had to decide whether to honor a deal that included the Taliban, but not the Afghan government.
The question everyone should be asking, is why did Trump make a deal with the Taliban, a designated terrorist organization, and why was the Afghan government left out of the negotiations?
It's almost as if Trump and the Taliban plotted against the Afghan government and the people.
Trump was negotiating with the Taliban about whether or not to remove our troops, and NOT with the Afghan government, which was hosting our troops.
The Republican National Committee has conveniently removed an inconvenient webpage from 2020 in which it praised Trump for signing a "historic peace agreement with the Taliban."
The page had been removed with the web address redirecting to a 404 error page featuring the quip: "It looks like you're as lost as Biden is."
Featured as part of a section titled "President Trump Is Bringing Peace In The Middle East," the page described how Trump had "continued to take the lead in peace talks."
In the now-deleted GOP webpage, it is stated that Trump negotiated a deal for the withdrawals by May 2021 "in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the organization's current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at Trump’s request.
Remember when Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David? I do
The UK's defense minister blamed the chaos in Afghanistan on Trump on Monday.
UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace has pointed the finger at Trump.
He told "BBC Breakfast" on Monday: "The die was cast when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation."
"President Biden inherited a momentum, a momentum that had been given to the Taliban because they felt they had now won. He'd also inherited a momentum of troop withdrawal from the international community, the US."
"So I think in that sense, the seeds of what we're seeing today were before President Biden took office. The seeds were a peace deal that was effectively rushed, that wasn't done in collaboration properly with the international community and then a dividend taken out incredibly quickly."
He had previously called Trump's deal "rotten" and said the international community would likely "pay the consequences."
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Trump is an extreme narcissist, and a complete sociopath. He does not care about anyone or anything other than himself, and his own desires.
A Trump quote from 2004, in response to a Larry King Live caller asking him how he handles stress during a crisis.
Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. And Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily, and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all the boxes.
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Republicans: "We have a mountain of irrefutable evidence of Joe Biden's crimes. And at some point, this evidence will be released. I don't know when, I don't know where, I don't know how, I don't know why, I don't know what. But I do know it will be, at some point, maybe soon, maybe later, maybe more than one, put out eventually by someone or something." 🤣 🤣
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Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath.
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around him as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims and accomplices, who will end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, Gates, etc) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blames Dems for his government shutdown, after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown.
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In 2018, 8 republican lawmakers decided to celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas.
The group celebrated America's Day of independence in Moscow laughing it up with a number of key Russians, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two same two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press laughing it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Comey was fired.
What's worse is that we have no way of knowing what was said during their meetings with Russian agents and officials, because the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the gloating Russians.
It may be a coincidence that two of the eight republicans who went to Moscow for some vague reason on the Fourth of July are now mouthpieces for the Kremlin. But fortunately for me, I don't believe in coincidences.
These 8 republicans have all the signs of a GOP/GRU Russian sleeper cell. Consider: Eight Republican lawmakers—and, notably, not a single Democrat—journey halfway around the world to spend America's Independence Day with Putin’s coziest cronies. We don’t really know what happens once they get there, but we do know that the Russians are really good at both psy-ops and kompromat.
It would explain why republicans like Johnson, Kennedy and others have been regurgitating Russian propaganda almost word for word.
It’s like the tv series, "The Americans" but with actual Americans.
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Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, because Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.
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The insurrection on January 6 proved that phony patriotism poses a threat to America, and to our democracy.
Samuel Johnson, the 18th century English writer said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Gore Vidal wrote, “When tyranny comes to the United States, she will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible.” How stunningly appropriate those quotes are in describing Trump's tyrannical one term as president.
Trump and his followers seem to think that wrapping themselves in the American flag, screaming FREEDOM, or standing for the anthem makes them super patriots. It no more makes them patriots than me standing in the middle of my garage makes me a Ford F-150.
I have never seen patriotism reduced to such hollow and irrelevant stupidity. To them, patriotism is all about empty childish gestures that show a misunderstanding of America, rather than honoring it. Real Patriotism is caring about what happens to your fellow American citizens. It's about sacrifice and service to others, it's about our shared humanity, while the best of America is about kindness, hospitality, and benevolence.
A true American patriot would use our flag, and everything it's suppose to represent, to unite our country, not to divide it, and not as a weapon against those who have different views or different skin colors.
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Since day one, Trump has been moving the goal posts on the pandemic, and on Sunday, "stable genius" said that keeping the U.S. death toll between 100,000 and 200,000 would be “a very good job.”
“We can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000, that’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000 — so we have between 100- and 200,000 — we all, together, have done a very good job,” Trump said during a task force press briefing.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
Trump is clearly mentally impaired, and his psychosis infects everything and everyone around him. He has turned his white house into an asylum for the criminally insane, and criminally incompetent. Trump's White House is a vortex of lies, pandemonium, betrayal, treason, thievery, nepotism, upheaval, moral turpitude, skulduggery, and sanctioned lawlessness.
There's enough chaos going on in Trump's white house, than even Nurse Ratched herself would be reduced to tears and a complete nervous breakdown.
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Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid...
It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when American banks stopped loaning Trump money. It was a win-win for both sides. The Russian mafia is totally different than the American mafia. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. In an interviewed, Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Putin’s boss at one point, was asked about the Russain mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.”
In 2005, Manafort started working for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. Manafort, a had hired himself out to a variety of global villains, promised he would “influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the US, Europe, and former Soviet Republics to benefit Putin’s government..
Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not...
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Trump was elected president, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia..
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On May 17, 2017, during a White House meeting days after Trump’s election, Obama warned Trump about Flynn, but Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie also directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017..
Flynn’s lies to the FBI prompted the DoJ to warn Trump ONCE AGAIN about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, acting AG Sally Yates, personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, Trump decided to reward Sally Yates for doing her job, and for her due diligence in warning him about Flynn, by firing her 3 days later. Let that sink in for a moment..
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Tucker Carlson: "I'm for getting along, I'm for color blindness, I'm for tolerance, 100 percent, but I also think that if things radically change in your country, it's okay for you to say, "what is this? And maybe I don't want to live in a country that looks nothing like the country that I grew up in. Is that bigoted?
John Oliver: "Uh yeah, yeah it is. That's like saying "I've got ten fingers and toes, a pointy face, with a little pink rosebud mouth, a cat sized body, a long weird tail, and I eat garbage. Does that make me a possum? YES, YES IT DOES!!!
That's the literal definition of the thing you just described."😂
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Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
The origins of the term Liberal can be traced back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of liberty ("the quality or state of being free").
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Never trust a guy who's claim to fame is being a pathological liar, and a con-artist..
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the NY's attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political. interests.
Trump and his children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal.
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On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit. Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the US. A major Brexit supporter, Steve Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign captured the interest of investigators in the UK and the US.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances. In Britain, revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’s annual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange a lunch for the UKIP leaders with the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize..
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Trump: "I spoke with the King of Saud Arabia, as one King to another King, and I asked him to do me a favor. I asked him and his family to purchase another entire floor in one of my towers to make up for the shooting in Pensacola FL, and he has agreed. That ladies and gentlemen, is called the art of the deal."
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Mary Trump said that Trump’s post-election behavior “makes perfect sense,” given his personality, psychology, and lifelong disdain for losers.
“This is somebody who’s never won legitimately in his life,” she said. “But he’s never lost either. Because in his view, winning is so important and he always deserves to win that it’s OK to lie, cheat and steal.”
Mary Trump said that Trump’s inherited his acerbic behavior from his father, Fred Trump. She called her grandfather “a horrible human being who just reveled in other people's humiliation."
“It’s not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel, it’s that he’s been allowed to be,” she said. “Every transgression that’s gone on unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further. That’s partially why we’re going to see him smashing as much stuff on his way out the door as he can.”
Trump’s niece says her uncle is “criminal, cruel and traitorous” and belongs in prison after he leaves the White House.
Mary Trump, a psychologist, rejects the notion that putting a former president on trial would deepen the nation’s political divisions.
“It’s quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can handle it and that we just need to move on,” Mary Trump told The Associated Press in an interview.
“If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald," she added. "(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is.”
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Trump has repeatedly said he slowed the spread of the virus into the US by acting decisively to bar travelers from China on Jan. 31. But as with everything that comes out of that lie factory he calls a mouth, that also turned out to be categorically false.
Trump and his administration took a month from the time it learned of the outbreak in late December to impose the initial travel restrictions amid furious infighting. The NSC staff ultimately proposed aggressive travel restrictions to high-level administration officials - but it took at least a week more for Trump to adopt them.
Matthew Pottinger, deputy national security adviser and a China expert, met opposition from Steven Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow, said two former NSC officials involved in the meetings. Mnuchin and Kudlow were more concerned about economic fallout from barring travelers from China. Pottinger was “pleading with Mnuchin and others” to stop travelers from coming, one former NSC official said.
By then, the first known patient in the U.S - a man in his 30s who had traveled from Wuhan to Seattle on Jan. 15 – tested positive for COVID-19.
Each day that Trump and his insane clown posse debated the travel measures, roughly 14,000 travelers arrived in the US from China, according to figures cited by the Trump administration. Among them was a traveler who came from Wuhan to Seattle in mid-January, who turned out to be the first confirmed case in the U.S
On Jan. 22, Trump downplayed the threat posed by the virus, telling CNBC from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “We have it totally under control.”
With more than 1 million confirmed cases, and more than 67 thousand deaths, America now has more deaths and cases of infections than any other country in the world.
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The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
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Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US.
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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Republicans like Joni Ernst and Susan Collins are trying to convince us that by some miracle, Trump has finally seen the light, and that he has now learned his lesson. Really?!?!
Republicans are treating Trump the exact same way that his parents treated him as a child, by rewarding him for his bad behavior. They have basically told Trump that there will be no consequences for anything that he does, and not only will they not punish him, they will protect him from being punished by anyone else. This is how Trump's parents created a monster without boundaries. A sociopath who is oblivious or indifferent to the devastation he causes to everything around him. A sociopath who will never accept blame himself, but instead blames others, even for acts he obviously committed.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
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“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
"Tyranny, like he//, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated”
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
This election is a choice between Trump/tyranny, or America.
MAKE A DECISION....
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Trump actually believes he can set a deadline for a pandemic to end. And if that doesn't work, he'll probably take a map and a sharpie, and draw a diagram of the coronavirus heading out to sea. There is no end to this man's pathological ignorance. I swear, ignorance is like a religion to him. I've never seen a human being so confident and devoted in his own stupidity.
Trump should just stop talking all together, because he has never solved a single problem in his entire life. He doesn't solve problems, he only creates problems, or he exacerbates them. Trump himself is a systemic problem for the country, on multiple levels. He portrayed the pandemic as a hoax, and believes he knows more than medical experts in their own fields. To put it mildly, he is a walking talking, living breathing fk up.
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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Trump is far worse than Nixon was ever capable of being. Nixon was corrupt for sure, but even still, there were limits to how far he would go. Trump on the other hand, is a complete sociopath, without limits or boundaries. Trump has proven that he will cross any line, and violate any and all ethical standards..
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Just days before Trump was sworn in, Dean stated that he believed Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
John Dean's words could not have been more prophetic.
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A perfect example of what happens when Don the Con testifies under oath.
I'm sure Trump never wants to see Tim O'Brien again after their last encounter.😂
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally, genetically, and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
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Trump likes to get his way, and he’s not above cutting off a sick infant’s health coverage to make it happen.
The story begins after the death of Trump’s father, Fred Sr., in 1999. As David Cay Johnston explains in his book The Making of Donald Trump, Fred Sr. had written a will after the death of his oldest son, Fred Jr., known as Freddy, in 1981. The will left the majority of Fred Sr.’s wealth to Donald and his surviving siblings. Freddy’s family was largely cut out.
When Fred Sr. died, Freddy’s children sued, claiming that the will “had been ‘procured by fraud and undue influence’ by Donald and the other surviving siblings,” according to Johnston.
Johnston writes that medical insurance had consistently been provided to the family through Fred Sr.’s company. This coverage was crucial for Freddy’s grandson (Donald’s grandnephew), who suffered from seizures and later developed cerebral palsy. So crucial, in fact, that a letter sent from a Trump lawyer to the insurer after the patriarch’s death in 1999 said that “all costs” for the sick child’s care should be covered, regardless of caps on the plan or medical necessity, according to Johnston. That didn’t last long..
A week after the lawsuit was filed in court, Freddy’s son (Donald’s nephew) received a letter informing him that the health insurance would be discontinued, meaning his ill son would be left without coverage. Donald openly admitted to the New York Daily News that he and his siblings took this action out of revenge.
“Why should we give him medical coverage?” Trump said, adding, “They sued my father, essentially. I’m not thrilled when someone sues my father.”
Trump explained that his late brother’s family didn’t receive much in the will because their father wasn’t fond of Freddy’s ex-wife.
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Richard Grenell, Trump’s inexplicable pick for the Director of National Intelligence, has less than zero experience in intelligence or national security. He had even less experience in diplomacy when Trump named him as the Ambassador to Berlin. What Grenell does have however, are shady connections to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, who are connected to the Russian mob, and the Kremlin. And this is the man that Trump's wants to trust with the entire treasure trove of Amercan intelligence and classified information?!?!😲
For years, Grenell’s bread and butter had been serving as a political consultant and advisor. He founded Capital Media Partners in 2009, to assist clients with “international strategic communications.” Grenell boasts of having “clients based in the U.S. Iran, and throughout Europe. The former Soviet Republic of Moldova, a little country that few Americans ever think about, became a subject of intense interest to Grenell shortly before our 2016 election. The poorest corner of Europe, Moldova barely has any legitimate economy.
Moldova is known for its out-of-control corruption and crime, particularly its lurid role in the illegal trade of 5ex slaves. Moldova’s main industry is the selling of its young women, often children, to human traffickers, who dispatch them around the globe to be exploited. Grenell, who does not seem to have shown any interest in the troubled country before, oddly published four American op-eds between mid-August and mid-October 2016, extolling Moldova’s virtues.
To those familiar with Moldova’s nasty politics, it was clear that Grenell was going to bat for Vladimir Plahotniuc, the most powerful political player in Moldova, not to mention the country’s wealthiest oligarch. In the summer of 2016, Plahotniuc’s charmed life as his country’s most feared Oligarch was in trouble. Mihail Gofman, the country’s anti-corruption czar, went public about Plahotniuc's crimes. Seeking safety in America, Gofman explained to the FBI how Plahotniuc oversaw the theft of $1 billion from Moldova’s state treasury—one-eighth of the country’s annual GDP—then laundered it with Kremlin help.
Gofman’s fears for his future and safety were warranted. When Moldova’s former Prime Minister Vlad Filat, a critic of the Kremlin, denounced Plahotniuc for his role in the billion-dollar-theft, he was arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison, reportedly on Plahotniuc’s orders. Gofman’s account, which confirmed what many Western intelligence agencies suspected, was that Plahotniuc is deeply in bed with Russian organized crime, specifically the notorious Solntsevo Brotherhood, led by Semyon Mogilevich, according to INTERPOL..
In his 2016 op-eds, Grenell insisted that Gofman was wrong about Plahotniuc. Grenell even attacked Congressmen, Randy Weber, a Texas Republican, who tried to assist Gofman in exposing Moldovan crime and corruption, accusing Weber as pro-Kremlin.
So why did Grenell develope a sudden and passionate need to defend Vlad Plahotniuc. It wasn’t an act of charity, but Grenell has failed to disclose what motivated his public defense of Moldova’s top oligarch, and crime boss. His financial disclosure forms submitted for his appointment as ambassador to Berlin reveal that over the previous year, Grenell made $688,362 from Capitol Media Partners, i.e. for political consulting. For whom, however, is unclear.
This is important since Plahotniuc isn’t just a corrupt oligarch who is accused of robbing his impoverished country blind. He’s also a human trafficker, in fact the leading one in Moldova. INTERPOL admitted his role in human trafficking in 2012. Although Plahotniuc has never been charged with this crime, this isn’t surprising given the influence he possesses over Moldova’s highly corrupt judiciary.
What Plahotniuc really is represents one of the worst-kept secrets in Eastern Europe. His criminal enterprises are well known to Western intelligence and police agencies. If Grenell went to bat for Plahotniuc for money, the American public deserves to know how much and from whom.
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This was like watching an interview with a young Trump. However Trump is far worse, because he would NEVER admit to the things this guy did.
Con-man, malignant narcissist, pathological liar, and sociopath. There will be no guilt, no apologies, no shame, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath like Trump.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a narcissistic sociopath.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired..
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises..
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Bannon, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way...
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities..
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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Conservatives like referring to liberals as communists, when in reality it's nothing more than pure projection. Conservatism is practically in lock step with communism.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
Conservatives have even taken a page right out the communist playbook. Controlling the reproductive rights of women is an old and well document communist tradition.
Because if a government can prevent you from having anAbortion, it can also force you to have one. That's what happens when the choice has been taken away from you. It doesn't get more communist than that.
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Last Dec, Trump was forced to wire $2 million to pay a court-ordered fine for misusing his illegitimate Trump Foundation to further his business interests and 2016 presidential run. The money will be distributed to eight charities.
"Charities are not a means to an end, which is why these damages speak to the president’s abuse of power and represent a victory for not-for-profits that follow the law." New York Attorney General said in a statement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the NY's attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political. interests.
Trump and his children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
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Trump pressed top Justice Department officials in a late December phone call to declare the election he lost “corrupt,” and “leave the rest” to him and Republican allies in Congress, according to contemporaneous, handwritten notes taken by officials on the call.
On the Dec. 27 phone call with then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his second-in-command, Richard Donoghue,
Trump pressured them to violate the Constitution, and reverse Biden's win.
Donoghue memorialized the conversation in handwritten notes, which the House Oversight Committee made public.
On the call, Rosen, who took over at the Justice Department after William Barr resigned, and Donoghue push back. They tell Trump "the DOJ can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election, doesn't work that way," the notes say.
Trump responds: "Don't expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen."
Rosen and Donoghue said repeatedly on the call that the allegations of voter fraud were false.
According to Donoghue's notes, the men told Trump they had done hundreds of interviews as part of dozens of probes and that his allegations across a number of swing states were not supported by evidence.
They told Trump "flat out" he was getting false information or the claims were "just not supported by the evidence."
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Four police officers committedSuicide in the days and months after the riot.
The first was U.S. Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, 51, who had been guarding the Capitol for 15 years and was on duty at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He took his own life three days after the riots.
Several days later, D.C. Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, 35, who was injured in the riots on Jan. 6, also committedSuicide.
Smith’s wife, Erin, told the Washington Post her husband related to her the fear and panic he experienced the day of the assault on the Capitol, and that he was afraid he mightDie.
In defending the Capitol, Smith was struck on the helmet by a metal pole thrown by rioters. Later that night, his wife said he went to the police medical clinic, where he was prescribed pain medication and put on sick leave.
Smith’s wife said he “wasn’t the same” in the days after the riot and seemed to be in constant pain. After visiting a police clinic on Jan. 14 and being ordered back to work, SmithShot himself on the way to work, the Post reported.
The familiesof Liebengood and Smith both sought to have them recognized as “line of dutyDeaths," which would afford their families enhanced benefits.
In a letter sent to Rep. Jennifer Wexton of Virginia, Liebengood’s widow wrote, “After assisting riot control at the Capitol on January 6th, USCP scheduled Howie to work lengthy shifts in the immediate days following. He was home for very few hours over the course of four days. Although he was severely sleep-deprived, he remained on duty- as he was directed- practically around the clock from January 6th through the 9th. On the evening of the 9th, he took hisLife at our home.”
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While the coronavirus highlighted Trump’s indifference, criminal negligence and incompetence, we may look back at his response to the current protests as the moment when his longtime flirtation with authoritarianism hardened into something more sinister. There’s no limit to what Trump will inflict to get reelected. His own sister called him a cruel human being.
He called protesters “ter.rorists,” and suggested they should be locked up for at least a decade to silence them, encouraged the use of force against American citizens and the free press, and promised to unleash the military on American citizens. These are the actions of authoritarian regimes in countries the world over.
In many countries around the world, it would be distressing, but not surprising to see the government use the fear of terrorism to demonize and encourage the use of force to squash these protest movements. Playing up violent acts committed by a small minority is right out of the authoritarian playbook.
It shifts focus away from Trump's many failures, and assigns blame to a boogeyman. This step alone is critical for Trump. Trump is not to blame for the systemic racism and injustice, but addressing it is the LAST thing he would ever want to do. Why? Well for starters, he himself is a ra.cist.
Trump is not inciting this violence alone, either. Not long after he tweeted his baseless plans for ter.rorist designation, Matt Gaetz took to Twitter with a threat of his own, writing, “Now that we clearly see Antifa as ter.rorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?”
Trump's actions have already caused immense pain to everyday Americans and the American way of life. They set a dangerous precedent. We are on a perilous path. We are now seeing how Trump and those around him who share is authoritarian impulses respond protests that resulted from genuine grievances. Consider how they will handle the protests that almost certainly will erupt if Trump tries to postpone the election, steal the election, suppress the vote in Democratic areas, or refuses to accept its result if he loses.
In a 2016 replay, Trump recently refused to say whether he would accept the election results if he loses. That was a clear threat, and a warning. Trump has identified his true enemies, — and
It is America's constitution, and us.
Trump doesn't even need Pence as a running mate. Trump's running mate is tyranny.
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Russian GRU officers accused of hacking the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the DNC used cryptocurrency to pay for the necessary computer infrastructure in the U.S. Mueller’s indictment found that the defendants “conspired to launder the equivalent of more than $95,000 through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity” of bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies. The GRU hackers used hundreds of different email accounts to purchase servers to avoid creating a “centralized paper trail.” They also enlisted several third parties that “facilitated layered transactions through digital currency exchange platforms, providing heightened anonymity.” The extensive laundering of the funds was intended not only to further a crime, but also to obscure the origin of the funds, providing the operation a degree of plausible deniability..
It is not unusual for discussions of foreign political influence operations to pivot to embassies. Former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in particular, is a key figure in the collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. He held a series of secret meetings with Trump campaign officials, including Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, former Trump adviser Carter Page, and former Trump adviser J.D. Gordon. During one private meeting Kislyak held with Kushner and Flynn, they discussed the possibility of establishing a secure communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. During the transition, Kislyak had also brokered a meeting between Kushner and the head of a sanctioned Russian government bank, Vnesheconombank. The bank maintains the meeting was about Kushner’s family business; Kushner denies this and says the meeting was a diplomatic one related to his role in the presidential transition.
On top of these controversial meetings, Kislyak’s embassy also carried out several suspicious transactions that U.S. bank investigators have flagged to U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
First, in November 2016—10 days after Trump won the presidency—the Russian government wired Kislyak a lump-sum payment of $120,000. Both the timing and the amount raise questions, as the sum was more than twice Kislyak’s normal salary payments.
Second, the Russian Embassy attempted to make a $150,000 cash withdrawal just a few days after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. The bank reportedly blocked this transaction, because it questioned the embassy’s justification that it needed cash in Washington to pay employees who had already returned to Russia.
Third, the embassy paid $2.4 million to a small construction company controlled by a Russian immigrant in the United States, who was reportedly not equipped to carry out the work commissioned. What’s more, the bank investigators found that the money was “cashed quickly or wired to other accounts.” Manafort’s trial showed, small vendors can be instrumental, intentionally or not, to laundering large amounts of money from abroad.
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What Traitor Trump did to Ukraine by withholding aid, is almost as bad as what he did to the Kurds. In both cases, people lost their lives because of Trump's treachery.
Trump also wants to fire Inspector General Michael Atkinson, a man appointed by him. Atkinson provides oversight for the intelligence community, a man employed to be a politically-impartial watchdog. But Trump wants to fire him for the simple fact that Trump doesn't believe that Atkinson has been sufficiently loyal to him. Sound familiar? Well it should, because it's the same unethical reason he used to fire Sessions and Comey.
As the Inspector General, Atkinson was the one who evaluated the whistleblower report. He ultimately deemed it credible, putting in motion the sequence of events that would ultimately lead to where we are today. So Trump wants to fire him for doing his job, and not being a criminal like him. Trump wants everyone around him to ignore the Constitution, and turn a blind eye to his dirty deeds and criminality, and anyone who doesn't, his deemed disloyal.
If a police department has a Police Chief that is brazenly extorting and shaking down businesses locally, and police officers within the department realize what's happening, what should they do? Should they just ignore it? Should they join in with the Police Chief? Or should they report it to Internal Affairs?
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If we take a step back, and remember a few of our past American Presidents, like Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower, JFK, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, FDR, Reagan, Carter, and Obama, it's easy to see that Trump has nothing in common with any of them. Traitor Trump does not possess any of the traits that made them decent men, and great leaders.
A few of our past presidents, whether you agree with them politically or not, came from poor or modest backgrounds: Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton, Truman, Carter, Obama, all came from nothing. Trump comes from a family of wealthy, self-serving, entitled cowards, who have never served or sacrificed anything for anyone. Cowardness, greed, hubris, and contempt for the law runs through Trump's veins. He despises everything that made some of our past presidents great leaders.
Trump despises John McCain, because McCain was everything that he's not. Trump will attack veterans, PoWs, our intelligence agencies, or anyone that swears and oath to serve a cause greater than themselves. He will attack them because the concept or idea, of serving someone, or something, other than himself is inconceivable.
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DJT has done considerable damage to America's democratic institutions, and brought the nation to the brink of civil catastrophe. Trump is an emotionally and psychologically wounded sociopath, who in-turn, has left America grievously wounded out of sheer spite. And he was demanding a 2nd term in order to finish her off. Trump will be remembered as the chaos and disorder president. He is a clovenhoofed purveyor of fear & loathing. A provocateur of mayhem & upheaval, and merchant of lies & deception. And he tried his best to create an America in his own image, which is vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, grotesque, ignorant, selfish, indecent, malicious, debased, indifferent, and malevolent.
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I'm absolutely sure that Rudy, Trump, and the entire GOP is being PAID by Russia.
Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for with Russian money.
It's why repubicans are fighting so hard to defend him instead of the Constitution. It's also why Republicans have been repeating the exact same lies and propaganda of the Russian government and Russian security services like the GRU.
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@evolutionistheflyingspaghe2702
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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The wheels have fallen off Republican claims (LIES) that Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating increased growth and government revenues over the next decade. Reminds me of Cheney's claim that the Iraq war would pay for itself. Republican voters fell for that one too.
“Not only will this tax plan pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” Treasury Sec Steven Mnuchin famously boasted (LIED) in September 2017.
The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time last year, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American.
The Treasury Department reported the debt hit $22.012 trillion, a jump of more than $30 billion in just this month.
The national debt has been rising at a faster rate following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax-cut package after a little more than a year. The nation has added more than $1 trillion in debt in the last 11 months alone.
Trump has quickened the rate at which the debt is growing by widening the deficit to finance his $1.5 trillion package of sweeping tax cuts for himself, his wealthy friends, big banks, and corporations.
Trump promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves by spurring on economic activity, but revenues have since stalled. Federal spending by the Trump administration is around 6.6 percent higher than it was before. In 2017, the national debt grew by 4 percent, according to CBO data, which excludes intragovernmental holdings. By the following year, Trump's second in charge, this had accelerated to 7 percent.
It's a similar story with the deficit. When Trump was elected in 2016, the size of the deficit measured as a portion of GDP was 3.2 percent. By the end of 2018 this had increased to 3.9 percent. The deficit is expected to hit 4.2 percent in 2019. It is on course to reach a nominal value of $1 trillion by the end of the year.
That increase comes despite the economy doing well, so yes, it can be attributed directly to his tax cuts for the wealthy, which clearly aren't paying for themselves, as most professional economists warned. Trump's tax cuts was nothing more than corporate welfare, OR, a tax cut for the swamp.
Trump thinks about the national debt as he does his own personal debt. A 2016 Fortune magazine analysis revealed Trump's business is $1.11 billion in debt. That includes $846 million owed on five properties. This is not surprising considering that Trump famously bragged about being the "King of Debt" along with the fact that Trump has filed for bankruptcy 6 times, and has relied on Saudi Royals, and Russian Oligarchs to come to his rescue and bail him out numerous times over the years.
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Conservatives don't actually believe in freedom or liberty. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and then going afterCivil liberties in the next..
Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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Trump is a professional con-man, It's all he knows.
Trump is doing the same thing to his cult followers that he did to American banks and Deutsche Bank, and the same thing he did to everyone who donated money to his fake charity foundation, and the same thing he did to the people who spent thousands to enroll in Trump University. This is the same man who would pose as his own spokesmen, using the fake names of John Miller, and John Barron. Trump used the name John Barron when he called into Forbes magazine, and lied about how much " his boss" was worth, just so he could get on the Forbes list as one of the richest people in the country.
Trump has been running a con with no limits his entire life. American banks are fully aware of who and what Trump is, it's the reason they won't touch him with a 10 ft pole. Deutsche Bank is now learning the same lesson about Trump that American banks learned in the 80s and 90s. Trump's crimes will catch of up with him one way or another. The multiple SDNY's charges of money laundering, tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud, wire fraud, campaign finance violations, illegal donations to his inauguration, and running a fake charity foundation, will all be front and center during the 2020 presidential debates. I can't wait.😂
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Starting back in 2011, Trump falsely accused President Obama multiple times, of doing exactly what he's doing now?
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran. I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic?”
--Trump, Nov 16, 2011
"Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!"
--Trump, Oct 22, 2012
"I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!"
--Trump, Sep 16, 2013
"Remember what I previously said--Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is."
--Trump, Sep 25, 2013
"Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"
--Trump, Nov 10, 2013
We now know that as usual, Trump was only fantasizing about what he would do if he were president.
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“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama
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When Trump was asked about Russia supplying weapons to the Taliban, Trump said, "Well, we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia, too." 😲
During the interview, Trump defended Russia in the exact same manner that Putin would have. In fact, it was almost as if the reporter was interviewing Putin himself, based on the lies, deflections, and whataboutisms that Trump gave as answers.
The sad truth is that Trump owes the Russians way too much money for him to ever question Putin about anything. If Putin were to tell Trump that today is Christmas, Trump would have no choice but to nod his head in agreement and say "So it is. Merry Christmas Vlad!!!"
Since the 80s the Russians have been financially supporting Trump and bailing him out from bankruptcy after American banks stopped loaning Trump money. He is still indebted to them today. And just like any loyal dog, Trump knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him.
The motivating factors that drives a person to betray their own country, and become a willing agent of another hostile country are broken down into the acronym MICE.
M oney
I deology
C ompromise/Coercion
E go
Trump clearly has no ideology, because he believes in nothing. But he is clearly susceptible to the other 3. Money, Ego and being Compromised. There's no doubt that Putin, being a KGB agent, recognized those weaknesses in Trump from a mile away. People like Manafort, Kushner, Don Jr, Moscow Mitch, and many other Trump associates fell prey to at least 3 of those factors as well. Trump and his inner circle presented a target rich environment for Russan agents. I have no doubt that Putin was both dumbfounded, and elated at how many of Trump's people were so eager to betray America...
On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. The report states that there were a total of 272 secret contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. All of Trump's people initially lied about these contacts when questioned.
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Rand Paul isn't even qualified to speak to Dr Fauci withoutpermission. Especially when you discover that Rand Paul isn't even a real doctor himself.
Rand Paul earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. After that, he completed his general surgery internship at Atlanta-based Georgia Baptist Medical Center, followed by a residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center. Despite his medical training, Paul does not hold a bachelor's degree. He attended Waco, Texas-based Baylor University to study biology and English, but left a few courses short of a diploma after he was accepted into medical school.
Rand Paul is not even a board-certified ophthalmologist, as he reportedly claimed. Paul's certification comes from a board that he created HIMSELF. 😂 But he hasn't been certified by an organization recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties for years.
The now-defunct board he created was not recognized by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, so Randy was not certified by a board recognized by the state since 2005, and since Paul's board dissolved in 2011, he has had no certification from an active body.
Basically, Dr. Dre is more of a doctor than Randy.😄
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Instead of spending his time fantasizing about ki//ing his fellow members of Congress, shouldn't Gosar be focused on writing legislation that will help the citizens in his district, and the country? I mean, it's kind-of like his job, right?
"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Remember all the times that Trump falsely accused President Obama of doing exactly what he's doing now?
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran. I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic?”
--Trump, Nov 16, 2011
"Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!"
--Trump, Oct 22, 2012
"I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!"
--Trump, Sep 16, 2013
"Remember what I previously said--Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is."
--Trump, Sep 25, 2013
"Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"
--Trump, Nov 10, 2013
We now know that as usual, Trump was only fantasizing about what he would do if he were president.
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"I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion, reminded soldiers that ‘TheNazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine Corps General James Mattis,
June 3, 2020
Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful
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Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and Republicans are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we the Amercan, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
Will we keep are constitutional republic, or will we lose it, and see it replaced with a monarchy? Will we still have a democracy, or will we be ruled by a tyrant without boundaries? These are the questions that will be on the ballot box in 2020. This election will be the most important election in our nation's history.
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Capitol Hill Police: "On January 6, Trump and his supporters were screaming "stop the steal!! Stop the steal!!!"
"Well we heard their pleas. And on January 6, we stopped the steal.🤣
You're welcome."🤣
Bannon knows what he did, and so do we, because he bragged about it on his podcast. It's now a part of history
A day before the insurrection, Bannon made comments on his podcast stating that "all he// is going to break loose tomorrow. It's gonna be moving. It's gonna be quick. And all I can say is strap in, the War Room, a posse. You have made this happen and tomorrow it's game day."
“We’re now on the cusp of really reversing this, decertifying this, and that is because of you, this audience that has responded to everything. It’s now put us at the point that it’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point ofAttack. Right? The point of attackTomorrow. It’s going to kick off; it’s going to be very dramatic.”
“It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be extraordinarily different. And all I can say is: Strap in. Let’s get ready. So many people said, ‘Man, if I was in a revolution, I would be in Washington.’ Well, this is your time in history.”
Bannon said this to his listeners on January 5.
Can someone please inform Bannon, that if you plan and incite an insurrection on our nation's Capitol, and it fails, you're probably going to be prosecuted. It's called law and order. So please, stop the squeal. 🤣
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Cruelty is the point.
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with thisFraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straightWhite, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those theyHate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous whiteMen who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. His ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019.
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca.
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Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality came to us from North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the despotic dictator that Trump admires so much.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
The Republican party has been replaced by a destructive cult known as Trumpism. It's a cult rooted in lies, absurdities, wild conspiracy theories, self-deception, hypocrisy, self-righteous bigotry, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience to the "Chosen One."
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right..
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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Psychologist Frank DiPrima:
Trump's Professor, William T. Kelley taught marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence:The Management of Marketing Information..
Professor Kelley stated that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*ddam student I ever had.”
Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*ddam student I ever had.” Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity, but long before he was considered a political figure. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told the story that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything
Professor Kelley’s view seems to be shared by other University of Pennsylvanians, from the Daily Pennsylvanian, stating:
Biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. They officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy..
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don, was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
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Trump’s lies are not the problem. It’s the millions who swallow them who really matter.
--Nick Cohen
Truer words were never spoken.
Rudy's associate, Lev Parnas should have really listened to Michael Cohen's warning about getting close to Trump. Just imagine that you're a loyal MAGA hat wearing Trump cultist like Parnas. And for more than a year, you worked for Trump by partnering with Rudy to help carry out Trump's bribery scheme in Ukraine. You even put yourself in legal jeopardy for Trump by illegally funneling tons of Russian money into his super-PAC, and republican campaigns.
Parnas received a $1 million from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
So then you get caught, arrested, and indicted. Then you turn on the TV one day, to see your cult leader, the man you loved and admired, the man that you risked everything for, announce to the world, that he's never met you, and has no idea who you are. 😲 How would you feel right now if you were Lev Parnas? 😂
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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CCult members learn a new vocabulary that is designed to constrict their thinking into absolute, black-and-white, thought-stopping clichés that conform to group ideology. (“Lock her up” and “Build the Wall” are Trumpian examples. Even his put-downs and nicknames—Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, and Pocahontas—function to block other thoughts. Terms like “deep state” and “globalist” also act as triggers. They rouse emotion and direct attention.)”
― Steven Hassan, TheCult of Trump: A LeadingCult Expert Explains How Trump Uses Mind Control On His Followers.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled CultFormation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructiveCults like Trump ism.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly calledBrainwashing.
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe,
EvilConspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructiveCult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The CCult of Trump
Narcissistic ccult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A ccult environment like Trump ism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
Steven Hassan, is an expert in ccults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the UnificationChurch, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “TheCult of Trump." When polled, Trump ccultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon..
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow hlim, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on ccults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many ccults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those theyHate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. His ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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While the coronavirus highlighted Trump’s indifference, criminal negligence and incompetence, we may look back at his response to the current protests as the moment when his longtime flirtation with authoritarianism hardened into something more sinister. There’s no limit to what Trump will inflict to get reelected. His own sister called him a cruel human being.
He called protesters “ter.rorists,” and suggested they should be locked up for at least a decade to silence them, encouraged the use of force against American citizens and the free press, and promised to unleash the military on American citizens. These are the actions of authoritarian regimes in countries the world over.
In many countries around the world, it would be distressing, but not surprising to see the government use the fear of ter.rorism to demonize and encourage the use of force to squash these protest movements. Playing up violent acts committed by a small minority is right out of the authoritarian playbook.
It shifts focus away from Trump's many failures, and assigns blame to a bo.ogeyman. This step alone is critical for Trump. Trump is not to blame for the systemic racism and injustice, but addressing it is the LAST thing he would ever want to do. Why? Well for starters, he himself is a ra.cist.
Trump's actions have already caused immense pain to everyday Americans and the American way of life. They set a dangerous precedent. We are on a perilous path. We are now seeing how Trump and those around him who share is authoritarian impulses respond protests that resulted from genuine grievances. Consider how they will handle the protests that almost certainly will erupt if Trump tries to postpone the election, steal the election, suppress the vote in Democratic areas, or refuses to accept its result if he loses.
In a 2016 replay, Trump recently refused to say whether he would accept the election results if he loses. That was a clear threat, and a warning. Trump has identified his true enemies. and it is America's constitution, and us.
Trump doesn't even need Pence as a running mate. Trump's running mate is tyranny.
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Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Now this week we've learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said.
The official said two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
Naturally Traitor Trump will accuse our troops of refusing to yield to his Russian comrades.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
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Deripaska is great friend of Putin. He also is an all-purpose oligarch and therefore, an all-purpose crook.
Deripaska had acted on behalf of a "senior Russian government official” – code for Putin – and had claimed to represent the Kremlin in other countries. The treasury said then: “Deripaska has been investigated for money laundering, and has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering.”
The US also sanctioned Deripaska’s companies, including the aluminium giant United Company Rusal, and Basic Element. Rusal was removed from the sanctions blacklist after Deripaska reduced his majority stake and gave up control of Rusal’s holding company, EN+.
If you recall those golden years of "No Collusion Whatsoever ShutUp Please", you will recall that, in 2017, Rusal announced that it would be chipping in $200 million to build an aluminum plant in Kentucky, which is represented in the Senate by then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This came right after the Treasury Department, at McConnell’s urging, lifted sanctions on the company. What a marvelous coincidence, everyone said.
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Let's be clear, Flynn didn't lie to Pence or Trump about his contacts with the Russians, it was Trump and Pence who lied to the American people, because they knew all along about his contacts with the Russians. He was literally acting on their behalf.
When Trump fired Michael Flynn, in Feb 2017, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official and then lied to Pence and others about the interactions. But emails among top transition officials, show that Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents showed that Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
After learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia.
On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House.
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing. While in the real world, America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 15k deaths. Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world. I sh¡t thee nay.
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So whatever happened to the Republicans as the “party of law and order”? True, Richard Nixon, who first branded the party that way, was lying when he famously said, “I am not a crook.” Both Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal rank among the most notorious examples of executive branch lawlessness in our nation’s history. Well, that was until Trump’s January 6 insurrection.
Dems have now positioned themselves as the only ones willing to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.
At the time of Watergate, authoritarians were more evenly divided between the parties, but they’ve become much more concentrated in the GOP since then. Republicans have become more inclined to lawlessness — although it's not tolerated on the part of others, of course!
The lawlessness we see today from the GOP isn’t new — just vastly more blatant than it was during Watergate. But the infrastructure supporting, defending and excusing it, is dramatically more powerful and robust, and the authoritarian mass base is much more consolidated within their voter base.
Trump’s blatant endorsement of lawlessness, has only encouragedRabid lawlessness from his supporters.
“Bullies, narcissists and sociopaths exist in every walk of life and in every town and city in every country,” Hughes said. “If encouraged by a pathological leader, this minority will enthusiastically step forward to act beyond the law, to target opponents, and violently assert their pathological values. If this process has the support of a critical mass of the general population, as Trump has, history suggests that societies can find themselves powerless to stop further descent into darkness."
--Ian Hughes
How small-town bullies andSadists had been empowered in Stalin’s Russia, as described by Ian Hughes in his book “Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy.”
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Trump has changed, but unfortunately, that change has only been for the worst. Trump is incapable of "learning" therefore he doesn't get better, he only gets worse. Keep in mind, this is a man who has filed for bankruptcy 6 times. Does that sound like a man who learns???
Tony Schwartz, Trump's ghost writer for the "Art of the Deal" said it best:
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
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Here's just one example of Trump's so called "values."
Trump’s history of creepy comments about the looks of his daughter Ivanka are well known. But his younger daughter, Tiffany, has largely stayed out of the spotlight—much like her father’s equally creepy comments about her anatomy..
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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Trump tweeted on 24 January:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Feb. 27, Trump press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
Trump is now up to his beady eyeballs in debt to the Bank of China...and the loan is due soon.
Whether Trump’s businesses received more loans from state-owned Chinese banks, or other investors with ties to foreign governments is unknown because Trump refuses to release his complete tax returns and other financial records.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal.
Trump is currently on the hook to China for more than 200 million dollars. In 2012, his real estate partner refinanced one of Trump’s most prized NY buildings for $1 billion. The debt included $211 million from the state-owned Bank of China — its the first loan of this kind in the U.S. — and the debt is due in the middle of what would be Trump’s second term.
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In Sept, one month before Lev Parnas was indicted on campaign finance charges, his wife received a $1 million wire transfers from a bank account in Russia. The the source was a lawyer for Dmytro Firtash, according to a court filing by U.S. prosecutors.
Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who made a fortune in the natural gas trade, and is perhaps the most enigmatic figure in the scandal related to Trump's impeachment.
A billionaire with close ties to the Russian mob, Firtash is facing bribery-related charges here in the U.S. and fighting extradition from Vienna. He once attempted to buy the famous Drake Hotel in NY with the now imprisoned Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager. He's seen by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and Western governments as a corrupt instrument of Russia.
Firtash provided documents to Giuliani that he used to further his discredited claim that Joe Biden engaged in wrongdoing in Ukraine. The question over Firtash's role in the effort to smear Biden deepened when Parnas said the oligarch's involvement came from an explicit quid pro quo. In exchange for Firtash's help in their effort to damage Biden, Parnas assured the oligarch they (Rudy, Trump, and Parnas) would make his U.S. legal troubles disappear.
In other words, according to Parnas: Guiliani, was so eager to help Trump and hurt Biden, that he turned to a man Ukrainian activists call their country's most dangerous oligarch — and offered the equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card.
"Some folks might wonder what Mr. Giuliani was thinking. The better question is whether he WAS thinking," said Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor and senior FBI official. "This is so foolhardy and so reckless, that it is difficult to fathom what he was doing or how he thought it could succeed."
Firtash lived up to his end of the alleged bargain: His lawyers provided a now-discredited affidavit from a Ukrainian prosecutor accusing Biden of wrongdoing. But Giuliani's team did not deliver.
According to Parnas and a senior U.S. official, Firtash's lawyers, Giuliani associates Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, were unable to convince Attorney General William Barr to intervene in the Firtash case. The alleged scheme, one former U.S. official said, was stunning in its audacity.
"Think of it this way," said the official, who has deep knowledge of Ukraine's politics and Firtash's history. "You have the president's personal lawyer trying to get the president's official lawyer, the attorney general, to get the Justice Department to drop charges against an oligarch supported by Russia. That's what was happening."
"Firtash is at dead center of the greatest corruption operation in Ukraine's history," said a former senior U.S. diplomat who served in the region. "He managed the flow of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine and beyond and it kept Ukraine dependent on Russia's gas supplies."
Anders Aslund, a former Swedish diplomat who has studied Ukraine's economy for years, said Firtash is more of a purveyor of bribes than a proper businessman. "He has essentially been used by the Russians to buy political power in Ukraine," said Aslund. "He's the person who has spent the most money on behalf of the Kremlin on Ukraine's politicians."
In 2013, as the Obama administration was pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine, federal prosecutors in Chicago indicted Firtash, charging him with a scheme to bribe Indian officials to obtain a lucrative mining deal to sell titanium to Boeing for the 787 Dreamliner. He was arrested in Vienna in March 2014, and released on $174 million bail and has been contesting his extradition to the U.S. ever since.
The $174 million bail, said to be the largest in Austrian history, was paid by the Russian billionaire Vasily Anisimov, who is also under U.S. sanctions.
Richard Grenell, Trump’s inexplicable pick for the Director of National Intelligence, has less than zero experience in intelligence or national security. He had even less experience in diplomacy when Trump named him as the Ambassador to Berlin. What Grenell does have however, are shady connections to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, who are connected to the Russian mob, and the Kremlin. And this is the man that Trump's wants to trust with the entire treasure trove of Amercan intelligence and classified information.
In interviews, Lev Parnas described a meeting he and Rudy had in London where they met two associates of indicted Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, one of whom was on his legal team. The Washington Post reported on that meeting, and a Firtash lawyer confirmed that a meeting with Giuliani happened. Parnas said he was in the meeting, and that Giuliani used it to try to get material from the oligarch that would bolster his attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Trump.
Firtash is wanted in this country on multiple felony corruption and bribery charges. DOJ prosecutors say Firtash is an "upper-echelon associate" of Russian Organized Crime.
"Firtash is at dead center of the greatest corruption operation in Ukraine's history," said a former senior U.S. diplomat who served in the region. "He managed the flow of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine and beyond and it kept Ukraine dependent on Russia's gas supplies."
After the meeting, two of Giuliani’s allies joined Firtash’s legal team. Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova began representing Firtash in the summer of 2019, and worked to score political gifts for Trump from Firtash. Parnas said they also tried to leverage their Trumpworld connections to help Firtash.
“During the situation that was going on with the Firtash case, Victoria called Ric Grenell because he was the ambassador to Germany and Vienna was in the same orbit there,” Parnas said. “She basically asked him, if he sees any pressure coming from DOJ to extradite Firtash, if he could let us know. She told me that Grenell said he would.”
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When it comes to Traitor Trump, Farage, Boris, and Brexit, all roads lead back to Putin.
On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit. Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the US. A major Brexit supporter, Steve Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign captured the interest of investigators in the UK and the US.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances. In Britain, revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’s annual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange a lunch for the UKIP leaders with the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize..
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President Obama said that when making a decision, it's helpful not to watch TV or read social media.That's because that "creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment," He also said it's important to "have a team with a diversity of opinion" to help with making decisions and providing context.
President Obama had two important tips for any president to help make good decisions.
First, Obama said, you should "make sure you have a team with a diversity of opinion sitting around you."
"The other thing that's helpful is not watching TV or reading social media," he said. "Those are two things I would advise, if you're our president, not to do. It creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment."
Obama spoke about entering office during the Great Recession, and he said that the presidency is like "drinking out of a fire hose."
"That's doubly true when you're in the middle of a crisis," Obama said.
A president can't absorb all the information on their own when making a decision, so it's important to have teams to provide information and context about the problem, he said.
"Then what you have to do is create a process where you have confidence that whatever data is out there has been sifted and sorted," Obama said.
Obama said that because there's so much information out there now, including "opinion wrapped up as fact" and clickbait, it's important to filter through the noise.
"What it does mean is that if you are susceptible to worrying about what are the polls saying or what might this person say about this topic, or you start mistaking the intensity of the passion of a very small subset of people with a broader sense about your country or people who know something about the topic, that will sway your decision-making in an unhealthy way,"
"I am asking you to hold fast to that faith that is written into our founding documents...that ideal whisper...by slaves and abolitionist, that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders, and those who marched for justice. That creed...reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battle fields, to the surface of the moon. A creed at the core of every American, who's story is not yet written....YES WE CAN!!"
--President Barack Obama
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Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
What Kushner tried to do is exactly what American traitors have done in the past when they've decided to start working for the Russian government. It's basically what Aldrich Ames did in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Union Embassy in DC, and turned over highly classified information to the Russians.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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At the time of his deth, Jim Jones held such power over his followers that he was able to direct more than 900 of them to participate in a ma55 mur.der-sui.cide.
Jones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"I thought he could heal because I saw healings and I thought they were real," said former Peoples Temple member Leslie Wagner-Wilson. "He was a master of manipulation, but you saw him with this dark hair, the sunglasses, and the way that he spoke -- he was a great orator -- and it moved you, it inspired you because he was so passionate. And so I was just enthralled."
As time went on, former members said Jones became more extreme.
In 1974, Jones leased more than 3,800 acres of isolated land in the jungle from the Guyanese government. By 1978, nearly 1,000 followers had moved to the Guyana compound, former members said, and food started to run out. Having been forced to give up their passports and money upon arrival, some former members said they were cut off from the outside world.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
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Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Trump is running the country with the exact same type of logic, wisdom and leadership that he used with his casinos. And it worked out great for him personally, but it was a disaster for the casinos, investors, and the thousands of his casinos employed.
A close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings leaves little doubt that Trump’s casinos were protracted failures. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed the city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.
But even as his companies did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straightWhite, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those theyHate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous whiteMen who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. His ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
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He says we're going to have to see what happens, as if we don't have a Constitution.
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are clear. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump, democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Trump's Professor, William T. Kelley taught marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence:The Management of Marketing Information...
Professor Kelley stated that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*dd@m student I ever had.” says Psychologist Frank DiPrima.
"Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*dd@m student I ever had.” Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity, but long before he was considered a political figure. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told the story that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything."
Professor Kelley’s view seems to be shared by other University of Pennsylvanians, from the Daily Pennsylvanian, stating:
Biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. The officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy..
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don, was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
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As it stands now, practically anyone, and anything connected to Trump is now under investigation. His inauguration, his Trump crime organization, his fake charity foundation, his fraudulent taxes, his tainted campaign, and his illegitimate presidency, are all under investigation. Most Americans already knew that Trump was totally unfit, and unqualified to be president, but I don't think anything prepared us for an unmitigated disaster of this magnitude. Trump's presidency has been such an unprecedented, and unimaginable debacle, that it can only be defined as a miracle. Because it cannot be explained with logic, reasoning or science.
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Trump’s campaign chairman Manafort, shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies. Manafort was also accused of covering up other meetings and contacts with the Russian, an elusive man named Konstantin Kilimnik who worked for Manafort on election campaigns for pro-Kremlin politicians in eastern Europe.
Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the the election. US Intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian operation was ordered by Putin to help Trump’s campaign.
Mueller has also said that Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign, described Kilimnik as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU”
Manafort’s attorneys did not deny that Manafort gave Kilimnik the data, instead stating that he had not lied about it but was merely “unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed”. The attorneys also confirmed that Manafort had met Kilimnik in Madrid, claiming he “had not initially remembered” the meeting but recalled it when confronted with records showing the two were in the Spanish capital at the same time. LOL!!!😂 So Manafort tried to pretend that he didn't remember taking a flight across the Atlantic Ocean to meet up with a Russian agent in Spain in order to pass polling data on to him.😂😂
It was previously known that Kilimnik and Manafort had met twice during 2016 in the US. The date of the Madrid meeting was not stated, but a source familiar with Manafort’s team said it was in early 2017 after Trump had entered office.
Trump said he knew “nothing” about his then-campaign chief Paul Manafort sharing polling data with a Russian spy during the 2016 presidential campaign. 😂 Sure Donnie....we believe you.😄
The disclosure that Manafort had given Kilimnik polling data is the strongest piece of public evidence that a high-ranking Trump campaign official may have been coordinating with Russians in an illegal effort to get Trump elected. Such data could have been used by Russia as part of a broad-ranging scheme, which involved bogus social media accounts, to manipulate public opinion in Trump’s favor.
Mueller has charged that Kilimnik, who worked for Manafort for years, tried with Manafort to tamper with potential witnesses against Manafort.
Mueller has alleged that Kilimnik — who remains at large — has ties to “a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.”
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Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
The question now is why would Manafort continue to lie for Trump? Why would Manafort, who has a law degree from Georgetown and years of experience around white-collar crime, behave like this? What incentive does he have to spend most or all of his remaining years in prison rather than betray Trump? One way to make sense of his behavior is the possibility that Manafort is keeping his mouth shut because he’s afraid of being killed.
That speculation might sound hyperbolic, but there is plenty of evidence to support it. In February, a video appeared on YouTube showing Manafort’s Russian employer, Deripaska, on his yacht with a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich. In the video, from August 2016, Deripaska could be seen speaking with a high-ranking Kremlin official. The video was such a source of embarrassment to Moscow that it fought to have it removed from YouTube. Vashukevich, who was then in a Thai jail after having been arrested there for prostitution, announced that she had heard Deripaska describe a plot to interfere in the election and that she has 16 hours’ worth of audio recordings from the yacht to support her charges. In a letter to America authorities, her associate wrote, “We risk our lives very much.”
Vashukevich’s name has disappeared from the news media. In all probability, either the FBI or Russian intelligence has gotten to her. Whatever has happened to her, her testimony suggests both that Russia is still hiding secrets about its role in Trump’s election and that someone who knows Deripaska well believes he would and could kill her for violating his confidence.
Russia murders people routinely, at home and abroad. In the nine months after Trump’s election, nine Russian officials were murdered or died mysteriously. At least one was suspected to have been a likely source of information for the British agent Steele. The attorney for the firm that hired Steele told the Senate last August, “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier.”
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Trump's own people informed him of an outbreak in Wuhan China as far back as February, but he refused to listen to his own intelligence agencies. The same way he refused to listen to them when they warned him about Russian cryber espionage and interference in our elections. He completely ignored them.
Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and they went unheeded..
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable..
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable...
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever—and possibly get away with it..
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he could possibly get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
Trump and republicans continue to rage against the Constitution in their ongoing war with our democratic republic. They have made it abundantly clear that we must vote them out of office in order for our democracy to survive.
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Trump and his followers will NEVER forgive the Capitol Hill Police Officers for stopping their steal on January 6th.
"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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Trump's handler and benefactor Putin, has placed a price tag on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. And Trump responds by doing absolutely nothing. In 2019, John Bolton told colleagues that he briefed Trump on the matter in March 2019. But Trump had access to the information even earlier, in February. It appeared in the president’s daily brief on Feb. 27.
And now after all of that, Trump wants to reward Putin by lifting sanctions on Russia, and bringing it back into the G-7. And since Trump received the first briefing about the Russain bounties in Feb, he has been laughing it up with Putin in multiple phone calls on Mar 30, April 9, 10, 12, 25, May 7, and June 1. Even NOW, Trump has never uttered one word of condemnation against Putin. Not....one.
As a compromised President and a traitor, Trump serves at the pleasure of Putin. He's not interested in protecting our troops, he's only interested in slavishly serving and protecting Putin. Since the 80s, the Russians have been financially supporting Trump and bailing him out from bankruptcy after American banks stopped loaning Trump money. And just like any loyal dog, Trump knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him..
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History will record Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over that troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
After Trump had cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 105,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The entire operation, prosecutors say, was working under the protection of Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, whom the FBI identified as a top Russian vor closely allied with Semion Mogilevich. In a single two-month stretch, according to the federal indictment, the money launderers paid Tokhtakhounov $10 million. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower.
For the next seven months, the Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump...
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Thanks to Traitor Trump, the US was forced to extract a top-secret source from Russia after Trump revealed classified information to two Russian officials in 2017. The US was concerned that Trump and his administration routinely mishandled classified intelligence and that their actions could expose the covert source as a spy within the Russian government.
Trump stunned the national-security apparatus and intelligence community when it surfaced that in an Oval Office meeting in May 2017 he shared the information with Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, and Sergey Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador to the US.
Traitor Trump's egregious disregard of strict intelligence-sharing rules to protect highly placed sources "prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk" that the source in Russia would be exposed.
At the Oval Office meeting, which took place one day after Trump fired FBI Director Comey, Trump boasted to the Russians that firing "nut job" Comey had taken "great pressure" off him.
That sounds like the reaction of a traitor breathing a sigh of relief.
Comey had been spearheading the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
Trump then went on to share with Lavrov and Kislyak intelligence connected to the Islamic State in Syria. The information came from Israel, which had not given the US permission to share it with the Russians because it could have compromised an Israeli source in the region.
This is not the first time national-security officials have expressed concerns that Trump's recklessness and incompetence could reveal sensitive information about US intelligence-gathering processes and human sources working abroad.
Late last month, Trump's tweet about US military information he received during a classified intelligence briefing earlier that day immediately set off alarm bells because it included a satellite photo of an Iranian launchpad that was of a much higher resolution and better quality than the commercial satellite images of the site that were publicly available.
It also contained markers indicating that it was taken by USA-224,one of the US's most secretive spy satellites. Intelligence officials said Trump's tweet would be a gold mine for hostile foreign powers.
Trump is clearly traitor, and a national security threat.
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I think America needs to have a long conversation about Trump and his crime family's close business relationships with Jyna.
Trump and his crime family have many lucrative business deals with China. Trump's products are manufactured in China. And Ivanka has conveniently received more than 30 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. This is what happens when you have a president who from day one was compromised by greed and his own self-serving interests.
The Trumps are the landlord to one of China’s top state-owned banks, which has occupied the 20th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan since 2008. The bank’s lease is worth close to $2 million annually, according to industry estimates and a bank filing.
And despite Trump's rhetoric about American manufacturing, assembly-line workers in China still produce blouses, shoes and handbags for the clothing line created by Ivanka. Trump’s business interest in China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Trump business relationships with China are among the main examples plaintiffs in multiple court cases have cited in allegations that Trump is violating the Constitution’s “emoluments clause” by accepting payments from foreign governments.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf.
Days later, Trump announced his support for Chinese-backed telecommunications firm ZTE, a departure from his previously aggressive stance toward Chinese industry that prompted ethical experts to question whether the two actions were related. But of course they were related. This is Don the con we're talking about.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974..
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to DT, McConnell, McCarthy, Cruz, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Hawley, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
DT is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fasc.ism, wild conspiracy theories, rac.ism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. DT is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Trump’s history of creepy comments about the looks of his daughter Ivanka are well known. But his younger daughter, Tiffany, is a recent college graduate who has largely stayed out of the spotlight—much like her father’s equally creepy comments about her anatomy..
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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As far back as 2015, Trump has been connected to documented acts of violence, with perpetrators claiming that he was even their inspiration. In fact, dozens of people enacted violence in Trump’s name in the years before the Capitol attack, according to a 2020 report from ABC News.
In 2016, a white man told officers “Donald Trump will fix them” while being arrested for threatening his Black neighbors with a knife. That same year, a Florida man threatened to burn down a house next to his because a Muslim family purchased it, claiming that Trump’s Muslim ban made it a reason for “concern.” Then there are the more widely known examples, like Cesar Sayoc, who mailed 16 inoperative pipe bombs to Democratic leaders and referred to Trump as a “surrogate father”; and the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in 2019 that left 23 dead, where the shooter’s manifesto parroted Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants.
October 23, 2015: After repeatedly being interrupted by protesters at a campaign rally in Miami, Trump warned he’ll “be a little more violent” next time when addressing protesters. “See, the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time.’ The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent. And the fourth group, I’ll say get the hell out of here!” he said. On video, the pro-immigration protesters could be seen being forcibly dragged out of the campaign event.
January 23, 2016: At a campaign rally in Iowa, Trump, in describing the loyalty of his supporters, notoriously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.
March 9, 2016: A Trump supporter punched a Black male protester being escorted out of a Trump campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The Trump supporter was recorded on video saying he enjoyed “knocking the he// out of that big mouth” and “Yes, he deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to ki// him.”
Two days after the assault, Trump said such attacks on protesters were “very, very appropriate” and the kind of action “we need a little bit more of.” Trump called the protesters “very violent,” though multiple news outlets at the time reported that there were no documented cases of protesters inciting violence against Trump supporters.
March 2016; Demonstrators interrupted Trump at a rally in St. Louis, Missouri. As they were being escorted out of the venue, Trump bemoaned the fact that there were no longer "consequences" to protesting and insisted the "country has to toughen up."
“You know, part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right?" he explained.
October 18, 2018: At a rally in Montana, Trump celebrated Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who body-slammed a reporter in May 2017, telling the crowd, “Any guy who can do a body-slam ... he’s my guy.”
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Trump: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a full grown baby, I spoke like a man-baby, I thought like a man-baby, I reasoned like a man-baby."
Republicans like Joni Ernst and Susan Collins are trying to convince us that by some miracle, Trump has finally seen the light, and that he has now learned his lesson. Really?!?!
Republicans are treating Trump the exact same way that his parents treated him as a child, by rewarding him for his bad behavior. They have basically told Trump that there will be no consequences for anything that he does, and not only will they not punish him, they will protect him from being punished by anyone else. This is how Trump's parents created a monster without boundaries. A sociopath who is oblivious and indifferent to the chaos and devastation he causes to everything and eberyone around him. A sociopath who will never accept blame himself, but instead blames others, even for acts he obviously committed.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
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Trump is playing a dangerous game with our oceans and coastal communities. By massively expanding offshore oil drilling while simultaneously rolling back drilling-safety standards put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Trump is making more major oil spills inevitable.
If a spill happens in the Arctic Ocean — where Trump is trying to invite oil companies into federal waters that were protected by President Obama — treacherous conditions would make cleanup impossible. And wherever the next big oil spill happens, wildlife will die and coastal communities will suffer.
The Gulf of Mexico and its coastline still haven’t recovered from 2010’s Deepwater Horizon blowout, which killed 11 workers, and thousands of marine animals as it gushed more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf for almost three months. The country’s worst environmental disaster clearly called for new regulations to prevent it from happening again. Trump is currently rolling back those safety regulations in his reckless pursuit of so-called “energy dominance.” Just as he pretends climate change isn’t real.
After well-blowout prevention devices suffered catastrophic failures on Deepwater Horizon, Obama called for 3rd party inspections of safety equipment. It was a measured, reasonable response to such an epic industry failure. In April Trump signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to “reconsider” several oil rig safety regulations. Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, and the same Zinke that is currently under multiple investigations of ethics violations, is in charge of rolling back the safety regulations.
Calls for reversing the Obama-era regulations is part of Trump’s efforts to ease restrictions on fossil fuel companies and generate more domestic energy production. (GREED)
Doing so, the agency asserted, will reduce “unnecessary burdens” on the energy industry and save the industry $228 million over 10 years.(GREED)
The Obama-era rules, written in 2016, tightened controls on blowout preventers, devices that are intended to stop explosions in undersea oil and gas wells, and called for rig operators to have third parties certify that the safety devices worked under extreme conditions. In the Deepwater Horizon spill, a supposedly fail-safe blowout preventer failed after a section of drill pipe buckled.
Environmental groups warned that reversing the safety measures would make the United States vulnerable to another such disaster.
“Rolling back drilling safety standards while expanding offshore leasing is a recipe for disaster,” Miyoko Sakashita, director of the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “By tossing aside the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Trump is putting our coasts and wildlife at risk of more deadly oil spills. Reversing offshore safety rules isn’t just deregulation, it’s willful ignorance.”
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Trump's failed coup will go down in history as the most transparent coup attempt ever.
Bannon openly bragged about the coup on his podcast the day before the coup. It's now a part of history
The day before the coup attempt, Bannon made comments on his podcast stating that "all he// is going to break loose tomorrow. It's gonna be moving. It's gonna be quick. And all I can say is strap in, the War Room, a posse. You have made this happen and tomorrow it's game day."
“We’re now on the cusp of really reversing this, decertifying this, and that is because of you, this audience that has responded to everything. It’s now put us at the point that it’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point ofAttack. Right? The point of attackTomorrow. It’s going to kick off; it’s going to be very dramatic.”
“It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be extraordinarily different. And all I can say is: Strap in. Let’s get ready. So many people said, ‘Man, if I was in a revolution, I would be in Washington.’ Well, this is your time in history.”
Bannon said this to his listeners on January 5th.
Trump pressed top Justice Department officials in a late December phone call to declare the election he lost “corrupt,” and “leave the rest” to him and Republican allies in Congress, according to contemporaneous, handwritten notes taken by officials on the call.
On the Dec. 27 phone call with then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his second-in-command, Richard Donoghue,
Trump pressured them to violate the Constitution, and reverse Biden's win.
Donoghue memorialized the conversation in handwritten notes, which the House Oversight Committee made public.
On the call, Rosen, who took over at the Justice Department after William Barr resigned, and Donoghue push back. They tell Trump "the DOJ can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election, doesn't work that way," the notes say.
Trump responds: "Don't expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen."
Rosen and Donoghue said repeatedly on the call that the allegations of voter fraud were false.
According to Donoghue's notes, the men told Trump they had done hundreds of interviews as part of dozens of probes and that his allegations across a number of swing states were not supported by evidence.
They told Trump "flat out" he was getting false information or the claims were "just not supported by the evidence."
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We can't even expect Traitor Trump to tell us the truth, about anything, big or small.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
After Trump had cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 105,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake..
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. And over the last 3 years, he fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire.
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure within White House national security council, and in typical Trump fashion, he got rid of it simply because he didn't understand it, and didn't care enough to even try to understand it.
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Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
The question now is why would Manafort continue to lie for Trump? Why would Manafort, who has a law degree from Georgetown and years of experience around white-collar crime, behave like this? What incentive does he have to spend most or all of his remaining years in prison rather than betray Trump? One way to make sense of his behavior is the possibility that Manafort is keeping his mouth shut because he’s afraid of being killed.
That speculation might sound hyperbolic, but there is plenty of evidence to support it. In February, a video appeared on YouTube showing Manafort’s Russian employer, Deripaska, on his yacht with a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich. In the video, from August 2016, Deripaska could be seen speaking with a high-ranking Kremlin official. The video was such a source of embarrassment to Moscow that it fought to have it removed from YouTube. Vashukevich, who was then in a Thai jail after having been arrested there for prostitution, announced that she had heard Deripaska describe a plot to interfere in the election and that she has 16 hours’ worth of audio recordings from the yacht to support her charges. In a letter to America authorities, her associate wrote, “We risk our lives very much.”
Vashukevich’s name has disappeared from the news media. In all probability, either the FBI or Russian intelligence has gotten to her. Whatever has happened to her, her testimony suggests both that Russia is still hiding secrets about its role in Trump’s election and that someone who knows Deripaska well believes he would and could kill her for violating his confidence.
Russia murders people routinely, at home and abroad. In the nine months after Trump’s election, nine Russian officials were murdered or died mysteriously. At least one was suspected to have been a likely source of information for the British agent Steele. The attorney for the firm that hired Steele told the Senate last August, “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier.”
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Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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US law bans foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns, but they can circumvent the restrictions by routing financial support through anonymous bank accounts, shell corporations, and front companies. it is easy to set up a company without disclosing its purpose or the identity of its true owners.
Foreign adversaries can then use these companies to execute anonymous financial transactions that facilitate attacks on free and fair democratic elections.
A network of shell corporations could be used to hide the origin of foreign funds pumped into a political action committee, or a social media political ad campaign. The Kremlin has long had expertise in this area. During the Soviet Union’s heyday, the KGB perfected the craft of anonymously moving funds to seed foreign political campaigns. The FSB and the GRU, the KGB successors, are well-versed in these techniques as well.
Law enforcement and congressional investigations have revealed that Kremlin-linked actors paid considerable sums of money to support Trump and curry his favor. A Russian organization controlled by an oligarch close to Putin spent more than $1 million a month just on social media campaigns favoring Trump, according to the special counsel. A Russian American energy tycoon—who boasted to a Kremlin official in July 2016 of being “actively involved in Trump’s election campaign”—donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Victory fund. And a company affiliated with a sanctioned Russian oligarch paid $1 million to Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, for unspecified services after the election. These and other transactions examined throughout the report establish that, during the campaign and presidential transition, Trump had several compromising financial entanglements with actors representing a hostile foreign power.
Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov’s transferred $20 million to an American bank account just days after a meeting that he organized between Trump senior campaign officials, including Manafort, Kushner, and a Russian government attorney. Hackers, troll farms, and spies cannot operate without money. Following the money trail helps investigators discover who is funding these entities.
The three stages of money laundering are PLACEMENT, LAYERING, and INTEGRATION. Placement refers to the process by which the individual or organization introduces illicit money into the legitimate economy. This first step often involves breaking up large amounts of illegally obtained cash into smaller, less conspicuous amounts, which are then deposited directly into bank accounts or converted into monetary instruments such as checks or money orders.
Once the money has been deposited into the economy, an individual LAYERS the money through repeated transactions, establishing a paper trail that creates the appearance that the money was obtained legitimately through investments in real estate, art, gambling, or payments for goods and services. One common method for doing so is by creating anonymous shell corporations, which allow people to do business without disclosing the identities of the ultimate beneficial owners. The money launderer may pass the money through multiple bank accounts or shell corporations, thus further obfuscating its origins.
The final stage is INTEGRATION, whereby the funds re-enter the legitimate economy through more transparent purchases of assets or services.
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Trump is terrified that Flynn and Roger Stone won't be able to do a long stretch in prison, and will decide to cut a deal instead, and reveal all of Trump's crimes. Stone could corroborate Rick Gates' testimony that Trump did in fact collude with WikiLeaks..
In the video of a December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin's propaganda network RT at a Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who would later become Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's campaign when he was being paid $45,000 to speak at the gala.
"It is not a coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin," said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Flynn's Moscow jaunt, like his oddly timed phone chats with the Russian ambassador, has been well reported. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 dinner, was attended by a healthy serving of ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs.
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin.
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats. Like Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
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From the beginning, Trump built a vanguard of lying sycophants around him, and fox is their propaganda outlet These people were all told to leave their morals, ethics, and integrity at the door when becoming a member of Trump's cult.
Trump is using the same tactics that the pig Napoleon used in George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. Every tyrant has his loyal propagandist, and Napoleon had one in his mouth piece known as Squealer in the novel. And Fox, Kellyanne, Graham, and others have been acting as Trump's "Squealer." Squealer was a clever propagandist, who (as the animals said) could turn night into day.
Every time an act of Napoleon's is questioned by the other animals - regardless of how selfish or severe it may seem, Squealer is able to convince the animals that Napoleon is only acting in THEIR best interest. And like Squealer, Trump's propagandists use lies, deflections, projections and gaslighting to turn day into night...to turn black into white. Trump himself even told his followers that they shouldn't believe what they hear or see with their own eyes. He said they should only believe what he tells them.
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Recent books by Timothy Snyder, Masha Gessen, and Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig have traced Trump’s growing pattern of lies and lawlessness. Yes, nearly all presidents have occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One falsehood does not undermine democracy, but 20,000+ can; one governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully executive the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama.
• Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
• Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
• Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to apologist Mark Meadows.
• Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
• Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-Nazis while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
• Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
• Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
• Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
• Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler—to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
• Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
• Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
• Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
• Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
• Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
• Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
• Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is deviant fascism.
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Bill Browder, an American investor, whose business in post-Soviet Russia ran afoul of Putin, believes Republican congressman Rohrabacher, and Libertarian Rand Paul, have both been compromised by Russia.
In 2016, Dana Rohrabacher flew to Moscow for a meeting with Russia’s deputy general prosecutor. We he returned to D.C., the California Republican lobbied to take an expanded version of the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan law that allows the US to sanction Russan human rights offenders, OFF the congressional agenda. The bill was named in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, Browder’s lawyer, who died in 2009 in a Moscow prison. (Browder successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act in 2012.)
Rohrabacher also returned from Russia with a propaganda film he screened for colleagues in his office. Rohrabacher’s attempt to block the expanded bill failed.
“There is absolutely no reason why any member of Congress would do this … unless there was something else going on,” Browder said. “Somehow the Russians have got damaging information on Dana Rohrabacher, or that they’ve found some way of financing him in such a way that they’ve influenced his behavior.”
Rohrabacher isn’t the only congressman Browder suspects is in Putin’s pocket.
“The other person I am very suspicious about is Rand Paul,” Browder said, noting that the Kentucky Republican senator traveled to Moscow in August and a week later called on Trump to lift sanctions on a pair of Russian lawmakers who are on the so-called Magnitsky list.
“Why would he do that? The people of Kentucky don’t want that to happen,” Browder said. “It makes no sense to me why a U.S. politician under the circumstances right now would be trying to loosen sanctions on Russia.”
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Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem & upheaval. I am a merchant of lies & deception. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, grotesque, selfish, indecent, malevolent, debased, indifferent, inept, sociopathic, and malicious.
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This cover-up by Trump, Barr, and republicans, is worse than the failed cover-up of Watergate. Trump is at war with America, it's justice department, it's intelligence agencies, it's rule of law, it's free press, and it's Constitution.
Barr is the same morally bankrupt stooge that he's always been. Barr served as Attorney General in the Bush administration from late 1991 to early 1993. Most notably, Barr railed publicly against a long running independent counsel's Iran-Contra investigation of the Reagan-Bush administration, and Barr fully supported President Bush’s last minute pardon of Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s former defense secretary. Weinberger had been indicted on five felony charges, including accusations that he obstructed federal investigations and lied to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. Barr also supported Bush's pardoning of 5 administration officials who had been found guilty of crimes involving Iran-Contra.
Hearing of Weinberger being pardoned, Judge Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel investigating Iran-Contra, issued a statement of condemnation: “President Bush’s pardon…undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office—deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence."
It appears that history is repeating itself. "Its like Deja vu, all over again."
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Lauren, who ran on a "law-and-order" platform, has had several dust-ups with police. This jailbird has a rap sheet unusually long for a member of Congress.
And her track record of thumbing her nose at the law continued after she tussled with Capitol Police officers over her refusal to walk through newly installed House metal detectors.
Back in June 2015, Boebert was cuffed for disorderly conduct at a country music festival near Grand Junction, Colo., after police said she attempted to interfere in the arrest of minors busted for underage drinking and encouraged the accused to run off.
While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies’ reports. She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
“Lauren continued yelling and causing the underage drinkers to become unruly,” an arresting officer said in a statement at the time.
Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015.
A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs.
In September 2010, Boebert was arrested after a neighbor accused Boebert’s two pit bulls of attackingHer dog. Boebert pleaded guilty to a single count of “dog at large."
Boebert’s future husband, Jayson, also had brushes with law enforcement. In January 2004, he was arrested after exposing his himself to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 ) was also there. Jayson Boebert pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure, earning himself four days in jail and two years probation.
In February 2004, he was booked on a domestic violenceCharge, against Lauren. He “did unlawfully strike, shove or kick … and subjected her to physical contact,” a spokesman for the Garfield associate county court clerk stated.They had been dating at the time. Jayson Boebert ultimately served seven days in jail.
In May 2004. during an altercation with Jayson at his home, she scratched his face and chest and trashed his residence, according to a police report. She was slapped with third-degree assault, criminal mischief and underage drinking charges. A rep for the Garfield County Combined Court said they could not reveal any information about the case’s final disposition.
This is what "law & order" and conservative Christian values looks like. 🤣🤣
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NEVER FORGET...that it didn't have to be this way.
Trump's presidency has been far worse than the tragedy of 9/11. 200 thousand American lives lost equates to about 66 9/11s.
And the worst part of it all, is that It didn't have to be this way. It was all preventable, not just in hindsight, but in foresight as well.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
We owe it to the more than 200 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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"I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion, reminded soldiers that ‘TheNazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine Corps General James Mattis,
June 3, 2020
Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful
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The January 27 transcript of Trump's phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto had insisted publicly his country would not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full..
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Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019.
Countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and work he has done.
And Trump thinks he knows more about viruses and infectious diseases than this guy, simply because he had an Uncle who attended MIT. Let that sink in for a moment.
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In McConnell's own words..
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beat and blo.o.d.ied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about mur.dur.ing the VP."
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
"There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President."
"And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth."
"The issue is not only the President’s intemperate language on January 6th."
“It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged ‘trial by combat.’
“It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President."
"The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things."
"This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.
"A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"It was obvious that only President Trump could end this.
“Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the Administration.
"But the President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job.
“Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!
“Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that VP Pence was in danger… even as the mob carrying Trump banners was be.a.t.ing cops and breaching perimeters… the President sent a further tweet attacking his Vice President.
“And even then, with police officers blee.d.ing and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
NEVER FORGET.
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History will record Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over that troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
After Trump had cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 105,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
" TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
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@EB-du3vh
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
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Allowing Trump to run for election in 2024, would've been like allowing Nixon to run for election again in 1976.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Those days are long gone.
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@QuantumOfSolace1
That was a textbook example of whataboutism.
Deflecting or changing the subject is called "what-aboutism" — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. It's an attractive tactic for Putin, Trump, and Russian trolls. Whataboutism allows them to be vague, but appear straight-talking at the same time. What-aboutism is essentially a schoolyard taunt, brought to a national and global level.
The idea behind what-aboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A's faults — "Yeah? Well WHAT ABOUT that bad thing you did?"
It's not a complicated tactic — any grade-schooler can master it. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia.
One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it's a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings..
Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a black-and-white worldview. But in this worldview, it's very difficult to be the good guy; idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be "unmasked" as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency. If nobody is perfect, then it means that Trump and Putin should get a pass for any wrongdoings.
Semper Fi
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What part about Trump being a narcissistic sociopath don't some people understand?
This is the same Trump that tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85 and terminally ill, was in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Trump sole control over his dying father's estate..
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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So while the nation has been busy dealing with a viral pandemic, Moscow Mitch has been quietly slithering around making phone calls to senior federal judges and urging them to step aside ahead of the 2020 election. Moscow Mitch has started to personally reach out to federal judges to pressure their retirement while Trump is still in office.
Moscow Mitch has been contacting judges to “sound them out on their plans and assure them that they would have a worthy successor if they gave up their seats soon,” aided by other Republicans who are making similar overtures of their own.
A source familiar with the Kentucky leader's thinking described how McConnell is personally reaching out to judges appointed by past Republican presidents.
"Yes, he has made calls," said a longtime McConnell confidant who asked for anonymity in order to speak freely. McConnell is making the requests because he wants time to replace the judges with new conservative-minded jurists."
In February, Trump and McConnell placed its 51st circuit court judge on the bench, falling only a few nominations short of what President Obama did over the course of two terms. Moscow Mitch has been able to help Trump appoint 193 federal judges, including two Supreme Court justices, to the bench since 2017..
This is why the 2020 election will easily be the most important election in our lifetime. This election is not about Biden or Bernie. This election is about Trump, and removing him from office...PERIOD. Failure to do so would mean watching Trump and Moscow Mitch do the unthinkable, placing another one of his unqualified cultist on the Supreme Court, along with stacking courts across the country with more extremist Federal Judges. This election is about preserving our democracy, and our Constitutional Republic. So we simply can't afford to F this one up, because there won't be any "do-overs."
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Today, Trump and Republicans are telling the American people that we can no longer keep it.
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Trump accused John McCain of handing over the Steele dossier to the FBI “for very evil purposes.”
Fun facts: On March 25, 2019, Lindsey Graham admitted that he himself told John McCain to give the FBI the Steele dossier on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, a revelation that comes after Trump repeatedly assailed the late Arizona Republican over the issue.
Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters that McCain showed him the dossier when he received it in late 2016.
"And I told him the only thing I knew to do with it, it could be a bunch of garbage, it could be true, who knows? Turn it over to somebody whose job it is to find these things out, and John McCain acted appropriately,” Graham said.
McCain was not made aware of the Steele dossier until Nov 18, 2016 — after Trump had won the election.
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Make no mistake, Trump supporters are just like him. They don't believe in democracy or our Constitution. They despise and reject everything America is suppose to represent and stand for. Donald and his supporters are NOT patriots by any stretch of the imagination..
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will upon the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
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On July 23, 2019, Trump said this: "I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."😲
This is clearly a man who sees himself as a dictator. Since his campaign, Trump has been trying to tell us that he doesn't believe in democracy or our Constitution. He said it when he bragged about shooting someone on 5th Ave. He said it when he bragged about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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When Trump said "stop the steal" it was code word for his followers to "start the steal."
DJT sat in the White House, and watched theVio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
AndVio.lence was the only option they had left. DJT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, theViolence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
On January 6, Capitol Hill Police Officers stopped the steal that Trump had planned for that day. And we as a nation, owe them a debt of gratitude.
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
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The wheels have fallen off Republican claims (LIES) that Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating increased growth and government revenues over the next decade. Reminds me of Cheney's claim that the Iraq war would pay for itself. Republican voters fell for that one too.
“Not only will this tax plan pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” Treasury Sec Steven Mnuchin famously boasted (LIED) in September 2017.
The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time last year, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American.
The Treasury Department reported the debt hit $22.012 trillion, a jump of more than $30 billion in just this month.
The national debt has been rising at a faster rate following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax-cut package after a little more than a year. The nation has added more than $1 trillion in debt in the last 11 months alone.
Trump has quickened the rate at which the debt is growing by widening the deficit to finance his $1.5 trillion package of sweeping tax cuts for himself, his wealthy friends, big banks, and corporations.
Trump promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves by spurring on economic activity, but revenues have since stalled. Federal spending by the Trump administration is around 6.6 percent higher than it was before. In 2017, the national debt grew by 4 percent, according to CBO data, which excludes intragovernmental holdings. By the following year, Trump's second in charge, this had accelerated to 7 percent.
It's a similar story with the deficit. When Trump was elected in 2016, the size of the deficit measured as a portion of GDP was 3.2 percent. By the end of 2018 this had increased to 3.9 percent. The deficit is expected to hit 4.2 percent in 2019. It is on course to reach a nominal value of $1 trillion by the end of the year.
That increase comes despite the economy doing well, so yes, it can be attributed directly to his tax cuts for the wealthy, which clearly aren't paying for themselves, as most professional economists warned. Trump's tax cuts was nothing more than corporate welfare, OR, a tax cut for the swamp.
Trump thinks about the national debt as he does his own personal debt. A 2016 Fortune magazine analysis revealed Trump's business is $1.11 billion in debt. That includes $846 million owed on five properties. This is not surprising considering that Trump famously bragged about being the "King of Debt" along with the fact that Trump has filed for bankruptcy 6 times, and has relied on Saudi Royals, and Russian Oligarchs to come to his rescue and bail him out numerous times over the years.
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Someone should tell Trump that the cameras aren't responsible for the words that come out of his mouth. The same way the mirror isn't responsible for the ridiculous looking face he sees when he looks into one.
Trump said he takes no responsibility for a jump in calls concerning the misuse of disinfectants after he dangerously suggested last week about injecting them as a treatment for coronavirus.
Trump:"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute," Trump said. "And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that."
When the "stable genius" was asked about reports of an increase in people misusing disinfectants, Trump answered: "I can't imagine why." 😲
When pressed about whether he takes any responsibility, Trump said, "No, I don't."😲
In the days following Trump's speculation about disinfectants, states across the country starting receiving higher than usual calls about exposure to Lysol, bleacha, and cases about exposures to other household cleaners."
In Illinois, the Public Health Director citing a rise in calls specified two recent examples of cleaning agents being misused: "the use of a detergent solution for a sinus rinse and gargling with a bleach and mouthwash mixture in an attempt to kill coronavirus."
Trump: "I take credit for everything, and responsibility for nothing. It's the con-man's creed."
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A citizens arrest for what exactly? What crime did he see him commit?
The sad truth is that theseFascistsTruly believe that Trump has given them the green light to act on their worst impulses.
Look at the guy from Charlottesville whoPlowed his car into a crowd of people. He did that because he thought it would please Trump. And it probably did.
Now he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison.
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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In 2007, Trump sued reporter Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth.
The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times. The lies Trump told were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
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Trump has bragged time and time again about only picking the very best people for his administration. Trump also said the same thing about Trump University. He bragged that he hand-picked only the best to teach at Trump University. But dozens of those he picked had checkered pasts, including serious financial problems and even convictions for cocaine trafficking and child molestation. The lawsuit against Trump found that he and his fake real-estate seminars were a massive fraud, designed to "upsell" students into buying course packages costing as much as $35,000. Many of those hired to teach did not have college degrees and were not licensed to broker real estate. At least four had felony convictions.
Ron P. Broussard Jr. was hired to the Trump University staff in 2007, even though he was never licensed as a real estate agent or broker, Broussard was listed as "staff" or "coordinator" for at least five Trump seminars titled "Fast Track to Foreclosure." Records show the former Army sergeant was convicted at court-martial in 1994 for indecent acts with a child. The child was an 8 year old daughter of a fellow soldier. He served five years in the military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. He's currently a registered sex offender.
Timothy C. Gorsline taught at least eight Trump University seminars in 2008 He pleaded no contest a decade earlier to felony cocaine possession, according to an electronic database of Florida court records. Copies of Gorsline's resume at Trump University showed that when asked if he had been convicted of a felony, Gorsline marked an X indicating "Yes."
Damian D. Pell, who helped teach at least 23 Trump University seminars from 2008 to 2010, pleaded guilty in Florida to a felony charge of trafficking cocaine. Court and arrest records show that Pell's car was pulled over by Sheriff's deputies in June 1999. Authorities recovered 62 grams of powder cocaine from his car, and 1,200 grams in a subsequent search of his home — a haul with a street value in excess of $154,000.
Spencer J. Raffel, who staffed a Trump University event in 2008, had a felony conviction in FL for grand theft, according to court records. He was sentenced to serve three years of probation in 1989. Court records also showed that Raffel, 52, had a multi-decade history of failing to pay debts, including defaulting on real estate loans, during the same period he was helping teach students how to profit from properties in foreclosure.😲
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued in 2013, alleging that the university was a "fraud from beginning to end," geared toward pressuring students into buying ever more expensive seminars, course materials and mentoring services of little educational value. Regulators say Trump University staff often targeted senior citizens or those already in dire financial straits, encouraging them to max out their credit cards to pay for classes they couldn't afford.
In his 2005 video, Trump said his hand-picked instructors would give his students a better education than top-level university business schools.
"Honestly, if you don't learn from them, you don't learn from me. If you don't learn from the people we're going to be putting forward — these are all people that are hand-picked by me — then you're not going to make it in terms of the world of success," Trump said.
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The witnesses against Paxton were some of his closest friends, associates, employees and appointees. They were all Republicans. The vote in the Texas House to impeach was overwhelming. But Paxton has shown that he is willing to abuse his power and do favors for his friends and political allies, and that is something 16 Texas Senators value highly in their AG.
Paxton faced a laundry list of charges largely centered around using his office to do political and legal favors for donors, obstructing federal investigations, hiring unqualified outside counsel to carry out his wishes, and seeking to involve some of the top officials in his office in his schemes. Not only did some of his most loyal appointees and friends refuse to go along with his various corrupt schemes, they also reported Paxton to the FBI and testified against him in the impeachment trial.
The most salacious part of the charges was Paxton's long-term affair with a woman while portraying himself as a conservative, christian "family values" politician. What made that part of the case even more compelling was that Paxton's wife was a State Senator sitting on his impeachment jury. A House impeachment manager previously detailed how Paxton used his office to get his mistress a job so she could be closer to him, and had a contractor install a $20,000 granite countertop in his kitchen while being paid by Nate Paul, who was bribing Paxton for a variety of political and legal favors.
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Trump says that Cohen isn't a smart person. Yet he made Cohen his personal lawyer for years. Who's the dummy now?😂😂 Trump is such a terrible liar. You'd think he would be good at it by now.
A letter of intent forwarded by Russian-born businessman Felix Sater to the Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, outlines the terms of a licensing agreement to purchase property to build a "Trump World Tower Moscow."
Sater sent the letter of intent - dated October 13, 2015, and signed by a Russian investor named Andrey Rozov - to Cohen for then-candidate Donald Trump's signature.
Emails exchanged between Cohen and Sater - who have known each other since they were teenagers - weeks later indicated that they were preparing to celebrate not only Trump's election victory, but also the potential Russia deal.
Sater boasted of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the emails, which were obtained by The New York Times, telling Cohen that he would "get all of Putins team to buy in" on the Moscow deal.
Slater email to Cohen: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," Sater wrote, . "I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected."
Two months later, Cohen emailed Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, asking for his "assistance" in pushing the deal through, according to emails submitted to congressional investigators
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Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath.
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, Navarro, Weisselberg, etc). The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all of the boxes.
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According to republicans, we have two different constitutions. There's the Constitution that was created by our Founding Fathers -- the one we're all familiar with, and then there's the "alternative" constitution, that was apparently created the day that Trump was sworn into office. According to republicans, this "alternative" constitution says that Trunp is above the law, and he can literally do whatever he wants, without consequences, and without ever being held accountable.
"I pledge allegiance, to Lord King Donald Trump, of the Dystopian States of America, and to the monarchy for which he stands, one ruler, the chosen God, with oppression and subjugation for all."
---The GOP MAGA
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Steve Bannon once said proudly: “I am a Leninist.” Bannon said that Lenin wanted to destroy the Russian state (which was true) and that he had the same goals for Amerca. “I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment" Bannon said.
From the look of Trump’s time in White House, Bannon installed a bevy of Leninist political tactics that could have come straight from the Bolshevik leader’s playbook..
Two days after Lenin seized power in Russia a century ago, he began an assault on the free press – and his successors in the USSR did not let up for the next 70 years. Putin is literally following in Lenin's footsteps, and Trump would love to follow in Putin's footsteps.
Three days after Trump’s inauguration Bannon told the NYT: “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen … I want you to quote this. "The media here is the opposition party." This was the beginning of Trump's war on the free press, which is a must for any demagogue.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon in March of last year, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution.
Since information from the press can undermine a dictator's spell over his cultists, they will often attack and demonized the free press. They will usually claim that the media can't be trusted. They have even called out for violence against news outlets that oppose them, claiming that the press is part of a deep state conspiracy against them, or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get him. No dictator can survive in a country that has a free press. This fact was not lost on Lenin, and neither is that fact lost on Trump. The truth has been, and will always be, Trump's nemesis
Bannon helped to creat the hate-filled language of alt-right politics, which is decidedly Leninist in tone. Above all, Lenin needed to invent enemies he had to be seen to defeat. In post- revolutionary Russia it was the “elite” a word Lenin used frequently. And he despised so-called “experts” who claimed a monopoly of knowledge. He often said that a worker with five days’ training could run a government department. He scapegoated opponents and labelled them “enemies of the people”.
Lenin abolished the existing legal system and started afresh. Within a few weeks his regime closed down the first freely elected parliament in Russia’s history – and the Soviets never allowed another one. It would be wrong to assume that the next step for Trump is the abolition of Congress, or the construction of labour camps. But the unprecedented war by tweet between Trump and the judiciary over his executive orders has real echoes of Lenin.
Lenin would very likely have identified 2016 as a revolutionary moment. He matters today not because of his flawed and bloody answers, but because he was asking questions similar to those we are asking today. In his quest for power, Lenin promised people anything and everything. He offered simple solutions to complex issues. He lied unashamedly. He justified himself on the basis that winning meant everything; the ends justified the means. Lenin was the godfather of post-truth politics. Powerful people have learned depressing lessons from him. In order for our democratic republic to survive, Trump must be defeated.
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Trump is the most prolific pathological liar in American history.
A pathological liar is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way.
Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies.
Pathological liars are great storytellers. Their lies tend to be very detailed and colorful.
Even though obviously over-the-top, the pathological liar may be very convincing.
Along with being made the hero or victim in their stories, pathological liars tend to tell lies that seem to be geared at gaining admiration, sympathy, or acceptance by others.
A pathological liar tells lies and stories that fall somewhere between conscious lying and delusion. They sometimes believe their own lies. It’s difficult to know how to deal with a pathological liar who may not always be conscious of their lying. Some do it so often that experts believe they may not know the difference between fact and fiction after some time.
When asked questions, they may speak a lot without ever being specific or answering the question.
Most people lie at one time or another. Previous research has suggested that we tell an average of 1.65 lies every day. Most of these lies are what are considered “white lies.”
Pathological lies, on the other hand, are told consistently and habitually. They tend to appear pointless and often continuous. Trump tells at least 12 lies per day.😲
Identifying a pathological liar isn’t always easy. The following are some signs to help identify a pathological liar:
They often talk about experiences and accomplishments in which they appear heroic, they're also the victim in many of their stories, often looking for sympathy, their stories tend to be elaborate and very detailed, they respond elaborately and quickly to questions, but the responses are usually vague and don’t provide an answer to the question, they may have different versions of the same story, which stems from forgetting previous details, or previous lies..
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Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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There will be no guilt, no apologies, no shame, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath like Trump.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a narcissistic sociopath.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired..
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises..
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Bannon, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way...
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities..
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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"What have you got to lose" Trump said.
"We've got it under control" he said.
"It will disappear like magic" he said.
"It's just one person coming in from China" he said.
Trump should be sealed in a glass case that reads, BREAK ONLY IF YOU WANT TO: destroy a business, destroy your country, file for bankruptcy, launder Russian money, start a fake charity foundation, betray your country, or exacerbate a national pandemic.
The Spanish flu came in two waves. The first wave of infections came in March of 1918, and wasn't as deadly or widespread, but that was just the calm before the storm. A second and more deadly mutated wave came back in the fall, and it was lethal enough to take the life of a perfectly healthy man in his twenties within 24 hours of showing symptoms. It infected at least 500 million people, and took at least 50 million lives. In the US alone, the virus took 195 thousand lives, in just October alone.
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 100 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences.
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
May 6: Following a concerted push to reopen schools beginning in late April, Trump lied again when he suggested that children aren't susceptible to the coronavirus.
Trump: "We realize how strong children are, right? Their immune system is maybe a little bit different. Maybe it's just a little bit stronger, or maybe it's a lot stronger," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American was NOT true. And at least 100 thousand American citizens have died because of his lies.
Allan Lichtman, the historian known for accurately predicting presidential elections, said that Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history..
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Russian GRU officers accused of hacking the Dem Congressional Campaign Committee and the DNC used cryptocurrency to pay for the necessary computer infrastructure. Mueller’s indictment found that the defendants “conspired to launder the equivalent of more than $95,000 through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity” of bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies. The GRU hackers used hundreds of different email accounts to purchase servers to avoid creating a “centralized paper trail.” They enlisted several third parties that “facilitated layered transactions through digital currency exchange platforms, providing heightened anonymity.” The extensive laundering of the funds was intended not only to further a crime, but also to obscure the origin of the funds, providing the operation a degree of plausible deniability.
A Russian American energy tycoon—who boasted to a Kremlin official in July 2016 of being “actively involved in Trump’s election campaign”—donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Victory fund. And a company affiliated with a sanctioned Russian oligarch paid $1 million to Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, for unspecified services after the election. These and other transactions examined throughout the report establish that, during the campaign and presidential transition, Trump had several compromising financial entanglements with actors representing a hostile foreign power.
Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov transferred $20 million to an American bank account just days after the secret Trump Tower meeting that he organized between Don Jr and Trump campaign officials, including Manafort, Kushner, and a Russian government attorney. Hackers, troll farms, and spies cannot operate without money. Following the money trail helps investigators discover who is funding these entities.
Former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak is a key figure in the collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. He held a series of secret meetings with Trump campaign officials, including Kushner, Sessions, Michael Flynn, former Trump adviser Carter Page, and former Trump adviser J.D. Gordon. During one private meeting Kislyak held with Kushner and Flynn, they discussed the possibility of establishing a secure communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. During the transition, Kislyak had also brokered a meeting between Kushner and the head of a sanctioned Russian government bank, Vnesheconombank. The bank maintains the meeting was about Kushner’s family business.
On top of these controversial meetings, Kislyak’s embassy also carried out several suspicious transactions that U.S. bank investigators have flagged to U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
First, in November 2016—10 days after Trump won the presidency—the Russian government wired Kislyak a lump-sum payment of $120,000. Both the timing and the amount raise questions, as the sum was more than twice Kislyak’s normal salary payments.
Second, the Russian Embassy attempted to make a $150,000 cash withdrawal just a few days after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. The bank reportedly blocked this transaction, because it questioned the embassy’s justification that it needed cash in Washington to pay employees who had already returned to Russia.
Third, the embassy paid $2.4 million to a small construction company controlled by a Russian immigrant in the United States, who was reportedly not equipped to carry out the work commissioned. What’s more, the bank investigators found that the money was “cashed quickly or wired to other accounts.” Manafort’s trial showed, small vendors can be instrumental, intentionally or not, to laundering large amounts of money from abroad.
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JimJones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"He was a master of manipulation, but you saw him with this dark hair, the sunglasses, and the way that he spoke -- he was a great orator -- and it moved you, it inspired you because he was so passionate. And so I was just enthralled," said former Peoples Temple member Leslie Wagner-Wilson.
As time went on, former members said Jones became more extreme.
In 1974, Jones leased more than 3,800 acres of isolated land in the jungle from the Guyanese government. By 1978, nearly 1,000 followers had moved to the Guyana compound. Having been forced to give up their passports and money upon arrival, some former members said they were cut off from the outside world.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
A cult environment like "Qanon" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing." The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
The 9/11hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, they also received funding from Saudi Arabia to plan their attack while they were here in America. But none of that mattered to Trump and Jared. His first trip abroad as President was to Saudi Arabia, so he could do the sword dance, and kiss the rings of his Saudi benefactors.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violated the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expected a return on their investment. Protection being one of the things the Saudis expected in return, and they received that protection from Trump and Jared.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
After Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and Saudi lobbying groups became lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of 2018, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Trump is clearly worried that Flynn and Stone won't be able to do a long stretch in prison, and will decide to cut a deal instead, and reveal all of Trump's crimes. Stone could corroborate Rick Gates' testimony that Trump did in fact collude with WikiLeaks.
Flynn's crimes and betrayal have been well reported and documented. In a now infamous video, Flynn is seen applauding and toasting Putin, Trump's benefactor, and a known tyrant. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 Moscow dinner Flynn attended was swarming with ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs.
In the video of a December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin's propaganda network RT at a Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who would later become Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's campaign when he was being paid $45,000 by Putin to speak at the gala.
"It is not a coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin," said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin.
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats. Like Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
Like Trump, Flynn proudly betrayed his country, and they both did it for nothing more than greed.
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boopsynana
Trump's white house is operating the same as Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.. It's nonstop chaos, pandemonium, betrayal, back-stabbing, buffoonery, thievery, treason, upheaval, nepotism, cronyism, bedlam, and sanctioned lawlessness. And they are all swimming in a sea of moral turpitude.
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Chris Christie volunteered himself for the job of running Trump's presidential transition team. But when he went to see Trump about it, Trump said he didn’t want a presidential transition team. Why did anyone need to plan anything before he actually became president? It’s legally required, said Christie. Trump asked where the money was going to come from to pay for the transition team. Christie explained that Trump could either pay for it himself or take it out of campaign funds. Trump didn’t want to pay for it himself. He didn’t want to take it out of campaign funds, either, but he agreed, grudgingly, that Christie should go ahead and raise a separate fund to pay for his transition team. “But not too much!” he said.
The transition team now moved into an office in downtown Washington DC, and went looking for people to occupy the top 500 jobs in the federal government. They needed to fill all the cabinet positions, of course, but also a whole bunch of others that no one in the Trump campaign even knew existed.
The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trump’s very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence, many floors above. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my phucking money! What the phuck is this?
Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my phucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain to Trump federal law. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: phuck the law. I don’t give a phuck about the law. I want my phucking money. Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn’t have both his money and a transition.
Shut it down, said Trump. Shut down the transition. Bannon was finally able to convince Trump why he needed a transition team. So Christie went back to preparing for a Trump administration. He tried to stay out of the news, but that proved difficult. From time to time, Trump would see something in the paper about Christie’s fundraising and become upset all over again. The money that people donated to his campaign Trump considered, effectively, his own.
Christie would eventually be fired by Jared Kushner. But it wasn’t just Christie who would be fired. It was the entire transition team – although no one ever told them so directly. As Nancy Cook reported in Politico, Bannon visited the transition headquarters a few days after he had given Christie the news, and made a show of tossing the work the people there had done for Trump into the bin. Trump was going to handle the transition more or less by himself. Not even Bannon thought this was a good idea. “I was phucking nervous as sh*t,” Bannon later told friends. “I go, ‘Holy phuck, this guy Trump doesn’t know anything. And he doesn’t give a sh*t.’”
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Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Cheating and lying are his only tools for survival. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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Adam Schiff has experience with prosecuting, and putting away traitors to this country.
In the late 80s and early 90s as a District Attorney in Cali, Adam Schiff successfully prosecuted the case of a Russian spy named Svetlana Ogorodonikov, and an FBI agent named Richard W. Miller, who was seduced by Svetlana Ogorodnikov, and agreed to sell classified information to the Soviet government. Eventually, this man—Richard W. Miller, a 47-year-old Los Angeles-based counterintelligence agent on the Bureau’s Soviet squad—would become the first FBI agent ever convicted of espionage.
Agent Miller would eventually agree to turnover highly classified information to the Russians for large sums of money. It took Schiff 3 trails, and 6 years, but he eventually won the conviction against Agent Miller and the Russian spy, and they were both sent to prison.
During those years, Schiff stated that he learned a lot about Russian tradecraft, and how the Russians operate, who they target, and the vulnerabilities they look for. During his work on the case, Schiff was also in frequent contact with FBI agents investigating Miller—giving the future congressman an intimate look at, and respect for, the Bureau’s counterintelligence mission against threats from from Russia, and it's mission of protecting the national security of this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
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Trump can't be bothered with doing his job when there's still so much more grifting left to do before November.
last year we learned that on Don the Con's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to his failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland, for the sole purpose of lining his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that DJT wanted to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
Now we've recently learned that DJT asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland..
This is a level of corruption that we have never seen before, or even imagined. Its naked, gratuitous, egregious and overt corruption on steroids. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, for Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history. T.rump's face belongs on the Mt Rushmore of corruption....all by itself. At this point, they should just wrap the entire White House with yellow police tape, and declare the whole thing a crime scene.
And win or lose in November, one thing won’t change for Trump: Over the next few years, he must settle a series of TREMENDOUSLY large debts. Before the end of a theoretical second term, his company will have to refinance—or, in a far less likely scenario, pay off—nearly a half-billion dollars in loans. These debts are maturing at the worst time for Trump, whose roach hotels and resorts have been plagued by declining revenues. And that was before the pandemic pummeled the hospitality industry.
On financial disclosure forms, Trump has reported holding 14 loans on 12 properties. At least six of those loans, representing about $479 million in debt, are due over the next four years. Some are guaranteed by Trump himself, meaning a creditor could come after his personal—not corporate—assets if he defaults. If he holds onto the White House, the refinancing of these debts could take his conflicts of interest to absurd new heights. How will the public know if these deals are on the up and up or whether Trump is receiving sweetheart terms from a bank that wants an in with the president? And what might a lender desire in return for helping Trump out of a financial jam?
Trump’s biggest creditor is Deutsche Bank, the bank preferred by Russian mobsters and Oligarchs. In the late 1990s, Deutsche Bank took a gamble on Trump, whose history of bankruptcies made him untouchable by most other lenders. Deutsche’s commercial lending division learned the hard way one reason why other banks wouldn't touch Trump with a ten-foot pole: If pushed by his creditors on payments, Trump shoved back. In 2008, after he defaulted on a loan for his Chicago hotel and condo development, he filed a multibillion-dollar suit accusing Deutsche and others of contributing to the recent financial meltdown, which he blamed for his inability to repay the loan.
Nevertheless, Deutsche’s private banking division, which caters to wealthy clientele, continued to lend to Trump, giving him $125 million, spread over two loans, to finance the purchase and renovation of his Doral golf resort in 2012. Both are floating rate loans, meaning the interest rate fluctuates based on market conditions, which lending experts say usually indicates they are interest-only loans. If so, Trump probably hasn’t paid down much if any of the principal and will owe something close to the whole $125 million when the loans come due in 2023.
In 2014, Trump took out a separate floating loan from Deutsche’s private bank to bankroll the development of his luxury hotel in Washington, DC. The balance of this $170 million debt is payable in 2024. That year, Trump will also owe Deutsche between $25 million and $50 million in connection with his Chicago hotel and complex.
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I wish that there was a way we could somehow flatten the curve of Trump's lies, better known as Bull sht Mountain.
Trump is now bragging about the ratings of his daily live news conferences on the coronavirus, and suggested that the large viewer numbers — rather than the multiple lies he has told during them — are fueling discussions in the media about ending the practice of broadcasting them live and unfiltered.
Trump: “Because the ratings of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the NYT, the Lamestream Media is going crazy" Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. Apparently this is all a game to him.
What Trump's utterly oblivious, self-absorbed, Ineffectual pompous a$$ doesn't realize is that the American people aren't tuning in because of him, we are tuning in because we want to keep up-to-date on the coronavirus and the US’s policies on it. The American people are watching the press briefings to hear from the coronavirus task force, which includes top public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and others on the task force.
Trump has made dozens of false claims during the briefings, which have directly led to the loss of lives, including overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, to falsely saying that anyone who wants to be tested for coronavirus infections can be, to claiming that the coronavirus will magically disappear, to claiming that there are no shortages of coronavirus tests, to claiming that America has tested more people than any country in the world, to claiming that the coronavirus was no different than the flu.
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The January 27 transcript of the phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto has insisted publicly his country will not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full.
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a deranged tyrant.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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Two days after the insurrection on Capitol Hill, Trump sent what turned out to be his last ever tweet before he was hit with a permanent ban for inciting the insurrection. “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20,” he wrote on Jan. 8. But, according to a new book, that wasn’t entirely Trump’s own decision. Jonathan Karl writes in Betrayal, that Trump only announced that he wouldn’t attend the inauguration after he caught wind of Mitch McConnell’s plan to disinvite him from the event. “McConnell felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” Karl reported. “McConnell wanted to get a letter together from the top four congressional leaders informing Trump that he had been disinvited.” However, before the letter could be written, Kevin McCarthy reportedly blabbed about the plan to Trump, who then sent his final tweet to make it appear as if he had made the call. 🤣
Ali Alexander, formerly, known as Ali Akbar, the Stop the Steal organizer who claimed three sitting U.S. congressmen helped plan the rally that came before the insurrection, has been subpoenaed by the January 6th Select Committee along with fellow rally organizer Nathan Martin. The committee is seeking records from Stop the Steal LLC in addition to Alexander and Martin.
Alexander bragged on live streams last December that he and Trump-supporting Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) were working on a plot to exert “maximum pressure on Congress” during the vote to certify Biden’s electoral victory. The day before the attack, Alexander led a group in a “victory” or “death” chant at a rally, the committee said. During the events at the Capitol, Alexander filmed a video of himself looking over the crowd from afar and saying, “I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this.”
Following the events of January 6th, Alexander went into hiding and frantically tried to erase his affiliation with numerous Stop the Steal web domains he owned.
Alexander and his cohort, Brandan Straka were also both named in a lawsuit brought by the Capitol Police harmed by the January 6 insurrection. According to Damon Hewitt, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, “As this lawsuit makes clear, the January 6 insurrection was not just an attack on individuals, but an attack on democracy itself. It was a blatant attempt to stifle the votes and voices of millions of Americans."
In the suit, Alexander, along with other defendants, are accused of “violating two provisions of the federal KuKluxKlan Act, which forbids conspiracies to use force, intimidation, and threats to prevent federal officers from doing their jobs or to injure them in the course of their work.”
Alexander has made some changes in his life in order to hide his past. Previously, he went by Ali Akbar. And a search of that named shows he was found guilty on several charges to prior changing his name.
Court documents indicate he found trouble with the law back in 2007 when he pled guilty to a felony property theft charge out of Fort Worth, Texas. He was sentenced to 12 months probation, according to documents. Again, in 2008, Alexander pled guilty to a credit card abuse felony charge out of Texas.
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If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying in the Senate trial, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then surely these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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"I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion, reminded soldiers that ‘TheNazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine Corps General James Mattis,
June 3, 2020
Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful
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The seeds for the failure of Trump's presidency were planted before Trump was even sworn in, and he planted them himself. With his own hands, Trump sowed the seeds of ineptitude, indifference, and criminal incompetence, that have now defined his presidency.
From The Guardian:
Chris Christie volunteered himself for the job of running Trump's presidential transition team. But when he went to see Trump about it, Trump said he didn’t want a presidential transition team. Why did anyone need to plan anything before he actually became president? It’s legally required, said Christie. Trump asked where the money was going to come from to pay for the transition team. Christie explained that Trump could either pay for it himself or take it out of campaign funds. Trump didn’t want to pay for it himself. He didn’t want to take it out of campaign funds, either, but he agreed, grudgingly, that Christie should go ahead and raise a separate fund to pay for his transition team. “But not too much!” he said.
The transition team now moved into an office in downtown Washington DC, and went looking for people to occupy the top 500 jobs in the federal government. They needed to fill all the cabinet positions, of course, but also a whole bunch of others that no one in the Trump campaign even knew existed.
The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trump’s very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence, many floors above. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my phucking money! What the phuck is this?
Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my phucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain federal law to man-baby. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: phuck the law. I don’t give a phuck about the law. I want my phucking money. Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn’t have both his money and a transition.
Shut it down, said Trump. Shut down the transition. Bannon was finally able to convince man-baby why he needed a transition team. So Christie went back to preparing for a Trump administration. He tried to stay out of the news, but that proved difficult. From time to time, Trump would see something in the paper about Christie’s fundraising and become upset all over again. The money that people donated to his campaign Trump considered, effectively, his own money.
Christie would eventually be fired by Jared Kushner. Kushner’s role in his sacking was confirmed to him by Steve Bannon. But it wasn’t just Christie who would be fired. It was the entire transition team – although no one ever told them so directly. As Nancy Cook reported in Politico, Bannon visited the transition headquarters a few days after he had given Christie the news, and made a show of tossing the work the people there had done for Trump into the bin. Trump was going to handle the transition more or less by himself. Not even Bannon thought this was a good idea. “I was phucking nervous as sh*t,” Bannon later told friends. “I go, ‘Holy phuck, this guy Trump doesn’t know anything. And he doesn’t give a sh*t.’”
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Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing.
The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
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These protesters are the most unpatriotic people in America. And what's worse, there is nothing grassroots about these protests at all. It may look homegrown, but it's not. They are being funded, guided and created by billion dollar corporations, and the conservative political groups that they own. But let's be clear, these protests are small, and they represent a very small minority of people in this country.
The protesters that show up armed to the teeth and dressed like insurgents should be treated for what they are....terrorists. They are truly the dregs of humanity. Like Trump, most of them have never served in the military, and they never will. Because they're too fat, too lazy, too selfish, too incompetent, and too cowardly. But that won't stop them from dressing up like insurgents and showing off their weapons of mass carnage, and stumbling around in public wrapped in a cloak of phony patriotism.
Like Trump, these counterfeit patriots are indifferent to the harm, stress, and potential devastation they are placing on our medical infrastructure by helping to spread this virus. It's like their minds have been infected with some sort of mental virus that blocks out logic, reasoning and critical thinking. The concept of serving a cause greater than themselves is completely foreign to them. If they can't eat it, grope it, or shoot it, then they don't want it.
Do they really believe that the rest of America is out having a good time, and going about their normal lives? Do they believe that the more than 60 thousands families that have lost loved ones are enjoying themselves right now? Do they think the doctors, nurses and first responders who have been on the front lines of this battle since day one, and are now stretched to the breaking point, are out having a good time, and living a normal life? Our greatest generation from WW2 have to be spinning in their graves. I'm actually glad that most of them are not around to see this. The men and women of our greatest generation had true grit. These protesters are filled with true sh!t.
If they really want to protest something, they should be out protesting for more protective gear for nurses, doctors, and first responders. Or how about protesting for more testing nation wide. But once again, they're too selfish, and too unpatriotic. For once, they should try and consider all of these things, and reject the worst instincts of their human nature. And last but not least, they should for once give some consideration to growing the F. UP.
Marine veteran
Semper Fi..
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Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Medical experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see, comprehend, or care about the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
Except experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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The articles of impeachment against Traitor Trump..
ARTICLE I: ABUSE OF POWER
Using the powers of his high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage. President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official United States Government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of the investigations. President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit. In so doing, President Trump used the powers of the Presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process. He thus ignored and injured the interests of the Nation.
ARTICLE II: OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS
In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed—Donald J. Trump has directed the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its "sole Power of Impeachment". President Trump has abused the powers of the Presidency in a manner offensive to, and subversive of, the Constitution.
In the history of the Republic, no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate "high Crimes and Misdemeanors". This abuse of office served to cover up the President's own repeated misconduct and to seize and control the power of impeachment—and thus to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives.
In all of this, President Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
So shall it be written, so shall it be done..
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Nothing good has ever resulted from anything that Trump has ever touched or been involved with. He is void of any goodwill or human decency. Trump is a purely toxic, insidious and malevolent being, who constitutes a vile and malignant affliction on this country.
And now tyranny and fascism are on the march in America.
Make no mistake, this election is a choice between Trump and tyranny, or America.
MAKE A DECISION....
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
So...will we keep are constitutional republic, or will we lose it, and see it replaced with a monarchy? Will we still have a democracy, or will we be ruled by a tyrant without boundaries? These are the questions that will be on the ballot box in 2020. Because Trump and Republicans are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we as a people, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
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So Putin engaged in massive cyber attacks on our country, as well as placing bounties on the heads of our troops, and Trump's response was to reward Putin by inviting Russia back into the G-7. Trump should have been impeached for this as well.
Helsinki July 16, 2018:
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
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Gloria Hanes
Trump is NOT an excellent business man at all. He's a complete an utter fraud. And he always has been.
Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine. In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to abstract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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If Trump and his gang of henchmen thinks this is over, then they are sadly mistaken. Congress will be holding oversight committee hearings to get the testimonies of Bolton, Lev Parnas, and others. The truth about Graham, Pompeo, Mulvaney, Nunes, and Pence will all be revealed in the next coming weeks and months. Trump and republicans blocked witnesses and evidence from being introduced in the trial because they are clearly terrified of Americans learning the truth. Unfortunately for them, the truth is going to come out, one way or another.
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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@ivareskesner2019
The sad truth is that theseFascistsTruly believe that Trump has given them the green light to act on their worst impulses.
Look at the guy from Charlottesville whoPlowed his car into a crowd of people. He did that because he thought it would please Trump. And it probably did. Rittenhouse did what he did because he thought it please Trump and other like-mindedFascists. And it clearly did.
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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We already know that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. That's why he has fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These people will not tell him the truth. They will instead tell him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear are lies and false narratives.
Trump has lost all credibility with the American people the same way he lost credibility with American banks a long time ago. Trump's words have been weighed and measured, and have been found wanting......consistently.
It's times like this when America needs, and misses, the calm, collective, intuitive, informative, honest, and reassuring words of President Obama.
Our current president believes that windmills cause cancer. Let that sink in for a moment.
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This has absolutely nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Gosar and other Republicans are being deceptive when they say they're fighting for freedom of speech.
Republicans aren't fighting for their right to free speech. They're fighting for their "right" to make threats, and to
inciteViolence. They're fighting for their "right" to be cruel.
"This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Gary Cohn's email describes what it was like to work in Trump's dumpster fire of a white house before he finally had enough, and resigned as Trump's chief economic advisor in 2018.
"It’s worse than you can imagine.
An idi0t surrounded by clowns.
Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing.
He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.
And his staff is no better.
Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing.
Bannon is an arrogant pr'ck who thinks he’s smarter than he is.
Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits.
No one will survive the first year but his family.
I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I’m the only person there with a clue what he’s doing.
The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day.
I am in a constant state of shock and horror."
Gary Cohn lashed out at some of his former colleagues, charging in a radio interview that the U.S. is losing the trade war as administration officials pursue a strategy that hasn’t worked.
Cohn, who was Trump’s first director of the National Economic Council, specifically pointed his finger at Peter Navarro, who serves as director of the National Trade Council, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for drawing the country into a misdirected tariff battle.
“Tariffs don’t work. If anything, they hurt the economy because if you’re a typical American worker, you have a finite amount of income to spend. If you have to spend more on the necessity products that you need to live, you have less to spend on the services that you want to buy.”
Cohn said he also had several high-profile disagreements with the administration, including one point where he nearly resigned following Trump’s comments on the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
Among the other revelations from his time in the White House, Cohn said a tipping point for him leaving was a meeting Navarro and Ross secretly set up with heads of the steel and aluminum industry to notify them that the administration was planning to levy tariffs on imports of the metals.
“What happened in the White House is we got to a point, unfortunately, where one or two people decided that they were going to no longer be part of a process and a debate,” he said.
When asked to confirm if it was Navarro and Ross who set up the meeting, Cohn said, “Yes. Those are the two people. When the process breaks down, then you’re, sort of, in my mind, living in chaos. I don’t want to live in a chaotic organization.”
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Trump's own people informed him of an outbreak in Wuhan China as far back as February, but he refused to listen to his own intelligence agencies. The same way he refused to listen to them when they warned him about Russian cryber espionage and interference in our elections. He completely ignored them.
Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and they went unheeded..
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable..
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable...
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House.
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing. While in the real world, America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 15k deaths. Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world. I sh¡t thee nay.
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Conservatives don't actually believe in freedom or liberty. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and then going afterCivil liberties in the next.
Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Recently Captain Sully, the pilot who saved all 155 lives on board his flight, when he landed his plane on the Hudson River, announced that he would be voting BLUE 💙, for the 1st time this election.
Capt,Sully: “For the first 85 percent of my adult life, I was a registered Republican. But I have always voted as an American. And this critical Election Day, I will do so by voting for leaders committed to rebuilding out common values and not pandering to our basest impulses.”
Capt Sully said that he feels the current administration has fostered a culture of “fear, anger and hatred," He stated that “leaders must take responsibility and have a moral compass grounded in competence, integrity and concern for the greater good.”
“Many are cowardly, complicit enablers, acting against the interests of the United States, our allies and democracy; encouraging extremists at home and emboldening our adversaries abroad; and threatening the livability of our planet.”
The result, according to Capt Sully, is a “struggle for who and what we are as a people.” The former pilot feels that the country has lost “unit cohesion,” and that the very fabric of American society is being threatened by the current leaders of the country.
Well, if voting BLUE💙 is good enough for Captain Sully, a man who singlehandedly saved 155 lives, then it's certainly good enough for this Marine veteran. So BLUE it is!!!💙💙💙
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Several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017 — and Mueller is seeking to find out why. The tycoons were given “unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle”—and investigators in special council Robert Mueller’s probe are interested in their attendance at the parties.
Rick Gates was heavily involved in planning the inauguration, with a Yahoo News report in 2016calling him the “shadow chair” of the event. There have long been serious questions about the money behind Trump’s inauguration — and where, exactly, it all went. Trump’s inaugural committee raised an astonishing $106.7 million, double the previous record set by Obama’s 2009 inaugural. But what they did with it isn’t so clear. The chair of GW Bush’s 2nd inauguration, Greg Jenkins, said he was baffled. “Trump had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events that we had, and yet they raise at least twice as much as we did,” he said. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. Counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
Back in June ABC News reported that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.
It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. Mueller is exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration. Sometime around March of this year, Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg flew in to a NY on a private plane — and was met there by Mueller’s investigators, who questioned him and searched his electronic devices.
Vekselberg is the owner of the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with aluminum and oil interests, and is one of the richest people in Russia. His cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who runs a US company tied to Vekselberg’s company, donated $250,000. Intrater had also kicked in $35,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.
Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration together, and at the January 19 candlelight dinner, they were seated with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen.. Later that year, that company run by Intrater paid Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, $500,000 — for, they claimed, real estate advice. A 1million inaugural donation came from Leonard Blavatnik, who runs a company called Access Industries. Blavatnik was on the guest list for the January 19 candlelight dinner too.
Blavatnik is a Soviet-born, UK-based billionaire who is a US citizen. He is also partnered with Vekselberg, in Russia’s aluminum industry. Together, they built the largest aluminum company in Russia by merging with Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Deripaska is also a player in Mueller's investigation — he employed Manafort, and Manafort tried to get in touch with him during 2016.
Alexander Mashkevitch, a Kazakh mining billionaire, was on the guest list for the “candlelight dinner,” and happens to have been in the Seychelles around the same time as Erik Prince.
And Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended Don Jr’s infamous Trump Tower meeting, were in town too — they attended an inauguration night party thrown by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who’s widely viewed as the biggest supporter of Putin’s regime in Congress.
Several people involved in previous inaugurations were quoted expressing puzzlement over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent over $100 million for what they got. But if there is anyone who might know where much of the money went, it is Rick Gates, who is now working with Mueller's investigation. So whatever Rick Gates knows, Robert Mueller now knows too.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults like Trumpism.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong for leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible..
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters.
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If Trump and republicans withhold witnesses and evidence that are directly connected to what Trump is being accused of, it will be clear to the world that the Senate trial is an egregious sham. It will go down as the biggest cover-up in American history.
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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If Trump and republicans withhold witnesses and evidence that are directly connected to what Trump is being accused of, it will be clear to the world that the Senate trial is an egregious sham. It will go down as the biggest cover-up in American history.
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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An AtlantaBlack barbershop owner said on Friday that he lost business after he was misled into hosting a campaign event for former President Trump.
On Wednesday, the former president's surrogates held an event, the BlackAmerican Business Leader Barbershop Roundtable, at Rocky's Barbershop that included a surprise phone call from Trump himself.
According to local news outlet 11 Alive, the number of customers flowing into Rocky's Barbershop has dwindled since the campaign event.
The shop's owner, Rocky Jones, told the outlet in an article published Friday, "We had some calls Thursday. We definitely got some calls, someBacklash, someAngry people that don't know me and I have to deal with that."
Jones said that he has "no involvement in politics" and added that he was under the assumption that the event was meant to be a forum for smallBlack-owned businesses.
Jones explained how the event came to be: it started with a text message, followed by a phone call while he was out of the country. He agreed to host what he thought would be a small, private gathering forBlack small business owners.
Instead, the event turned into a crowded affair, with Trump surrogates like Ben Carson and a surprise phone call from Trump himself.
"I thought it was going to be something real private," he said. "I'm thinking aboutBlack businesses in Atlanta, smallBlack businesses in Atlanta. And I'm like, 'Ok, so when are we gonna start talking about this?'"
When Trump phoned into the event, Jones was shocked. "I'm like, why is the ex-president calling somebody in my barbershop? This has nothing to do with smallBlack businesses," he said.
Meanwhile, Jones told another local news outlet, Atlanta News First, that he feels like he's "been betrayed" by how the event turned out. He also claimed that no one mentioned it would be a political event when coordinating it and that he never spoke to a Trump campaign representative.
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Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
After Trump had cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 105,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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It's been said, that doing the right thing, even when no one is watching you, is a good test of someone's integrity, and character. Unfortunately, Republican members of Congress, can't even do the right thing, even when the entire world is watching them.
They simply don't care.
Why is it that we never see Republicans writing or passing legislation that will actually help the American people?
It's because instead of doing the job that they're being paid with taxpayer money to do, they choose to spend their time gerrymandering districts, suppressing
your right to vote, issuing threats ofViolence, and plotting coups to overturn elections and bring down our democratic republic.
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Prosecutors say that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns and the candidates’ governments.”
How can Trump say that he doesn't know Parnas, when there are soooo many pictures and videos of then together?
Parnas was a Trump loyalist, and was working for Trump alongside Rudy for more than a year, and now all of a sudden, Trump doesn't know him, and republicans are attacking him? Their attacks against Parnas become even more dubious whenever we see all the pictures of him hanging out at Mar-a-Lago and Trump's hotel with Rudy, Trump, McCarthy, Meadows, Graham, Pence, Eric and Don Jr, Kellyanne, Sarah Sanders, and the list goes on and on. Parnas was a permanent fixture at Trump's properties.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
Trump cared about AshliBabbitt and the other insurrectionists about as much as JimJones cared about his flock.
So Trump tells hisCult to storm the Capitol, which they do. He also tells them to fight like he//, which they do. He even said he'd be there with them, which he wasn't. And then he refuses to pardon any of them. I mean It's almost as if he set them up. 🤣
And whileBabbitt was gettingShot in theNeck, while wearing a flag emblazoned with the name of a man who couldn't care less about her, that very same man was back in the White House, watching with glee as the chaos andViolence that he himself incited unfolded on live TV. And he reveled in it.
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Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, Israeli intelligence officials gathered at CIA headquarters, where they were told something astonishing: Russia, the agency believed, had “leverages of pressure” over the incoming president. Therefore, the agency advised the Israelis to consider the possibility that Trump might pass their secrets on to Russia. The Israelis dismissed the warning as outlandish. Who could believe that the world’s most powerful country was about to hand its presidency to a Russian dupe? That the United States government had, essentially, fallen?
A few months later, Trump invited Russian diplomats into the Oval Office. He boasted to them that he had fired “nut job” James Comey. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” At the same meeting, Trump passed on to the Russians a highly sensitive intelligence secret Israel had captured from a valuable source inside ISIS. It was the precise danger Israel had been cautioned about..
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Saudi Prince Mohammed bragged to confidants and to the Emirati Crown Prince, that he has Jared Kushner in his pocket.
Jared Kushner made an unannounced trip to Riyad in October of last year, catching some intelligence officials off guard. Kushner and Saudi Royal Prince Mohammed are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy.
After the meeting, Crown Prince Mohammed told confidants that he has Kushner in jis pockets, and that Kushner had discussed the names of Saudis disloyal to the crown prince, according to three sources who have been in contact with members of the Saudi and Emirati royal families since crackdown ordered by the Prince Mohammed.
Kushner had access to Trump's daily security briefing, a highly sensitive intelligence update meant to be seen by only the president and his top advisers, before being stripped of his top-secret security clearance.
Before losing that access, Kushner was particularly interested in information about the Middle East, citing several former White House and US government officials.
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"Ignorance is Strength." This is the official moto of the cult known as Trumpism. We know this because of Trump sycophants like Kellyanne, who promotes the idea of "alternative facts." And Rudy Giuliani, who famously declared that " truth isn't truth."
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party (Trump) is always right.”
-- George Orwell, 1984
In George Orwell's novel 1984, a Thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding beliefs that oppose or question the Party. Thoughtcrime is thinking of anything that the Thought Police and the Party deem is illegal. Doubting the party line, or thinking anything contrary to the Party's message.
Within Trump's cult, he has a name for those who commit "Thoughtcrimes" against him, like questioning his actions, and calling out his lies, Trump refers to these people as "Never Trumpers."
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The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
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Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
After Trump had cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 105,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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The number one objective in 2020, is to remove Trump from office. The 2nd objective, is to remove Trump from office. The 3rd objective, is to remove Trump from office. If we the people, fail to achieve any of those objectives. America will officially become a failed dystopian state.
If we the people, fail to remove the existential threat to America from the Oval Office, it will mean the beginning of the end of our democracy, and the end of our 243 year old constitutional Republic. We will have traded those 243 years away for a career criminal, con-man, traitor, and tyrant. It would also mean watching Trump do the unthinkable, placing another one of his unqualified cultist on the Supreme Court. This will easily be the most important and consequential election in our lifetime, so we can't F this one up, because there won't be any "do-overs."
VOTE 💙 NO MATTER WHO!!! And that includes the Senate, because nothing changes unless we the people take back the Oval Office and the Senate.
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Back when Trump was still pretending that he knew how to run a casino in Atlantic City--back when he still had the people of Atlantic City fooled that he was a legit business man, he
became friends with a man named Joseph Weichselbaum, an embezzler, mob associate, cocaine trafficker, and a thrice-convicted felon.
Trump hired Weichselbaum, who was a helicopter pilot, to fly in casino high-rollers in and out of town through a company formed by Weichselbaum, to whom he also entrusted maintenance of "The Ivana," Trump’s personal helicopter. Weichselbaum—at that point a twice-convicted felon—personally piloted the Trumps in that copter.
Weichselbaum also had another business: importing drugs from Colombia and shipping them from Bradford Motors, a Miami-area car dealership he partly owned, to Cincinnati. Because Weichselbaum was then a twice-convicted felon, NJ gambling regulators insisted to Trump that he not be involved with providing helicopter services to the Trump casinos. Yet Weichselbaum continued collecting a $100,000 salary from the helicopter company, and Trump kept using the company that paid Weichselbaum.
In his indictment and confession, it was revealed that Weichselbaum’s more lucrative business was having drugs delivered to Bradford Motors, the Miami-area car dealership he had an ownership stake in. In his testimony, Weichselbaum admitted to helping to load up to 1,500 pounds of drugs at the time into cars, that mules then drove to the Cincinnati area for distribution in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
NJ Casino Control Commission records show that Trump learned of the indictment in October of 1985. At that point, any decent person would have cut off all ties to Weichselbaum, because failing to do so could cost him his casino license. But of course as we all know, Trump is anything but a decent person. Instead, Trump became even closer to the drug trafficker.
Two months after the indictment, Trump rented apartment 32C in the Trump Plaza Apartments on E. 61st St. in Manhattan to the Weichselbaum brothers, according to NJ Casino Control Commission records. Trump personally owned the unit. Then Trump wrote a letter to the District Court on Trump Organization stationery pleading for mercy for his drug trafficking friend. He called him “a credit to the community.” Trump also described the drug trafficker as “conscientious, forthright and diligent,” 😲
When NJ gaming regulators first asked Trump about this letter, he denied writing it.😂 When they came back with a copy of the letter, Trump said under oath that his signature was on the page.😂 However, Trump’s letter must have worked. Weichselbaum served just 18 months, while the people who merely drove the drugs to Ohio got sentences of up to 20 years.
During his parole, Weichselbaum was required to inform authorities that he had a job and a place to live. He told authorities he would be working for Trump again as Trump's helicopter guy once released. Weichselbaum then moved into Trump Tower.
Just another example of the type of people that Trump associates himself with. Only the best people.😉
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Trump and his grifter family are running their criminal enterprise out of the white. That's what the entire Trump administration has been about since the very beginning. It's why Jared and Ivanka were brought into the white house. They aren't working for the country, or the American people, they are working for themselves. They are working to enrich themselves even more. Every move they make is a calculated business move for their own financial gains.
It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, Australia, The UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president.
Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab. All anyone has to do is take a step back and open your eyes, and you'll see that what Trump and his family are doing is happening right in front of our faces.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with the confidence of a pathological liar. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies..
Instead of fighting the virus during this pandemic, Trump has been busy fighting Governors, Mayors, first responders, scientists, doctors, nurses, facts, science, common sense, and the constitution.
Trump has made it his mission to use these daily press briefings as an opportunity for him to stand at the top of Bull💩Mountain, and spread even more lies and propaganda to the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists.
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Trump is essentially a 74 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He is basically a botched human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind. This is the crux of the problem when it comes to Trump's total and complete failure as a leader and president. Trump's problem is not so much that he refuses to his job as president, Trump's problem is that he's not even capable of doing his job. He is not equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is simply incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to.
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Trying to limit the number of people who vote, is THE most un-American thing I've ever heard of.
So far, the only proof we have of someone trying to change election votes, is Trump himself. He used made-up allegations of voter fraud, in an attempt to engage in REAL voter fraud.
Trump begged Georgia's secretary of state to overturn the election results in an astounding hourlong phone call. Trump offered up a smorgasbord of lies and false claims about voter fraud and repeatedly berated state officials for not violating the constitutional on his behalf.
The phone call featured Trump, days before he is set to leave office, pleading with Raffensperger to alter the vote total and launching into a tirade of farcical conspiracy theories about the election. Trump even suggested that Raffensperger, who is a Republican, may face criminal consequences should he refuse to intervene in accordance with his wishes.
"So look," Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state." 😂😅
Raffensperger and his office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, pushed back against Trump's claims and said President-elect Joe Biden's victory of about 12,000 votes was accurate.
"The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry," Trump said in the call. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated." 😂
Translation: Trump wanted the Secretary of State for Georgia to illegally overturn the election in his favor.
Raffensperger responded, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong."
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also present on the call.
Meadows at one point suggested that the secretary of state's office and Trump's team find a path forward to resolve the dispute that did not involve the courts. Raffensperger said he did not believe there was one.
Translation: Trump and Meadows tried to violate the constitution and the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.
Trump also brought up a flurry of debunked conspiracy theories.
Raffensperger said Trump was being misled by claims on social media.
"Mr. President, the problem you have with social media is that people can say anything," he said.
"I know this phone call is going nowhere other than ultimately, you know — look, ultimately I win, okay?" Trump said. "Because you guys are so wrong. ... You've treated the population of Georgia so badly."
Democrats in and out of Georgia were swift to respond to the tape. Adam Schiff stated that "Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare."
"Once again. On tape," Schiff said, referring to Trump's impeachment. "Pressuring an election official to 'find' the votes so he can win is potentially criminal, And another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not."
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Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, because Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
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Remember when Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David? I do.
Ultimately the "deal" Trump made with the Taliban wasn't just a deal, it was also a double-cross. The double-cross was baked into the deal. Because he betrayed the Afghan government, the Afghan army, and the Afghan people with that deal.
History will record Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over that troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
This only emboldened the Taliban. They started taking even more territory, and more quickly than it had in years. As the Taliban's power increased, it had even less reason to engage in peace negotiations with the Afghan government.
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up the 20 year debacle that is Afghanistan would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the "deal" that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have done something that's never been done before.
They've evacuated more than 109,000 people by airlift since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an historic number, especially considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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Trump: "You've got Guatemalans, Mexicans, ISIS, the Menendez Brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, decepticons, those flyingMonkeys from the Wizard of Oz, Hannibal Lecter, Thanos, and severalBabadooks, all crossing the border illegally. Its scary stuff."😂😂
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The problem Trump is having is that everyone is not going to go along with his lies and schemes. Everyone isn't going to be willing to throw their careers and reputations away for him. Everyone isn't willing to be his shoeshine boy like Barr, Graham, and Nunes. People like Lt.Col. Vindman, Dr. Fiona Hill, Ambassador Bill Taylor, and Ambassador Yovanovitch, are examples of Americans who serve a cause greater than themselves. The character, moral courage, and integrity of true patriots like these, will always be obstacles to traitors, cowards, and the evil that men do.
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When are Trump’s supporters going to finally realize that a sociopath like Trump does not see others around him as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, Bannon, Rudy, Powell).
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There will be no guilt, no apologies, no shame, and no sense of remorse coming from a narcissistic sociopath like Trump.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a narcissistic sociopath.
~Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
~Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises..
~Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Bannon, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way...
~Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
~Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities..
~Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
~Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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Konstantin Rykov is a propagandist for the Putin government machine. “Rykov is considered to be one of the leading pro-Kremlin bloggers in Russia,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia .
Konstantin Rykov is the Russian who created Putin's troll farm, and has boasted online that he helped get Trump elected. His claims of involvement with the Trump team can't be dismissed for 2 reasons: first, he is very close to Putin, and had a long history of involvement with top levels of the Russian government; and, second, his description of how Trump’s campaign put together an effective internet strategy for information warfare is very close to the evidence revealed in the Mueller Report.
At about 11:14pm on November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election. At 11:29pm, Trump blasted out the following defiant tweet:
Trump: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
11:29 PM - Nov 6, 2012
Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.
Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Konstantin Rykov tells what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. In the first post, Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:
"Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him a reply, “I’m ready. What should I do?”
Trump replied with a picture. In the picture he was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully giving the thumbs-up sign.
Rykov explaines how things went from there:
"For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the US, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order.
Our idea was insane, but realizable.
In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man.
Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.”
British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.
Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others.
At the very beginning there was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.
The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it.
Keep in mind, Konstantin Rykov revealed all of this on Facebook just four days after Trump was elected. It was before people started asking questions about Cambridge Analytica or targeted social media ads. Rykov might have been boasting as he spiked the football in the end zone. What he didn’t think at that point, however, is that he had any reason to hide what he’d done..
His comments were also made well before details of Russian meddling in the presidential election were reported in the mainstream media. If Rykov wasn’t involved, then how on earth would he know as much as he confessed?
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Donald is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fasc.ism, wild conspiracy theories, rac.ism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump? I THINK NOT.....
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
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“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are clear. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump, democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Trump doesn't even understand the concept of "fair and honest."
In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
Trump's sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life."
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has no other choice but to lie, cheat, and steal in order to achieve anything.
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Johnny Almager
American banks stopped loaning Trump money years ago, but you want me to believe that politicians were asking Trump from economic advice??😂
Psychologist Frank DiPrima:
Trump's Professor, William T. Kelley taught marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence:The Management of Marketing Information...
Professor Kelley stated that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*ddam student I ever had.”
Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*ddam student I ever had.” Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity, but long before he was considered a political figure. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told the story that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything
Professor Kelley’s view seems to be shared by other University of Pennsylvanians, from the Daily Pennsylvanian, stating:
Biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. They officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy..
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don, was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
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Only a criminally incompetent fraud like Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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Trump begged Georgia's secretary of state to overturn the election results in an astounding hourlong phone call. Trump offered up a smorgasbord of lies and false claims about voter fraud and repeatedly berated state officials for not violating the constitutional on his behalf.
The phone call featured Trump, days before he is set to leave office, pleading with Raffensperger to alter the vote total and launching into a tirade of farcical conspiracy theories about the election. Trump even suggested that Raffensperger, who is a Republican, may face criminal consequences should he refuse to intervene in accordance with his wishes.
"So look," Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state." 😂😅
Raffensperger and his office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, pushed back against Trump's claims and said President-elect Joe Biden's victory of about 12,000 votes was accurate.
"The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry," Trump said in the call. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated." 😂
Translation: Trump wanted the Secretary of State for Georgia to illegally overturn the election in his favor.
Raffensperger responded, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong."
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also present on the call.
Meadows at one point suggested that the secretary of state's office and Trump's team find a path forward to resolve the dispute that did not involve the courts. Raffensperger said he did not believe there was one.
Translation: Trump and Meadows tried to violate the constitution and the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.
Trump also brought up a flurry of debunked conspiracy theories.
Raffensperger said Trump was being misled by claims on social media.
"Mr. President, the problem you have with social media is that people can say anything," he said.
"I know this phone call is going nowhere other than ultimately, you know — look, ultimately I win, okay?" Trump said. "Because you guys are so wrong. ... You've treated the population of Georgia so badly."
Democrats in and out of Georgia were swift to respond to the tape. Adam Schiff stated that "Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare."
"Once again. On tape," Schiff said, referring to Trump's impeachment. "Pressuring an election official to 'find' the votes so he can win is potentially criminal, And another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not."
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But didn't Trump say that he was the most transparent president in American history.
"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by MobRioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021
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Russian GRU officers accused of hacking the Dem Congressional Campaign Committee and the DNC used cryptocurrency to pay for the necessary computer infrastructure. Mueller’s indictment found that the defendants “conspired to launder the equivalent of more than $95,000 through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity” of bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies. The GRU hackers used hundreds of different email accounts to purchase servers to avoid creating a “centralized paper trail.” They enlisted several third parties that “facilitated layered transactions through digital currency exchange platforms, providing heightened anonymity.” The extensive laundering of the funds was intended not only to further a crime, but also to obscure the origin of the funds, providing the operation a degree of plausible deniability.
A Russian American energy tycoon—who boasted to a Kremlin official in July 2016 of being “actively involved in Trump’s election campaign”—donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Victory fund. And a company affiliated with a sanctioned Russian oligarch paid $1 million to Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, for unspecified services after the election. These and other transactions examined throughout the report establish that, during the campaign and presidential transition, Trump had several compromising financial entanglements with actors representing a hostile foreign power.
Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov transferred $20 million to an American bank account just days after the secret Trump Tower meeting that he organized between Don Jr and Trump campaign officials, including Manafort, Kushner, and a Russian government attorney. Hackers, troll farms, and spies cannot operate without money. Following the money trail helps investigators discover who is funding these entities.
Former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak is a key figure in the collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. He held a series of secret meetings with Trump campaign officials, including Kushner, Sessions, Michael Flynn, former Trump adviser Carter Page, and former Trump adviser J.D. Gordon. During one private meeting Kislyak held with Kushner and Flynn, they discussed the possibility of establishing a secure communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. During the transition, Kislyak had also brokered a meeting between Kushner and the head of a sanctioned Russian government bank, Vnesheconombank. The bank maintains the meeting was about Kushner’s family business.
On top of these controversial meetings, Kislyak’s embassy also carried out several suspicious transactions that U.S. bank investigators have flagged to U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
First, in November 2016—10 days after Trump won the presidency—the Russian government wired Kislyak a lump-sum payment of $120,000. Both the timing and the amount raise questions, as the sum was more than twice Kislyak’s normal salary payments.
Second, the Russian Embassy attempted to make a $150,000 cash withdrawal just a few days after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. The bank reportedly blocked this transaction, because it questioned the embassy’s justification that it needed cash in Washington to pay employees who had already returned to Russia.
Third, the embassy paid $2.4 million to a small construction company controlled by a Russian immigrant in the United States, who was reportedly not equipped to carry out the work commissioned. What’s more, the bank investigators found that the money was “cashed quickly or wired to other accounts.” Manafort’s trial showed, small vendors can be instrumental, intentionally or not, to laundering large amounts of money from abroad.
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"I pledge allegiance, to Lord King Donald Trump, of the Dystopian States of America, and to the monarchy for which he stands, one ruler, the chosen god, with oppression and subjugation for all."
---Trump supporters
Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason..
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much theylove and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. That was pretty low even for Trump.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
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The GOP will never recover from Trump . it's pretty much a wrap, just like Trump University and his fake charity foundation. And republicans in Congress will not be able to blame Trump. They will have no one but themselves to blame. It's very similar to the fable of "The Scorpion and the Frog." Republicans knew all along exactly who and what Trump is.
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a river. It's too treacherous to cross, so the scorpion nicely asks the frog to carry him across on its back. This makes the frog a little suspicious. It asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.” That sound reasoning relaxes the frog's nerves. So he allows the scorpion to climb aboard and they shove off across the flowing water.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little dance the drownings frog's back.
"I could not help myself, said the scorpion, It is my nature."
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.
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Trump and his family are literally running a criminal enterprise out of the white house.
The notion that Trump was actually concerned about corruption in Ukraine, or corruption in general, is laughable.
Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now. 😔 Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, because Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible..
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
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I view Trump as the Officer who had his knee on George Floyd's neck, and I view America as George Floyd, and I view Republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Graham, as the other Officers who stood by and watched, and did nothing.
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
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Removing a duly elected president from office through impeachment is not a coup, and it's certainly not a crime. It is the only legal and Constitution way to remove a president from office.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Andrew Stewart
Trump lies a little bit more than waaaay too much.
Trump 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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The FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" was a counter-espionage operation against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010.
Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley had been living for two decades in Canada and then in Europe before they ever set foot in the U.S. to start spying for Russia here. We now know that the FBI was on to them as spies as soon as they got here. In the 80s, these two Russian spies stole their new names and identities from deceased Canadian kids from the 1960s, and under those identities, they started a fake life in Toronto.
Although their spy life started in Canada, ultimately, the goal of this spy operation, the reason they were deployed by Russian intelligence in the first place was not to spy on Canada, but instead, to spy on the United States.
The couple lived in Toronto through the ’80s and ’90s. In the ’90s, Donald
Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley, had two sons. The spy couple spoke both French and English at home with their boys. They didn’t speak Russian at home with their boys even though they were from Russia and were native Russian speakers. Their sons had no idea that their parents were Russian at all.
In 2010, when a federal indictment against these spies was unsealed, the details of what this spy couple was assigned to do here in the U.S. by their handlers in Russia was revealed. The FBI’s investigation has revealed that a network of illegals is now living and operating in the U.S. in the service of one primary long-term goal, to become sufficiently Americanized such that they can gather information about the U.S. for Russia, and can successfully recruit sources
who are in or are able to infiltrate U.S. policy making circles.
They were getting information out of specific individuals in America, and reporting back to Moscow, individuals like a person who had worked in Congress as a legislative counsel, an economics professor who had contacts in Congress and with Washington policymakers. Donald Heathfield reported to Moscow that he had established contact with a former high ranking U.S. government national security official. Heathfield also made contact with a U.S. official working on nuclear weapons at a U.S. government research facility.
The FBI was watching them and collecting intel on their operations for that whole 10 year period. The FBI during that time had also put microphones inside the spy’s house. They had no clue how much the FBI was on to them, and that their house was bugged. The FBI had secretly gone inside their house on multiple occasions. They had photographed their notes and letters. The FBI also got into a safe deposit box they used to send encrypted messages.
The lead case agent for Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley at the FBI, the FBI agent who led this covert FBI operation that monitored those two Russian spies for years, all the surveillance these trained Russian spies were unable to detect, all the intelligence collected on them from right under their noses, and breaking their codes, was an FBI agent named Peter Strzok.
He actually won a medal for his work on that case. But he also worked on other Russian spy rings in the U.S. and Chinese spy rings in the U.S. Over more than 20 years at the FBI, he rose to become the senior agent on all espionage cases at the Washington field office at the FBI. Ultimately, he rose from there to become the head of the counterintelligence division for the whole FBI.
Strzok served four years in the Army, 101st Airborne, and then joined the FBI, where he spent 22 years working to protect this country’s national security. Peter Strzok is a man who has served and protected America faithfully and honorably. Now I see why a traitor like Trump attacks him. Let's place Peter Strzok's service to this country on a balance scale, up against Trump's service to this country, and let's see which individual comes up wanting.
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So while Republicans were engaged in pretend outrage over a pretend war on Dr Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, they were actually busy engaging in a real war on democracy.
Trump’s relentless effort to overturn the result of the election that he lost has become the most serious stress test of American democracy in generations, one led not by outside revolutionaries intent on bringing down the system but by the very leader charged with defending it.
In the 220 years since a defeated John Adams turned over the White House to his rival, firmly establishing the peaceful transfer of authority as a bedrock principle, no sitting president who lost an election has tried to hang onto power by rejecting the Electoral College and subverting the will of the voters — until now. It is a scenario at once utterly unthinkable and yet feared since the beginning of Trump’s tenure.
Trump has gone well beyond simply venting his grievances or creating a face-saving narrative to explain away a loss, as advisers privately suggested he was doing in the days after the Nov. 3 vote. Instead, he has stretched or crossed the boundaries of tradition, propriety and the law to find any way he can to cling to office beyond his term.
Trump’s efforts ring familiar to many who have studied authoritarian regimes in countries around the world.
When Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published their best-selling book, “How DemocraciesDie,” in 2018, warning that even the United States could slide into autocracy, they faced blowback from some who thought they were overstating the case. “We were criticized by some as alarmist,” Ziblatt, a government professor at Harvard University said. “It turns out we weren’t alarmist enough.”
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In December 2015, the convicted Russian spy, Maria Butina’s Russian gun-rights organization sponsored an NRA delegation to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials ( aka, Russian spies) including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.
Alexander Torshin — a Russian politician and longtime associate of Butina who has since come under U.S. sanctions — played a key role in the trip, and Russia’s decade-long operation of infiltrating American conservative groups. A conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV who has done business in Russia claims that he first introduced David Keene to Torshin in 2011 while Keene was NRA president. Keene and Torshin quickly forged an alliance based on mutual interests..
In 2013, Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the Right to Bear Arms conference in Moscow. Paul Erickson, who became Butina’s asset, accompanied Keene to the 2013 conference, where he reportedly first crossed paths with Butina.
Senate intelligence and finance committees have requested documents on the NRA’s connections to Russia, including documents related to whether the NRA took Russian money and the 2015 delegation. After spending a record $54.4 million to put Trump in the White House and support Republicans in Congress, the NRA’s membership dues dropped precipitously the following year.
The NRA’s lawyers initially lied about the Russian money, they eventually admitted to receiving “a total of approximately $2,512.85 from people associated Russian addresses” and “about $525” from two Russian nationals living in the United States in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The NRA also acknowledged “membership dues” from Alexander Torshin, who has been a non-voting life member of the NRA since 2012 — the year after he first connected with Keene. Butina's partner, GOP operative Paul Erickson, has lawyered up in light of reports that he too may be targeted by federal prosecutors as a covert Russian agent. Signs that Butina has reached a plea deal follows a September filing by federal prosecutors indicating that Butina offered to provide information to the the feds about Erickson’s illegal activities.
While Parnas helped Nunes arrange meetings, he also assisted Rudy in smearing Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch, who was fired by Trump because he believed she was interfering with his criminal scheme. Last month, the SDNY charged Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman with illegally moving money from foreign donors to American political campaigns, all of which were republican campaigns. Hmmmm😞
What's done in the dark will eventually come to the light.
The names of all the Republicans who have been bought and paid for with Russian money will eventually be revealed to the American people. Moscow Mitch's name will surely be at the top of that list.
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On Dec 16th 2019, Rudy admitted in an interview with Laura Ingraham, that as Trump's personal lawyer, he became a central figure in US foreign policy in Ukraine, promoting Trump's desire for an investigation into nonexistent Ukrainian election meddling; taking trips to advance a bogus investigation into the Bidens; and, by his own admission, exerting control over US diplomatic staffing in that country to serve the interests of his client.
Rudy admitted he played a leading role in the removal of Marie Yovanovitch, which set the stage for Trump efforts over the summer to bribe Ukraine into investigations of the Bidens for Trump’s own political gain.
Rudy: “I forced her out because she’s corrupt,” Giuliani said. I came back with a document that will show unequivocally that she committed perjury when she said that she turned down the visa for Viktor Shokin because of corruption .... there’s no question that she was acting corruptly in that position, and had to be removed. She should have been fired, if the State Department weren’t part of the deep state. I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way,” he said. “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."
Keep in mind, Rudy is NOT, I repeat NOT, a State Department employee. He has not been appointed by Trump for some sort of special diplomatic role. He has no official title, and he has no security clearance. He is simply serving as Trump’s personal goon, I mean attorney.
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The Trump criminal organization is pushing back against a proposed provision that would require the Secret Service to disclose how much it's spending on presidential travel.
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is battling with Dem senators in negotiations over legislation that would move the Secret Service back to the Treasury Department, where it was first housed before moving to the DHS.
The legislation is set to include a stipulation that the Secret Service disclose on a semiannual basis the amount being spent on presidential travel for the president and his adult children. “Mnuchin came to me last year with a proposal to move the Secret Service to the Treasury Department,” Sen Feinstein said in a statement. “As part of that effort, I proposed that the cost of presidential travel be included for greater transparency, accountability and oversight associated with protection during travel of presidents and their families.”
Mnuchin agreed to the financial disclosure provision, but like a true Trump sycophant, HOWEVER, he is against the 120-day requirement, and instead only wants the cost of the president’s trips revealed until after the election. 😲
That's like a used car salesman telling you that he will only tell you the past mechanical problems of a car until after you've purchased it from him.
The Secret Service is required to report semiannually the cost of protecting Trump's Children of the Corn, or non-White House residence, the Trump criminal organization failed to do so in either 2016 or 2017. The White House also dodged questions from the Government Accountability Office about the issue for two years, after the GAO sought information on the cost of Trump's travel to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump spent one out of every five days on one his golf course last year. The GAO found that Trump's first four trips to Mar-a-Lago in 2017 cost the Secret Service $1.3 million per trip (and $3.4 million in total government spending), and the Secret Service requested $60 million in additional funding in 2017. Federal charge card expenditures revealed the Secret Service also spent at least $250,000 at Trump properties in just the first five months of Trump's term alone, and the agency has paid a king's ransom for golf carts on Trump's golf outings, spending $588,000 on golf carts since 2017. The GAO report found that Trump's sons Uday and Qusay's travel to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and the UAE in 2017 cost the Secret Service $396,000 in total—and they've done plenty of traveling since.
Trump has spent nearly a third of his "presidency" at his properties. The GAO report reports that the Secret Service may have spent as much as $28 million JUST on Trump's trips to Mar-a-Lago by now. But that would be still just a fraction of his total travel costs. President Obama—whom Trump criticized for golfing too much—cost the government $96.9 million over 8 years with his travel, for comparison. So far Trump's golfing has cost American taxpayers more than 102 million dollars in just 3 years. Taxpayers have paid at least 81 million for Trump play on his golf course in FL, 17 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in NJ, 1 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in Los Angeles, and 3 million for Trump to play on his golf course in Scotland. And to add insult to injury, Trump is pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars from accommodations, lodging, and rental fees. The more trips to his properties, the more money he makes.
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“A lie once told remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth,” the infamous N@ziPropagandist JosephGoebbels memorably proclaimed.”
Trump,Q, fox, and Newsmax have learned dangerous and valuable lessons from Goebbels.
In 1984, with a briefcase in hand, Kerry Noble walked into a Kansas City, Mo church with intentions of blowing it up. He waited for his opportunity as he sat among a crowd of about 60 people.
"All I had to do was hit the timer and walk out," Noble said. "About 10 or 15 minutes later, there'd be an explosion, and everyone would dye."
Noble said he thought he was going to start a revolution. (Sound familiar?)
But as Noble sat among the crowd, he put a face to his "enemy." And his "enemy" appeared no different than anyone else. He thought of the consequences--of what would have amounted to the largest terrorist attack in America at the time. Then, he picked up the briefcase and left.
Noble joined other former cult members and experts back in 2002 at APA's Annual Convention in Chicago during the session "Cults of ha.tred" to speak out on the effects of mind control and destructive cults. To fully understand the psychological factors that lead to terrorism, the answers might lie in understanding cults.
Deborah Layton has encouraged more help for mind-control victims. "It can happen to the best of us," Layton said. At age 18, in the early 1970s, Layton's need for belonging attracted her to the Peoples Temple, a group that offered her a sense of comfort and answers to life. The leader, JimJones, made her feel like she was joining the Peace Corps. A few years later, Layton went to Jonestown.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
She escaped from Jonestown in 1978 and reported to police about activities there. She later said she felt ashamed at being warped into a cult. Steve Hassan, a former cult member and licensed mental health counselor who specializes in helping those in destructive cults, says recovery from a cult's mind control can be facilitated if victims attain the proper information, support and interventions from former cult members.
A destructive cult is an authoritarian regime that often uses behavior modification on followers, such as thought- stopping techniques and instilling an "us-versus-them" mindset, Hassan said. With thought-stopping techniques, members are taught to stop doubts from entering their consciousness about the cult, often with a key phrase they repeat. Phobia indoctrination is also used, where cults play on a person's irrational fears.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a destructive cult, Trumpism"/Q" checks most of the boxes.
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Remember when Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David? I do.
Ultimately the "deal" Trump made with the Taliban wasn't just a deal, it was also a double-cross. The double-cross was baked into the deal. Because he betrayed the Afghan government, the Afghan army, and the Afghan people with that deal.
History will record Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over that troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
This only emboldened the Taliban. They started taking even more territory, and more quickly than it had in years. As the Taliban's power increased, it had even less reason to engage in peace negotiations with the Afghan government.
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up the 20 year debacle that is Afghanistan would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the "deal" that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have done something that's never been done before.
They've evacuated more than 109,000 people by airlift since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an historic number, especially considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 100 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences.
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
May 6: Following a concerted push to reopen schools beginning in late April, Trump lied again when he suggested that children aren't susceptible to the coronavirus.
Trump: "We realize how strong children are, right? Their immune system is maybe a little bit different. Maybe it's just a little bit stronger, or maybe it's a lot stronger," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American was NOT true. And at least 100 thousand American citizens have died because of his lies.
Allan Lichtman, the historian known for accurately predicting presidential elections, said that Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as “the greatest dereliction of duty” in presidential history..
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Trump's Miami golf resort that puts money into his pocket more than doubled its room rates just before the White House announced his visit. Trump’s plan to address the RNC winter meeting at Trump National Doral has been in the works since mid-January, about the same time that the resort raised the nightly rate for its least expensive rooms from $254 to $539.
That higher figure is just under the maximum per-night rate federal government rules permit for a hotel in South Florida, and is triple the normal “per diem” rate employees are supposed to follow.
The White House would not reveal how much Trump’s Secret Service agents or other members of his “advance” team are paying for the days prior to his visit. At least two dozen staff typically need to get there a few days ahead of time to prepare for his arrival.
Doral officials refused to discuss how much they are charging for government employees staying there for Trump’s visit. The Trump Organization, the president’s family business that owns and operates the resort, also did not respond to questions.
The watchdog group, Public Citizen, said the episode illustrates Trump’s continued use of his office to enrich himself. “What better way to defend yourself in an impeachment trial over abuse of power than to jet to your private golf resort on the public dime, secure lots of publicity for the club on the public dime, and then, possibly, rip off taxpayers by forcing them to pay extra for the staff whose costs at the resort are billed to ‘we the people."
Trump backed down from his plan to award a multimillion-dollar government contract to his Doral resort to host the G-7 summit there this June. Trump had claimed he would not make any money from the contract, which was a blatant lie. He is the sole beneficiary of the trust that owns Trump Organization, and Trump Organization owns his hotels and golf resorts, including Doral. Yet Trump wants us to believe that he cares about fighting corruption.😂
Because Trump insists on playing golf at his own properties, American taxpayers have been the source for at least a few million dollars that have gone into his pockets in the form of rooms, meals and other expenses for Secret Service agents and other government employees who have stayed on-site with Trump at his golf courses in FL. NJ, Scotland and Ireland. The exact amount is not known because the White House refuses to release those records.
For the latter half of December and the first days of January, Doral’s website advertised rates as low as $254 per night for nonrefundable rooms for the days of the RNC meeting.
Those numbers suddenly jumped to $459 a night on Jan. 13, soon after the White House first began planning for a potential Trump trip to the meeting. The next day it jumped to $539 a night. But the most corrupt president in American history wants us to believe that he cares about fighting corruption. 😄
The jump in room rates at Doral continues a pattern of Trump properties hiking rates to take advantage of campaign and election-related events hosted by Republicans.
In 2016, Trump nearly quintupled the rent he charged his campaign for space in Trump Tower after he secured the GOP nomination and had access to the RNC’s donors, from $35,458 a month to $169,758, even though the number of employees remained the same.
In 2017, according to documents obtained by the group Property of the People under the Freedom of Information Act, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort refused to lower its room charges below the legal maximum $546 a night for administration officials staying there, despite State Dept requests to bring them into line with the government per diem of $182. The White House ultimately also approved a $1,005.60 bar tab after the State Department would not do so.
And in November, according to the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Trump’s D.C., hotel raised its rates threefold ― to more than $1,300 a night for its cheapest rooms ― for nights coinciding with a fundraising retreat for Senate Republicans. That hotel has similarly raised its cheapest rates to $1,600 for this November’s election night.
Not only is Trump personally profiting from his office by the increased political patronage of his business, the business raises rates when he does so he’ll profit even more.
Nixon's corruption never rose to the level of corruption that we've already seen with Trump.
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
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Having a sociopath like Trump as your leader/president during a life or death crisis, is probably the worst case scenario imaginable. A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake.
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. That's why he has fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire. Not only will they avoid telling him the truth, they will refrain from correcting him whenever he makes false and dangerous declarations about the coronavirus.
They will instead focus on telling him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear are lies and false narratives that match the alternative facts in his head. Whenever Trump says "the square peg goes into the round hole" he wants them to agree with him. And if you tell him that he's wrong, he will accuse you of being a never Trumper, and of plotting against him
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Trump knew the seriousness of the virus from the very beginning.
Trump & Bob Woodward's Covid Conversation Transcript: Trump ‘Playing it down’
February 7, 2020
Woodward:
"And so, what was PresidentXi saying yesterday?"
Trump:
"Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation."
Woodward:
"Indeed, it is."
Trump:
"It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?"
Woodward:
"I know. It’s much forgotten.:
Trump:
"It’s pretty amazing. And then I said, “Well, is that the same thing?”
Woodward:
"What are you able to do for-"
Trump:
"This is moreDeadly. This is 5% versus 1%, and less than 1%. So this isDeadly stuff.:
March 19, 2020
Trump:
"Now it’s starting out it’s not just all people, Bob. But just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older-:
Woodward:
"Yeah. Exactly."
Trump:
"Young people too. Plenty of young people. We’re looking at what’s going on in-"
Woodward:
"So, give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci, or somebody who kind of… It caused a pivot in your mind, because it’s clear just from what’s on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, “Oh my God. The gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.”
Trump:
"Well, I think Bob, really, to be honest with you-"
Woodward:
"Sure. I want you to be."
Trump:
"I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down."
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Hundreds of former federal prosecutors have signed onto an open online letter that says Trump's behavior toward the Russia investigation more than justified an indictment—for obstruction of justice. The open letter organized by the nonprofit group PROTECT DEMOCRACY, had roughly 400 signatures when it was initially posted. The letter neared 700 signatures by the following day.
The letter's second paragraph states, “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
In making the case that Trump obstructed justice, the letter singles out three of his alleged actions that are detailed in the Mueller report: his effort to get Don McGahn, the White House counsel, to fire the special counsel; his attempt to limit the scope of the inquiry by instructing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to carry a message to then Attorney General Sessions; and his repeated efforts to tamper with witnesses, including Cohen and Paul Manafort, by, among other things, raising the prospect of pardons.
The letter says Trump’s actions “satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge” and asserts that the evidence of “corrupt intent”—a key element of any obstruction case—is overwhelming.
The full list of names shows that more than three hundred of the signatories served at the Department of Justice for at least a decade. A hundred and sixty of them racked up twenty years or more. More than sixty did at least thirty years. And two of them did forty years: John Kolar, a former senior trial counsel, and E. Thomas Roberts, who headed the narcotics division in the District of Maryland.
Many of the signatories worked for different parts of the DoJ, in many parts of the country, at many different levels. There are former heads of major divisions, such as the financial-crimes and civil-fraud units, and former U.S. Attorneys. But there are also countless trial attorneys, appellate attorneys, and assistant U.S. Attorneys—the anonymous figures who prosecute cases on a day-to-day basis. And all of them are agreed that if Trump were sitting anywhere except the Oval Office, he would be facing a lengthy rap sheet.
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"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by MobRioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021.
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In their never ending quest to "own the libs"
It appears that MAGAs have resorted to ingesting a drug that's used for deworming horses and livestock. You can't make this stuff up folks.
Mississippi health officials are warning residents against using ivermectin, a horse dewormer medication, to treat COVID infections at home amid a spike in poisoningCalls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center.
The Mississippi Department of Health sent a letter out to to the MS Health Alert Network on Friday warning health professionals of the spike in poisonings from individuals digesting ivermectin.
Mississippi’s Poison Control is reporting an alarming uptick in calls from people who took a drug bought at a feed store meant to deworm livestock.
Some believe it will help with COVID-19, but veterinary experts warn if you buy it at a feed store, it could possibly leave you paralyzed.
“Everyday, everyday, people, phone calls, phone calls, people coming in,” Raina Boudreaux at Double M Feed, Garden & Pet Supply describes.
Boudreaux says it started a month ago.
“It has been flying off the shelves and as of right now, it’s very hard for us to even get,” Boudreaux said.
Mississippi’s Health Department put out a warning because poison control reports said at least 70% of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of Ivermectin meant for livestock.
Ivermectin gained popularity over social media among anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers, via Fox News, as a COVID cure and preventative treatment, even though the FDA has not approved it for that purpose and explicitly tells people not to take it for COVID.
Louisiana’s PoisonControl says it’s received calls from 18 people who have taken the drug.
Some of the symptoms individuals can experience are rash, nauseaVomiting, abdominal pain, neurologic disorders, and sometimes severe hepatitis.
SWEET!!! That sounds delightful.🤣
Thanks for tuning into another episode of, Zero Libs Owned. 🤣
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History will record Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over that troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
After Trump had cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
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Trump has been violating the Constitution since noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “profit, gain or advantage.” This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials profiteering from new federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decisionmaking to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or from the new federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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Trump admitted to being a Russian asset as he stood next to Putin in Helsinki, and Putin confirmed it when he was asked by a reporter if Russia helped in getting Trump elected.
June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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In the newly released audio, Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry is critical about Donald, saying she did his homework for him and that he is, among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His gawd-d tweets and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s*t. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." 😂 “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
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Trump pressed top Justice Department officials in a late December phone call to declare the election he lost “corrupt,” and “leave the rest” to him and Republican allies in Congress, according to contemporaneous, handwritten notes taken by officials on the call.
On the Dec. 27 phone call with then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his second-in-command, Richard Donoghue,
Trump pressured them to violate the Constitution, and reverse Biden's win.
Donoghue memorialized the conversation in handwritten notes, which the House Oversight Committee made public.
On the call, Rosen, who took over at the Justice Department after William Barr resigned, and Donoghue push back. They tell Trump "the DOJ can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election, doesn't work that way," the notes say.
Trump responds: "Don't expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen."
Rosen and Donoghue said repeatedly on the call that the allegations of voter fraud were false.
According to Donoghue's notes, the men told Trump they had done hundreds of interviews as part of dozens of probes and that his allegations across a number of swing states were not supported by evidence.
They told Trump "flat out" he was getting false information or the claims were "just not supported by the evidence."
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The notion that Trump was actually concerned about corruption in Ukraine, or corruption in general, is laughable. He even had the audacity to call himself the "law & order" president.
Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now. 😔 Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, because Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible..
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of WhiteSupremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian DomesticTerrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS.
Is Trump responsible for what happened on January 6th?
Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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America would surely not survive another 4 years of Trump and Barr.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and Republicans are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we the Amercan, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
America's democracy and Constitutional republic, has never been in more peril than it is right now. Trump and republicans, are attempting to reverse our victory in our War of Independence, that began 1775 and ended in 1783. They are attempting to throw it all away, like it never happened, and install a new King, a new monarch, a new tyrant, to rule over the American people..
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I just watched Newt Gingrich on Fox, spinning out of control as usual😄 He tried to compare Ken Star's investigation of Bill Clinton, to the Mueller investigation. He said that Mueller could have just stated that Trump was guilty of a crime the same way that Ken Star did when he claimed that Bill Clinton was guilty of a crime. Gingrich was lying as usual, because he left out the crucial difference between Star's investigation, and Mueller's investigation.
Ken Star had an INDEPENDENT special counsel investigation. Which means it did not fall under the rules, laws and oversight of the DoJ. But Gingrich and fox don't want their viewers to know this. Ken Star said that Clinton was guilty of a crime, because he had the power to do so, because his investigation was totally independent of the DoJ, Mueller did not have that freedom. Mueller did not have an independent special counsel investigation, which meant his investigation was part of the DoJ, which means he had to follow the rules and guidelines of the DoJ. And the DoJ clearly states that they cannot indict a sitting President, which is why Mueller did not charge Trump with a crime, but it wasn't because he didn't believe Trump committed a crime. The Mueller report clearly shows that Trump obstructed justice.
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@jasonwilson3057
By staying home on Dec 25 of 2018, Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn't visit military personnel on or before Christmas.
President Obama visited troops at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, in Kaneohe Bay, every Christmas he was in office, from 2009 to 2016.
President Obama traveled to Iraq in April 2009, just a few months after taking office.
Trump was in office for more than 2 years before he visited our troops in a war zone.
Trump also referred to our troop as losersAndSuckers.
In November 2018, FoxNews national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin confirmed that Trump did call American soldiers “SuckersAndLosers" and had questioned why anyone would want to become a soldier, and had not wanted to honor fallen Americans at the French Aisne-Marne cemetery in 2018.
"My sources include two senior former Trump administration officials who were on the trip to France where these remarks were made. They confirmed key parts of the Atlantic article and certainly described a pattern of behavior by DJT in describing war veterans and wounded warriors that coincides with the description in the Atlantic article," Griffin stated.
Griffin was told by the two Pentagon officials there were no security concerns preventing Trump from attending the ceremony at Aisne-Marne cemetery in France to honor America's fallen soldiers. He simply did not want to go..
Trump responded to the report in pure man-baby fashion, and called for Griffin to be fired for daring to tell the truth about his truly indefensible behavior.
It came as no surprise that other world leaders didn't let a little rain stop them from attending the WW1 memorial ceremony.
The decision prompted harsh criticism on Twitter, with Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill, saying that Trump was dishonoring U.S. servicemen.
"TheyDiedWith their face to the foe, and that pathetic-Inadequate DJT couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen", Soames stated.
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"Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, attacking the leader is seen as attacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people or ter rorists."
-- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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The DOJ has charged Alexander Smirnov with making false statements and obstruction as it relates to Smirnov's conversations with law enforcement officials about President Biden and his son Hunter. Significantly, Smirnov was responsible for many of the statements House Republicans have relied upon when pushing the impeachment inquiry against President Biden. Specifically, Smirnov lied about the extent of Hunter's relationship with Burisma, a Ukrainian company.
Smirnov falsely claimed that executives associated with Burisma hired Hunter to protect the company, using then-Vice President Biden, and that Hunter had been paid millions of dollars to peddle influence through his father. The indictment alleges that these statements made were complete fabrications. 😂
Specifically, the indictment alleges that Smirnov had contact with Burisma investigators in 2017, after the point President Biden would have had influence to alter public policy. Smirnov made multiple false claims to investigators again in September 2023, promoting false narratives about the President and his son. In total, this indictment, if proven true, debunks many of the allegations pushed by House Republicans against the President and his son. If convicted, Smirnov faces up to 25 years in federal prison. 🤣😅😂
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Simply claiming that there's proof of mass voter fraud, is NOT proof of mass voter fraud. You actually have to provide the evidence.
You can't just tell me that Bigfoot is real, and expect me to simply take your word for it. You're going to have to bring me Bigfoot.
Trying to limit the number of people who vote, is THE most un-American thing I've ever heard of.
So far, the only proof we have of someone trying to change election votes, is Trump himself. He used made-up allegations of voter fraud, in an attempt to engage in REAL voter fraud.
Trump begged Georgia's secretary of state to overturn the election results in an astounding hourlong phone call. Trump offered up a smorgasbord of lies and false claims about voter fraud and repeatedly berated state officials for not violating the constitutional on his behalf.
The phone call featured Trump, days before he is set to leave office, pleading with Raffensperger to alter the vote total and launching into a tirade of farcical conspiracy theories about the election. Trump even suggested that Raffensperger, who is a Republican, may face criminal consequences should he refuse to intervene in accordance with his wishes.
"So look," Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state." 😂😅
Raffensperger and his office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, pushed back against Trump's claims and said President-elect Joe Biden's victory of about 12,000 votes was accurate.
"The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry," Trump said in the call. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated." 😂
Translation: Trump wanted the Secretary of State for Georgia to illegally overturn the election in his favor.
Raffensperger responded, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong."
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also present on the call.
Meadows at one point suggested that the secretary of state's office and Trump's team find a path forward to resolve the dispute that did not involve the courts. Raffensperger said he did not believe there was one.
Translation: Trump and Meadows tried to violate the constitution and the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.
Trump also brought up a flurry of debunked conspiracy theories.
Raffensperger said Trump was being misled by claims on social media.
"Mr. President, the problem you have with social media is that people can say anything," he said.
"I know this phone call is going nowhere other than ultimately, you know — look, ultimately I win, okay?" Trump said. "Because you guys are so wrong. ... You've treated the population of Georgia so badly."
Democrats in and out of Georgia were swift to respond to the tape. Adam Schiff stated that "Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare."
"Once again. On tape," Schiff said, referring to Trump's impeachment. "Pressuring an election official to 'find' the votes so he can win is potentially criminal, And another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not."
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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NEVER FORGET
Never forget, that on 9/11, just hours after the towers fell, Trump bragged to local TV station WWOR, that his building 40 Wall Steet, was now the tallest building in downtown Manhattan. On a day of such unimaginable loss and tragedy, Trump seemed to be more focused on the bragging rights of now having the tallest building in Manhattan. But in true Trump fashion, his boast about having the tallest building in Manhattan after the towers fell was a big lie. The nearby 70 Pine Street building is 25 ft, taller than Trump's.
Trump also lied about losing 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend he lost on 9/11.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders that the legislation “provides pensions for those who are suffering from cancer and other illnesses stemming from the toxic debris they were exposed. Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. ”He then told an outrageous lie when he said, “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Trump wants to claim victim status too it appears. He can't stand to see anyone other than himself being viewed as a victim. Once again, Super Narcissist had to make it all about him.
Trump has told similar egregious lies about his whereabouts on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲 Super Narcissist strikes again.
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
During a 2015 rally, Trump claimed he watched the 9/11 attacks from a window in Trump Tower.
“Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that,” he said.
There’s just one problem — Trump Tower is more than four miles away from ground zero.
But who knows, maybe Trump was trying to receive money from the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund for his poor injured eyes, and the horror that they witnessed.
NEVER FORGET
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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So basically Trump and his henchmen tried to convince Pence into believing he had powers that in reality, he didn't have at all.
Now we know that the Willard Hotel in downtown DC was the command center for Trump’s failed coup attempt.
Some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.
Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is the first account detailing their role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence.
The two sources, both of whom have been granted anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, describe participating in “dozens” of planning briefings ahead of that day when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol as his election loss to President Joe Biden was being certified.
“I remember Marjorie T.G. specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”
Rolling Stone has confirmed that both sources were involved in organizing the main event aimed at objecting to the electoral certification.
These two sources also helped plan a series of demonstrations that took place in multiple states around the country in the weeks between the election and the storming of the Capitol. According to these sources, multiple people associated with the March for Trump and Stop the Steal events that took place during this period communicated with members of Congress throughout this process.
Along with Greene, the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).
“We would talk to Boebert’s team, Cawthorn’s team, Gosar’s team like back to back to back to back,” says the organizer.
And Gosar, who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters, allegedly took things a step further. Both sources say he dangled the possibility of a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.
“Our impression was that it was a done deal,” the organizer says, “that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval … in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House Freedom Caucus to sign on as a show of support.”
The organizer claims the pair received “several assurances” about the “blanket pardon” from Gosar.
“I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing,” Gosar said, according to the organizer.
In another indication members of Congress may have been involved in planning the protests against the election, Ali Alexander, who helped organize the “WildProtest,” declared in a since-deleted livestream broadcast that Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs helped him formulate the strategy for that event.
“I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said at the time. “We four schemed up on putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that — who we couldn’t lobby — we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside.”
The rally planner, who accused Alexander of ratcheting up the potential for violence that day while taking advantage of funds from donors and others who helped finance the events, confirmed that he was in contact with those three members of Congress.
“He just couldn’t help himself but go on his live and just talk about everything that he did and who he talked to,” the planner says of Alexander. “So, he, like, really told on himself.”
The sources plan to share that information with congressional investigators right away. While both sources say their communications with the House’s Jan. 6 committee thus far have been informal, they are expecting to testify publicly.
“I have no problem openly testifying,” the planner says.
--Rolling Stone
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. Trump was 4 billion dollars in debt, and American banks had stopped loaning him money after multiple bankruptcies. Trump was financially ruined until the Russians bailed him out. "They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
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Trump actually believes he can set a deadline for a pandemic to end. And if that doesn't work, he'll probably take a map and a sharpie, and draw a diagram of the coronavirus heading out to sea. There is no end to this man's pathological ignorance. I swear, ignorance is like a religion to him. I've never seen a human being so confident and devoted in his own stupidity.
Trump should just stop talking all together, because he has never solved a single problem in his entire life. He doesn't solve problems, he only creates problems, or he exacerbates them. Trump himself is a systemic problem for the country, on multiple levels. He portrayed the pandemic as a hoax, and believes he knows more than medical experts in their own fields. To put it mildly, he is a walking talking, living breathing phuck up.
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By pushing stories from a diverse body of outlets and posting material on different platforms, Kremlin propagandists adapted the concept of pre-propaganda in their efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, according to a recent study by researchers at the Center for Social Media and Politics at NYU.
The study investigated the online propaganda strategies of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Kremlin-linked “troll farm.” The U.S. Department of Justice accused the group of spreading disinformation online to interfere in the 2016 election, indicting 13 Russians it said were involved in the scheme.
The research focused on tweets by IRA trolls (accounts controlled by humans who masked their identities) about the 2016 election containing hyperlinks to political news stories, YouTube videos, and other content. More than 30 percent of the politics-related IRA tweets examined linked to external websites. Of these, about 10 percent linked to news stories, and 3 percent linked to YouTube videos. Trolls linked to conservative news sources (34 percent) more often than to liberal ones (24 percent) and skewed conservative in their sharing patterns over time.
This finding supports the theory—that the IRA tried to support the Trump campaign—and indicates that the IRA exploited social media platforms interconnected
ecosystem of links, shares, and likes to spread disinformation.
In sharing liberal and conservative stories alike, Russia tried to sow discord by playing both sides. It’s also possible that Russia was simultaneously trying to build an audience among moderates before luring them to the Republican side.
YouTube appears to have been a crucial part of the IRA’s cross-platform strategy. The trolls linked to the video-sharing platform more often than to most other external websites, sharing overwhelmingly conservative content (75 percent). And while the trolls cast a wide net when sharing news stories, they tightened their focus to a selection of mostly pro-Trump, pro-Republican YouTube videos.
Finally, the researchers tested for ideological consistency in troll behavior over time. That is, did the conservative trolls remain conservative, and the liberal trolls remain liberal, throughout the 2016 campaign? For the most part, the answer is yes. But here’s where it gets interesting: Trolls who mostly shared liberal news stories were more likely to cross ideological lines by also sharing conservative YouTube videos. Trolls who mostly shared conservative YouTube videos, on the other hand, rarely shared liberal ones.
This behavior points to the IRA’s use of pre-propaganda. The IRA may have shared news stories from diverse sources to build credibility and a broad audience, before dosing liberal and moderate users with conservative YouTube content. A propaganda campaign can target liberals, moderates, and conservatives, with an overall goal of helping the Republican campaign. The sheer amount of conservative content in the dataset suggests this was the case.
The researchers coined a term to describe what they found: cross-platform pre-propaganda, or pre-propaganda that exploits the interconnected nature of platforms. By using Twitter to get users onto YouTube, the IRA deployed a tactic that represented a degree of historical continuity in state-driven propaganda, and took advantage of social media as a means to lower costs, increase scale, and maintain the anonymity of covert campaigns.
When it comes to state propaganda, the major platforms don’t exist in a vacuum. Together, they provide a whole ecosystem for malicious actors to exploit.
Cue the reaction from Russian trolls in
T-minus 5 4 3 2 .......
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Trump loves to brag about how he only hires the very best people. He bragged that he hand-picked only the best people to "teach" at Trump University. But dozens of those he picked had checkered pasts, including serious financial problems and even convictions for cocaine trafficking and child mol.... The lawsuit against Trump found that he and his fake real-estate seminars were a massive fraud, designed to "upsell" students into buying course packages costing as much as $35,000. Many of those hired to teach did not have college degrees and were not licensed to broker real estate. At least four had felony convictions.
Ron P. Broussard Jr. was hired to the Trump University staff in 2007, even though he was never licensed as a real estate agent or broker, Broussard was listed as "staff" or "coordinator" for at least five Trump seminars titled "Fast Track to Foreclosure." Records show the former Army sergeant was convicted at court-martial in 1994 for indecent acts with a child. The child was an eight year old daughter of a fellow soldier. He served five years in the military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. He's currently a registered 5ex offender.
Timothy C. Gorsline taught at least eight Trump University seminars in 2008 He pleaded no contest a decade earlier to felony cocaine possession, according to an electronic database of Florida court records. Copies of Gorsline's resume at Trump University showed that when asked if he had been convicted of a felony, Gorsline marked an X indicating "Yes."
Damian D. Pell, who helped teach at least 23 Trump University seminars from 2008 to 2010, pleaded guilty in Florida to a felony charge of trafficking cocaine. Court and arrest records show that Pell's car was pulled over by Sheriff's deputies in June 1999. Authorities recovered 62 grams of powder cocaine from his car, and 1,200 grams in a subsequent search of his home — a haul with a street value in excess of $154,000.
Spencer J. Raffel, who staffed a Trump University event in 2008, had a felony conviction in FL for grand theft, according to court records. He was sentenced to serve three years of probation in 1989. Court records also showed that Raffel, 52, had a multi-decade history of failing to pay debts, including defaulting on real estate loans, during the same period he was helping teach students how to profit from properties in foreclosure.😲
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump in 2013, alleging that the university was a "fraud from beginning to end," geared toward pressuring students into buying ever more expensive seminars, course materials and mentoring services of little educational value. Regulators say Trump University staff often targeted senior citizens or those already in dire financial straits, encouraging them to max out their credit cards to pay for classes they couldn't afford.
In his 2005 video, Trump said his hand-picked instructors would give his students a better education than top-level university business schools.
"Honestly, if you don't learn from them, you don't learn from me. If you don't learn from the people we're going to be putting forward — these are all people that are hand-picked by me — then you're not going to make it in terms of the world of success," Trump said.
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In other words, Trump has found his "JosephGoebbels" / Minister of Propaganda.
“If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle."
"The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred."
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it, should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection."
--Joseph Goebbels
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History will record Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over that troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
After Trump had cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 105,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Q: What is it about treading on the American people that Republicans love so much?
A: Because Republicans don't actually believe in freedom or liberty. For Republicans, it's all about control.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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Why isn't Trump, the draft dodging champion, here in America on Memorial Day weekend honoring our fallen? Oh that's right, Trump has no respect for our veterans, PoWs, our fallen, or their gold star family members. Trump didn't even bother to visit Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day last year.
Trump didn't even bother to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is a presidential tradition. Just imagine if Obama and skipped Arlington or laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.😲 And just the day before, Trump didn't bother to attend the commemoration ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France while he was there. He said the rain prevented him from paying his respects to the American soldiers who died in WW1, however, the rain didn't prevent other world leaders from attending the ceremony.
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There’s much speculation as to how Rudy Giuliani “America’s Mayor,” the widely admired civic leader who presided over NYC during 9/11, could have been siphoned into Trump’s underworld. We got a Trump thanks to a compliant, sensationalist media apparatus that breathed life into his phony self-made billionaire myth, just as we owe them for Rudy, who they cast as a post-9/11 American hero..
By the time that the planes crashed into the Towers on Sept. 11, 2001 Giuliani was a master surfer of the wave of public opinion. In the attacks that played out in lower Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, PA, close to 3,000 people were killed — 343 of them uniformed New York City firemen.
Overnight, the media turned Giuliani into a larger than life heroic figure. But the people that were most intimately familiar with the city’s pre-9/11 counter-terrorism preparations knew that it was Giuliani’s failures as Mayor which contributed directly to the horrific body count for the FDNY that day.
On Feb. 26, 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked with a 1,200-pound bomb concealed in a rental truck that exploded in the basement. The blast killed six, injured 1,000 people, and forced 50,000 to evacuate.
In a detailed after-action report published in 1994 by the FDNY, the inability of firefighters and their officers to communicate over their analog radios that day was flagged as a vital issue that needed to be addressed with urgency. In 2008 — when Giuliani was running for president — FDNY Lt. James Wood recounted his experiences during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in an informational video produced by the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF).
While the bombing had taken place during Mayor Dinkins tenure as Mayor, Giuliani was sworn in on Jan. 2 1994. As the IAFF recalls it, the critical report about the defective fire radios gathered dust for several years.
It took until March of 2001 for new digital radios to be deployed, but they were withdrawn weeks later after they were deemed responsible for a near life-ending miscue when a firefighter isolated in a basement fire in Queens radioed a “May Day” call for assistance that none of his co-workers heard over their radios. It was only picked up by another fire company miles away. The new radios were shelved, and the old dysfunctional analogs were put back in service.
The contract for the new radios was a no bid, non-competitive contract that was, as it turned out, just an extension of an existing contract with Motorola, which has a near-monopoly on emergency communications.
According to a report issued by the NYC Comptroller the next month, Giuliani had “willfully” violated “city contracting rules…. endangering firefighters in a reckless bid to buy a new type of hand-held radio that it later had to pull from service,” The Times reported that “the new digital radios were never properly tested before being distributed to firefighters.” As City Comptroller Alan Hevesi documented, “they were purchased through what he described as an improper process that did not allow competing companies to bid for the contract.” At the time, Michael Wolf, who represented Com-Net Ericsson, a Motorola competitor, told the Times he was stymied in his efforts to even get the city to consider his company’s products.
Just six months later, FDNY’s bravest faced the doomsday scenario as they sized up the rescue operation in the Twin Towers on 9/11 that would take so many of their lives. They were equipped with the same analog radios that had failed them so badly when the WTC was bombed back in 1993. As the IAFF video documents and as the 9/11 timeline confirms, at 9:32 am. on 9/11, an FDNY Chief ordered all members in the North Tower down to the lobby. Even though he repeated the order, not a single company responded.
At 9:59 the WTC South Tower collapsed; and at 10 am the order to abandon the North Tower was repeated. Inside the North Tower were 121 firefighters who never heard that order. They perished when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am.
“On 9/11 firefighters went into the North Tower and started ascending the tower, yet they were being called back and they kept going,” said Richard Salem, an attorney who has been representing several of the firefighters’ families who lost loved ones when the North Tower collapsed. “Not one other uniformed officer from any other department, who had functioning radios, perished in that tower other than the FDNY.”
Despicably, Giuliani tried to cover up his own malfeasance by telling the 9/11 Commission that the North Tower firefighters had ignored the radio orders because of “their willingness, the way I describe it to stand their ground.”
Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, who lost his son Jimmy in the North Tower, will tell this tragic story to anyone who will listen. He and other surviving family members shadowed Giuliani during the 2008 primary and carried on a media campaign that was picked up by outlets like the Guardian..
“These radios did not work in the WTC in 1993 and they did not work in 2001." Jim Riches stated. "We got the story out there but when the media christened him ‘America’s Mayor,’ it all went away.”
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History: "You people don't listen, and you sure as he// don't learn. How many more times must I repeat myself? How many more times must I show the world what happens when people allow despotic and authoritarian dictators like Adolf, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Putin, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, and now Trump to come to power. It NEVER ends well. It never has, and it never will. For the umpteenth time, If you want to destroy a democracy, and create a despoti dictatorship, this is how you do it."
No two situations are ever identical, but history matters. Trump is inflaming and urging a large minority of the country to believe that the government constitutes a “deep state” conspiracy against him—and therefore them. He is feeding media outlets like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and Rick Wiles racist and conspiracist fuel. He is convincing a large minority that the election is rigged against them. He is purging officials that might offer government oversight and replacing the justice department and judiciary with radical loyalists. He is encouraging armed vigilantes to consider themselves members of a special “Trump Army” to defeat the threat of the enemy at home. Most critically, he is suppressing our ability to vote through the mail at a time of national pandemic.
A president pushing fascist rhetoric with authoritarian tendencies is running America, and putting our democratic safeguards at risk.
We've seen this before, and we know how it ends.
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Trump:
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said it was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
On January 6, Trump tried to do exactly that. He failed.
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia..
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In a 2017 interview, he put it more bluntly: “I think Trump is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
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cj p
The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!
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Parnas should have listened to Michael Cohen's warning about getting close to Trump. Just imagine that you're a loyal MAGA hat wearing Trump cultist like Parnas. And for more than a year, you worked for Trump by partnering with Rudy to help carry out Trump's bribery scheme in Ukraine. You even put yourself in legal jeopardy for Trump by illegally funneling tons of Russian money into his super-PAC, and republican campaigns.
Parnas received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
So then you get caught, arrested, and indicted. Then you turn on the TV one day, to see your cult leader, the man you loved and admired, the man that you risked everything for, announce to the world, that he's never met you, and has no idea who you are. 😲 How would you feel? 😄
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For $199, Giuliani will tell you a story or wish you a happy birthday.
After facing mounting legal bills and a criminal investigation, Rudy announced on Tuesday that he had signed up for Cameo, a website that lets celebrities sell video greetings to fans.
"Hi, it's Rudy Giuliani, and I'm on Cameo," Giuliani says in a welcome video posted to his page. "If there's an issue of concern you would like to discuss, or a story you would like to hear or share with me, or a greeting that I could bring to someone that would bring happiness to their day, I would be delighted to do it. It can be arranged, and we can talk through the magic of Cameo." 🤣🤣
In June, Rudy's allies created a "Freedom Fund" for public donations to help Rudy with his legal woes.
Giuliani also faces a $1.3 billion lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.
"HI it's Rudy Giuliani, and I'm on Cameo. If there's an issue of concern you would like to discuss, like the used motor oil leaking down my face for example, it can be arranged." 🤣😂🤣😅
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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In their never ending quest to "own the libs"
It appears that MAGAs have resorted to ingesting a drug that's used for deworming horses and livestock. You can't make this stuff up folks.
Mississippi health officials are warning residents against using ivermectin, a horse dewormer medication, to treat COVID infections at home amid a spike in poisoningCalls to the MississippiPoison Control Center.
The Mississippi Department of Health sent a letter out to to the MS Health Alert Network on Friday warning health professionals of the spike inPoisonings from individuals digesting ivermectin.
Mississippi’s PoisonControl is reporting an alarming uptick in calls from people who took a drug bought at a feed store meant to deworm livestock.
Some believe it will help with COVID, but veterinary experts warn if you buy it at a feed store, it could possibly leave you paralyzed.
“Everyday, everyday, people, phone calls, phone calls, people coming in,” Raina Boudreaux at Double M Feed, Garden & Pet Supply describes.
Boudreaux says it started a month ago.
“It has been flying off the shelves and as of right now, it’s very hard for us to even get,” Boudreaux said.
Mississippi’s Health Department put out a warning because poison control reports said at least 70% of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of Ivermectin meant for livestock.
Ivermectin gained popularity over social media among anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers, via Fox News, as a COVID cure and preventative treatment, even though the FDA has not approved it for that purpose and explicitly tells people not to take it for COVID.
Louisiana’s PoisonControl says it’s received calls from 18 people who have taken the drug.
Some of the symptoms individuals can experience are rash, nauseaVomiting, abdominal pain, neurologic disorders, and sometimes severe hepatitis.
SWEET!!! That sounds delightful.🤣
Thanks for tuning into another episode of, Zero Libs Owned. 🤣
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Trump has been violating the Constitution since noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “PROFIT, GAIN, or ADVANTAGE. This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials PROFITEERING from federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decision making to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or PROFITING from the federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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So in Wisconsin, you can LiterallyMurder someone and get away with it, as long as you say you did it because you felt threatened. 🤔hmmmm--Interesting.
A video taken just weeks before Rittenhouse went on Adeadly shootingSpree in Kenosha, captured Kyle describing his wish toShoot at people with an AR-15 as they left a pharmacy.
The video was obtained and published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In the 29 second video, Rittenhouse can be heard saying, "Bro, I wish I had my f---ing AR. I'd startShooting rounds at them."
Kyle: "Our justice system is a complete and utter joke. I mean I literallyMurdered two people, and got away with it. They'll never admit it, but deep down, even my supporters know I'm guilty. I mean why else would I have traveled to Kenosha that night with an AR-15, if I had no intentions ofShooting someone? There's literally a video of me that was taken weeks before, where I'm fantasizing about doing exactly that. I'm just grateful that the Judge refused to allow that video to be played in court. Whew!!"
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@user-fp4zn9yj8n
A psychopath is actually capable of caring for someone other than themselves. A psychopath is actually capable of feeling empathy and sympathy.
Trump is an extreme narcissist, and a complete sociopath. He does not care about anyone or anything other than himself, and his own desires.
A Trump quote from 2004, in response to a Larry King Live caller asking him how he handles stress during a crisis. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. And Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
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The wheels have fallen off Republican claims (LIES) that Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating increased growth and government revenues over the next decade. Reminds me of Cheney's claim that the Iraq war would pay for itself. Republican voters fell for that one too.
“Not only will this tax plan pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” Treasury Sec Steven Mnuchin famously boasted (LIED) in September 2017.
The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time last year, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American.
The Treasury Department reported the debt hit $22.012 trillion, a jump of more than $30 billion in just this month.
The national debt has been rising at a faster rate following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax-cut package after a little more than a year. The nation has added more than $1 trillion in debt in the last 11 months alone.
Trump has quickened the rate at which the debt is growing by widening the deficit to finance his $1.5 trillion package of sweeping tax cuts for himself, his wealthy friends, big banks, and corporations.
Trump promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves by spurring on economic activity, but revenues have since stalled. Federal spending by the Trump administration is around 6.6 percent higher than it was before. In 2017, the national debt grew by 4 percent, according to CBO data, which excludes intragovernmental holdings. By the following year, Trump's second in charge, this had accelerated to 7 percent.
It's a similar story with the deficit. When Trump was elected in 2016, the size of the deficit measured as a portion of GDP was 3.2 percent. By the end of 2018 this had increased to 3.9 percent. The deficit is expected to hit 4.2 percent in 2019. It is on course to reach a nominal value of $1 trillion by the end of the year.
That increase comes despite the economy doing well, so yes, it can be attributed directly to his tax cuts for the wealthy, which clearly aren't paying for themselves, as most professional economists warned. Trump's tax cuts was nothing more than corporate welfare, OR, a tax cut for the swamp.
Trump thinks about the national debt as he does his own personal debt. A 2016 Fortune magazine analysis revealed Trump's business is $1.11 billion in debt. That includes $846 million owed on five properties. This is not surprising considering that Trump famously bragged about being the "King of Debt" along with the fact that Trump has filed for bankruptcy 6 times, and has relied on Saudi Royals, and Russian Oligarchs to come to his rescue and bail him out numerous times over the years.
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On January 6, Capitol Hill Police Officers stopped the steal that Trump had planned for that day. We as a nation, owe them a debt of gratitude.
SidneyPowell's weekslong campaign to invalidate the results of the 2020 election was not based in fact, her lawyers said in federal court back in March.
Powell asked a federal judge to dismiss the $1.3 billion defamationSuit filed by DominionVoting Systems in January.
In court, lawyers for Powell told the judge that "no reasonable person" would believe that her false claims and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election were "truly statements of fact."
The filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claims Powell's statements were so absurd they couldn’t be taken seriously.🤣
“Plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements at issue as 'wild accusations' and 'outlandish claims,'" her lawyers wrote. "They are repeatedly labeled 'inherently improbable' and even 'impossible.' Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support defendant’s position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact."
"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by MobRioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021.
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Here's just a few examples of Trump's so called "values."
Trump’s history of creepy comments about the looks of his daughter Ivanka are well known. But his younger daughter, Tiffany, has largely stayed out of the spotlight—much like her father’s equally creepy comments about her anatomy..
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Traitor Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Ukraine scandal began in the spring of 2019, with a series of contacts between Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy, and Ukrainian officials. In mid-July, Trump decided to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine that had already been appropriated by Congress. The White House offered no explanation, except to blame “interagency delay.” A week later, Trump spoke by phone to the recently elected Ukrainian president, Zelensky. The memorandum released by the White House describing that call—which is consistent with the accounts of the whistleblower complaint that first brought this scandal to light—reads like a classic shakedown.
According to the memo, after exchanges of flattery, Trump states that “we do a lot for Ukraine” and that “we spend a lot of effort and a lot of time,” before he complains that the relationship is not always “reciprocal.” Zelensky then raises the question of military aid to Ukraine, to which Trump immediately responds, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” and proceeds to ask Zelensky to investigate two unfounded conspiracy theories: one involving the server containing emails stolen from the DNC during the 2016 election, and the other involving the thoroughly debunked claim about then-VP Biden, his potential reelection opponent. Trump asks Zelensky to work with Giuliani and AG Barr to investigate his potential opponent and so aid his own reelection campaign. There can be no misunderstanding that Traitor Trump was abusing his official power in the conduct of foreign policy to get a foreign government to investigate his political rival.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
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Russian trolls from Putin's IRA (Internet Research Agency) went into action on July 17 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had just been shot down over eastern Ukraine, and the same IRA (Internet Research Agency) operation that Putin would use to influence the U.S. presidential election two years later, went into overdrive, pumping out lies and conspiracy theories to exculpate Moscow’s murderous clients.
The Boeing 777 passenger jet was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298 passengers, including 80 children, when it was blown out of the air above territory held by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Exhaustive research by two Dutch journalists, Robert van der Noordaa and Coen van de Ven, published in the Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, shows precisely the way Russian trolls worked to shift blame for the massacre and create a dense fog of conspiracy theories to obscure the facts.
Van der Noordaa and van de Ven analyzed 9 million Russian IRA tweets covering the period 2014-2017 that were released by Twitter in October 2018 as part of an effort to elucidate the Russian role in the U.S. presidential election.
They report that in the 24 hours after the MH17 crash, Putin's IRA posted at least 65,000 tweets, mainly in Russian, that blamed the Ukrainian government in Kiev for the disaster. Altogether, 111,486 tweets about MH17 were posted by the IRA in just three days, from July 17 through 19. (By comparison, in the 10-week period leading up to the November 2016 US elections, the IRA accounts posted 175,993 tweets.) According to the two journalists: “Never before or after did the trolls tweet so much in such a short period of time.”
What is remarkable about the three-day tweetstorm is that the trolls actually wrote their own tweets instead of limiting themselves to retweeting or copying other extremist tweets, as was the case with other international incidents. They also composed their own stories on the LiveJournal platform, a popular Russian blog website, and then shared them on Twitter.
Russian-concocted theories like the one about Ukrainian fighter jets have stubbornly persisted in the Netherlands to this day, embraced by activist citizen journalists and even ordinary citizens, despite the irrefutable findings of the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) that the plane was shot down by a Russian BUK missile.
The JIT used intercepted recordings of telephone conversations by pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists, who discussed the delivery of the missile, videos and photographs on social networks, research of the Bellingcat investigators, eyewitness accounts, forensic examinations of the plane’s debris, and simulation modeling of the explosion of the plane to establish beyond doubt that Flight MH17 was shot down from Ukrainian rebel territory by a Russian 9M38 BUK missile launched from a BUK-TELAR self-propelled system, brought from the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in Kursk.
In fact, the impending transfer of the Russian BUK missile was already made known by the newly appointed Russian prosecutor in Crimea, Natalia Poklonskaya, who tweeted on June 29 that “the rebels now have a ‘fine cookie’ against the Ukrainian air force.” Her tweet was removed shortly after Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down.
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The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent expressed his disgust over rioters who stormed the Capitol, and Trump's rhetoric that sparked the insurrection.
"He's committed a mortal crime against the republic," Dent said. "He should have resigned over this, but he won't, of course."
In an interview, Dent conveyed his anger with a pro-Trump rioter carrying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol building, calling it a "desecration."
"I always proudly took my constituents to a plaque right by the east-front Capitol, right by the front door. It's a plaque dedicated to the honorary first defenders from Allentown, Pennsylvania, in Redding, Pennsylvania ... who went to the Capitol, at the call of Abraham Lincoln, to defend the Capitol during the Civil War. ... The confederates never got there. They were there to protect against the rebellion. And here we are, watching Confederate flags running through the Capitol. To see this desecration to me, it's so upsetting as an American, as a Republican. How could this happen?"
"The voters, the courts, the states – they've all spoken. They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever. This election was actually not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000 and 2004 were all closer."
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter aDeath spiral. We’d never see the whole nation accept an election again. Every four years would bring a scramble for power at any cost."
--Mitch McConnell, Jan 6.
A Texas man charged in the Capitol insurrection threatened to ki// hisChildren if they told the FBI he had taken part in the riot, according to court documents.
Guy Reffitt, who the FBI says is part of a far-rightExtremist group called "Texas Freedom Force," (hilarious) was arrested and charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and obstruction of justice.
The FBI said in a charging affidavit that Reffitt, a 48-year-old oil worker from Wylie, Texas, first bragged about his trip to Washington, DC, to his family, saying he had filmed the riot on a GoPro-style camera.
Upon learning of the FBI's investigation into the insurrection, Reffitt threatened toShootHisChildren if they turned him in to authorities, the affidavit said.
His wife told the FBI that Reffitt told his son andDaughter: "If you turn me in, you're a traitor and you know what happens to traitors … traitors getShot."
He separately told his daughter he'd "put a bulletThrough her phone if she posted about him on social media, according to the affidavit.
But Reffitt's family did end up speaking to the FBI, the affidavit said, and days later, agents arrived at Reffitt's door with a search warrant.
This guy loves Trump more than his own family.
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason..
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they wants, which is to be an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Today Trump openly admitted that he wants to dominate over the American people. This is the dictator that most of us knew was waiting to show itself since the day Trump was sworn in.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Every American should be concerned over Moscow Mitch admitting that he will not honor the oath that every Senator will have to take as impartial participants in the Senate trial. Moscow Mitch openly declared that he will NOT be impartial. He's violating his oath even before he takes it.
It will not be a legitimate trial without witnesses and evidence. Republicans refusal to allow witnesses and evidence is what's known as a COVER-UP.
Trump and republicans in the Senate wouldn't have a problem with Bolton, Rudy, Mulvaney, or John Eisenberg testifying if Trump was actually innocent. The problem is he's not innocent. He's guilty as charged, and they know it.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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Just imagine if a career criminal and con-man became president, and he systematically dismantled the DoJ, and then turned it into his personal tool to use as a get out of jail free card for himself and his criminal cohorts. It's the kind of thing we thought only happened in 3rd world banana republics, controlled by despots
Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump? I THINK NOT.....
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@stephaniesanderson6190
😂😆
Rand Paul earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C.. After that, he completed his general surgery internship at Atlanta-based Georgia Baptist Medical Center, followed by a residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center. Despite his medical training, Paul does not hold a bachelor's degree. He attended Waco, Texas-based Baylor University to study biology and English, but left a few courses short of a diploma after he was accepted into medical school.
Rand Paul is not even a board-certified ophthalmologist, as he reportedly claimed. Paul's certification comes from a board that he created himself. 😂 but he hasn't been certified by an organization recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties for years.
The now-defunct board was not recognized by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, so Paul was not board certified by a board recognized by the state since 2005, and since Paul's board dissolved in 2011, he has had no certification from an active body.
Basically, Dr. Dre is more of a doctor than Rand Paul.😄
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In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.”
The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement.
Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment..
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his crime family had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, Trump used his charity foundation to pay-off a $158,000 lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
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There’s much speculation as to how Rudy Giuliani “America’s Mayor,” the widely admired civic leader who presided over NYC during 9/11, could have been siphoned into Trump’s underworld. We got a Trump thanks to a compliant, sensationalist media apparatus that breathed life into his phony self-made billionaire myth, just as we owe them for Rudy, who they cast as a post-9/11 American hero.
By the time that the planes crashed into the Towers on Sept. 11, 2001 Giuliani was a master surfer of the wave of public opinion. In the attacks that played out in lower Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, PA, close to 3,000 people were killed — 343 of them uniformed New York City firemen.
Overnight, the media turned Giuliani into a larger than life heroic figure. But the people that were most intimately familiar with the city’s pre-9/11 counter-terrorism preparations knew that it was Giuliani’s failures as Mayor which contributed directly to the horrific body count for the FDNY that day.
On Feb. 26, 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked with a 1,200-pound bomb concealed in a rental truck that exploded in the basement. The blast killed six, injured 1,000 people, and forced 50,000 to evacuate.
In a detailed after-action report published in 1994 by the FDNY, the inability of firefighters and their officers to communicate over their analog radios that day was flagged as a vital issue that needed to be addressed with urgency. In 2008 — when Giuliani was running for president — FDNY Lt. James Wood recounted his experiences during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in an informational video produced by the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF).
While the bombing had taken place during Mayor Dinkins tenure as Mayor, Giuliani was sworn in on Jan. 2 1994. As the IAFF recalls it, the critical report about the defective fire radios gathered dust for several years.
It took until March of 2001 for new digital radios to be deployed, but they were withdrawn weeks later after they were deemed responsible for a near life-ending miscue when a firefighter isolated in a basement fire in Queens radioed a “May Day” call for assistance that none of his co-workers heard over their radios. It was only picked up by another fire company miles away. The new radios were shelved, and the old dysfunctional analogs were put back in service.
The contract for the new radios was a no bid, non-competitive contract that was, as it turned out, just an extension of an existing contract with Motorola, which has a near-monopoly on emergency communications.
According to a report issued by the NYC Comptroller the next month, Giuliani had “willfully” violated “city contracting rules…. endangering firefighters in a reckless bid to buy a new type of hand-held radio that it later had to pull from service,” The Times reported that “the new digital radios were never properly tested before being distributed to firefighters.” As City Comptroller Alan Hevesi documented, “they were purchased through what he described as an improper process that did not allow competing companies to bid for the contract.” At the time, Michael Wolf, who represented Com-Net Ericsson, a Motorola competitor, told the Times he was stymied in his efforts to even get the city to consider his company’s products.
Just six months later, FDNY’s bravest faced the doomsday scenario as they sized up the rescue operation in the Twin Towers on 9/11 that would take so many of their lives. They were equipped with the same analog radios that had failed them so badly when the WTC was bombed back in 1993. As the IAFF video documents and as the 9/11 timeline confirms, at 9:32 am. on 9/11, an FDNY Chief ordered all members in the North Tower down to the lobby. Even though he repeated the order, not a single company responded.
At 9:59 the WTC South Tower collapsed; and at 10 am the order to abandon the North Tower was repeated. Inside the North Tower were 121 firefighters who never heard that order. They perished when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am.
“On 9/11 firefighters went into the North Tower and started ascending the tower, yet they were being called back and they kept going,” said Richard Salem, an attorney who has been representing several of the firefighters’ families who lost loved ones when the North Tower collapsed. “Not one other uniformed officer from any other department, who had functioning radios, perished in that tower other than the FDNY.”
Despicably, Giuliani tried to cover up his own malfeasance by telling the 9/11 Commission that the North Tower firefighters had ignored the radio orders because of “their willingness, the way I describe it to stand their ground.”
Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, who lost his son Jimmy in the North Tower, will tell this tragic story to anyone who will listen. He and other surviving family members shadowed Giuliani during the 2008 primary and carried on a media campaign that was picked up by outlets like the Guardian.
“These radios did not work in the WTC in 1993 and they did not work in 2001." Jim Riches stated. "We got the story out there but when the media christened him ‘America’s Mayor,’ it all went away.”
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The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act..
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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@mr.e432
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
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Trump’s campaign chairman Manafort, shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies. Manafort was also accused of covering up other meetings and contacts with the Russian, an elusive man named Konstantin Kilimnik who worked for Manafort on election campaigns for pro-Kremlin politicians in eastern Europe.
Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the the election. US Intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian operation was ordered by Putin to help Trump’s campaign.
Mueller has also said that Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign, described Kilimnik as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU”
Manafort’s attorneys did not deny that Manafort gave Kilimnik the data, instead stating that he had not lied about it but was merely “unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed”. The attorneys also confirmed that Manafort had met Kilimnik in Madrid, claiming he “had not initially remembered” the meeting but recalled it when confronted with records showing the two were in the Spanish capital at the same time. LOL!!!😂 So Manafort tried to pretend that he didn't remember taking a flight across the Atlantic Ocean to meet up with a Russian agent in Spain in order to pass polling data on to him.😂😂
It was previously known that Kilimnik and Manafort had met twice during 2016 in the US. The date of the Madrid meeting was not stated, but a source familiar with Manafort’s team said it was in early 2017 after Trump had entered office.
Trump said he knew “nothing” about his then-campaign chief Paul Manafort sharing polling data with a Russian spy during the 2016 presidential campaign. 😂 Sure Donnie....we believe you.😄
The disclosure that Manafort had given Kilimnik polling data is the strongest piece of public evidence that a high-ranking Trump campaign official may have been coordinating with Russians in an illegal effort to get Trump elected. Such data could have been used by Russia as part of a broad-ranging scheme, which involved bogus social media accounts, to manipulate public opinion in Trump’s favor.
Mueller has charged that Kilimnik, who worked for Manafort for years, tried with Manafort to tamper with potential witnesses against Manafort.
Mueller has alleged that Kilimnik — who remains at large — has ties to “a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.”
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If we take a step back, and remember a few of our past American Presidents, like Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower, JFK, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, FDR, Reagan, Carter, and Obama, it's easy to see that Trump has nothing in common with any of them. Traitor Trump does not possess any of the traits that made them decent men, and great leaders.
A few of our past presidents, whether you agree with them politically or not, came from poor or modest backgrounds: Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton, Truman, Carter, Obama, all came from nothing. Trump comes from a family of wealthy, self-serving, entitled cowards, who have never served or sacrificed anything for anyone. Cowardness, greed, hubris, and contempt for the law runs through Trump's veins. He despises everything that made some of our past presidents great leaders.
Trump despises John McCain, because McCain was everything that he's not. Trump will attack veterans, PoWs, our intelligence agencies, or anyone that swears and oath to serve a cause greater than themselves. He will attack them because the concept or idea, of serving someone, or something, other than himself is inconceivable.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior.
I began this book with the assumption that Trump is a malignant narcissist. Actually, watching him and listening to him reminded me of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the cult I joined in college, in that both have a kind of God complex where they’re the only one with the answers, the only one who can fix things. Moon was going to create a theocracy and Trump was going to “drain the swamp.” But the way they carry themselves is similar.
But what really made me think of Trump as a cult was the way the groups who supported him were behaving, especially religious groups who believed that God had chosen Trump or was using Trump. There are actual pro-Trump religious groups, like the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders were saying, “We’re of God. The rest of the world is of Satan, and we need to follow our chosen leaders who are connected to God.”
There was this blind-faith aspect to the whole thing and an unwillingness to look at any inconvenient facts. That’s all very cult-like.
The bottom line is that I see very sophisticated mind-control techniques being used through the media, through religious broadcasters and radio talk-show hosts. It’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil, authoritarian view of reality that is mostly fear-based. And there’s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the image of the leader."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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S Tho
Or maybe, just maybe, he's just a con-man, like he's been his entire adult life.
Back in 1986 and likely for many years before, Trump colluded in tax evasion with Bulgari Jewelry Store in NY, a high-end posh location with tony clientele right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here's how the scam worked:
Trump would go into the store with his wife, his girlfriend, his...whatever (to use his vernacular). He would then buy her an expensive necklace or wristwatch. Normally, such a transaction would face the NY and state sales tax, which would be pretty high on luxury jewelry.
In an illegal attempt to evade the tax, Trump "asked" the store to instead ship the jewelry to an out of state location, where no NY sales tax could be collected. In fact, the store would merely send an empty jewelry box to the location, while Trump and his lady friends walked out the door with the jewelry that very day.
The state and city tax collectors eventually caught onto this scheme, and Trump promptly testified against his erstwhile tax evasion colluding partners at the jewelry store in order to save his own skin.😲 Anyone who gets close to a disease like Trump will end up getting pushed off a curb by him, and into an oncoming bus.
The empty box scam is just one example of Trump's history of illegal tax evasion. Another story can be told about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida by local reporter Frank Cerabino.
Trump bought the property from the estate of breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. He got it for a relative bargain at $7.5 million, something he bragged about in The Art of the Deal. Yet he refused for years to pay local property taxes on the actual value of the property, $11.5 million at the time he bought it. He tried to have it both ways--buy the property for a steep discount and also pay property taxes at that same under-valued level.
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Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with Russian crime bosses for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. Russian Oligarchs as well as the Russian mafya are both connected to Russian intelligence. It's virtually impossible to tell who is who. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafya and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mob in 1984. In ‘92, the Russian mob had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mob.
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin.
The Russians used Trump's apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s..
With Trump's constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. Public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all, Semion Mogilevich.
In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. Mogilevich’s greatest talent, the one that places him at the top of the Russian mob, is finding creative ways to cleanse dirty cash. According to the FBI, he has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world. In 1991, he made a move that led directly to Trump Tower. That year, the FBI says, Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring a fellow mob boss, Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. If Mogilevich was the brains, Ivankov was the enforcer..
The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. “He was like a ghost to the FBI,” one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years..
The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. “We were looking around, looking around, looking around,” James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section, told Friedman. “We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.”
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Trump and republicans will eventually be held accountable for selling out America to Russia. They've been raking in Russian money going all the way back to 2015.
Trump and the political action committees for Moscow McConnell, Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
During the 2015-2016 election season, billionaire Leonard Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Moscow Mitch was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, Lindsey Graham at $800,000, John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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On Fox, Rudy said he's not worried about Trump throwing him under the bus, because he has "insurance." Well clearly that can only mean one thing, Rudy is admitting to having evidence of Trump's criminality.😂
And make no mistake, Trump's other longtime partner in crime, Roger Stone, will definitely try to cut a deal. Because there is absolutely no way a coward like him is going to go to prison if he can help it. His only chance of preventing that from happening is giving up Trump.
This is usually what happens with any criminal organization when the feds are closing in on them. Trump's den of thieves has quickly turned into Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. We are witnessing the treacherous behavior of criminals when they start hedging their bets. Nonstop chaos, upheaval, back-stabbing, unbridled buffoonery, cowardice, and betrayal is about to ensue.
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" No one wins a race to the bottom." I wish someone had told Trump that a long time ago, not that it wouldhave done any good, because he seems to have been in a race to the bottom his whole life.
In Trump's book, The Art of the Deal, he brags about being an out of comtrol violent kid.
"Even in elementary school, I was a very assertive, aggressive kid. In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye — I punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled. I'm not proud of that but it's clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way."
During his rally In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the day of the Iowa caucuses, he told his crowd of cultists he would pay their legal fees if they engaged in violence against protesters.
"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise," he said on Feb. 1, 2016.
At a Las Vegas rally later that month, he said security guards were too gentle with a protester. "He's walking out with big high-fives, smiling, laughing," Trump said. "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you."
A similar situation unfolded at a rally that month in Warren, Michigan.
"Get him out," he said of a protester. "Try not to hurt him. If you do, I'll defend you in court. Don't worry about it."
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Mohamad bin Salman, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. What else do they have in common? They are all men that Trump admires and looks up to.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that Trump chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force on everyone else what he believes, and punish those who don’t.
Trump claims to support veterans after they return from service, but in the last two years he slashed funding for military housing assistance programs which help keep veterans off the street and gutted mental illness programs which help those dealing with PTSD and suicidal tendencies.
Trump cultists always brag about their love and support for our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
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A perfect example of what happens when Don the Con is under oath.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables on Trump, and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times.
Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
The lies Trump told were unstrategic, needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
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Romney stayed true to his oath of office. No Senator or Congressman swears an oath to the president. They swear an oath to the Constitution, and to the people of this country. However Trump, being the megalomaniac that he is, believes that everyone should swear an oath to him. And anyone who doesn't, should be called a "never Trumper." As if being a never Trumper comes with some sort of negative connotation. Being called a never Trumper is like having a badge honor bestowed upon you. It simply means that you put your country, and the Constitution before an undeserving and illegitimate con-man. Being a never Trumper is something we should all aspire to be. For there is nothing more righteous, than being a never Trumper. I salute Romney, Schiff, and all of his colleagues, for having the courage and the integrity to remain true to their oaths, and for standing up for our Constitution, the country, and the American people.
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Trump and his administration are spinning in a vortex of lies, upheaval, back-stabbing, unbridled buffoonery, thievery, treason, nepotism, criminal incompetence, bedlam, moral turpitude, and sanctioned lawlessness. And that's on a good day.
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How Democracies Die.
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia..
Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine.
Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box. The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. The constitution is suspended or scrapped. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance.
Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended, by political parties and organized citizens but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not.
This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy – packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence) and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy – gradually, subtly, and even legally – to kill it.
Not only did Americans elect a demagogue in 2016, but we did so at a time when the norms that once protected our democracy were already coming unmoored.
But if other countries’ experiences teach us that that polarization can kill democracies, they also teach us that breakdown is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
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General Mattis is a man of core beliefs, integrity, loyalty to the country, and commitment to our Troops. Trump on the other hand, is a Traitor, a coward, and a man who believes in nothing. Trump is despised by our military, and rightfully so. He has insulted our PoWs, and Gold Star family members, he refused to honor our WW1 fallen in France, and he refused to visit Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day. Trump has been in office for 2 years, and has yet to visit our troops serving overseas.
As a Marine veteran, I despise everything he represents. I was going to say that I also despise everything he stands for, but then I remembered that Trump doesn't stand for anything, because he doesn't believe in anything.
Semper Fidelis, Always Faithful
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Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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Multiple Obama-era officials have said they left the Trump administration with a 2016 “pandemic playbook” that detailed exact steps to take in the event of an infectious disease outbreak.
What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018.
Ronald Klain, the White House Ebola response coordinator from October 2014 to February 2015, tweeted out a link to a document titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”
The document is a 69-page National Security Council guidebook developed in 2016 with the goal of assisting leaders “in coordinating a complex U.S. Government response to a high-consequence emerging disease threat anywhere in the world.” It outlined questions to ask, who should be asked to get the answers and what key decisions should be made.
Nicole Lurie, another Obama administration official, confirmed the existence of the NSC pandemic playbook and also said similar documents were created for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The playbook listed types of infectious disease threats that could emerge. “Novel coronaviruses” were among pathogens flagged as having potential to cause heightened concern.
“We absolutely did leave a plan. It was called a playbook,” said Lisa Monaco, former homeland security adviser to President Obama. The goal, she said, was to share the lessons learned during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks.
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Trump is, and has always been, an agent of chaos. Trump doesn't solve problems, he IS the problem, just ask Atlantic City. Being a problem solver would actually require Trump's to first know history, combined with an understanding of perspectives. It would require him to be capable of reasoning and critical thinking.😂
He would have to be fully aware of his own weaknesses and limitations, combined with a willingness to listen and learn from experts with years of experience. Trump would also have to finally acknowledge that magic is not real. Last but not least, in order for Trump to become a problem solver, he would need to have the moral courage, and the moral compass to do what is right. Trump has proven that he clearly has none of the tools nor the desire to solve problems. And that is why he chooses to be an agent of chaos, because it's so much easier than being a problem solver. Even a 2 year old child can be an agent of chaos.
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Trump is clearly worried about Stone revealing everything he knows about Trump's crimes if he is faced with a long prison sentence.
Steve Bannon’s contacts with Stone during the 2016 campaign was one of the featured parts of Stone’s trial.
"I think we did, yes,” said Bannon, when asked during Stone's trial whether the Trump campaign viewed Stone as its “access point” to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Stone’s denials of having any contact with WikiLeaks was undercut by testimony from people like Bannon and a trail of emails and phone records. One message from Aug. 16, 2016, shows Stone telling Bannon on the day he took over as campaign CEO about the prospect that WikiLeaks would drop more damaging documents for the Clinton campaign.
“I have an idea … to save Trump’s @55,” Stone wrote.
Bannon testified that he heard repeatedly from Stone — before he even took over as Trump campaign chief — about his access to WikiLeaks. And Stone kept on talking about the potential of more detrimental materials through the late summer and early fall, at a time when Clinton had the lead in the polls.
Bannon’s contacts with Stone included an Oct. 4, 2016, exchange after a much-hyped Assange news conference, which fueled the hashtag "October?surprise" but it turned out to be a bust.
“It was a big dud, yes,” Bannon said.
But a few days later, WikiLeaks dumped emails stolen from the Clinton campaign just minutes after The Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape. Bannon described that chain of events as the “Billy Bush weekend” — a reference to Trump bragging about grabbing women by the p..
Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Clinton.
Gates testified that the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
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A letter of intent forwarded by Russian-born businessman Felix Sater to the Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, outlines the terms of a licensing agreement to purchase property to build a "Trump World Tower Moscow."
Sater sent the letter of intent - dated October 13, 2015, and signed by a Russian investor named Andrey Rozov - to Cohen for then-candidate Donald Trump's signature.
Emails exchanged between Cohen and Sater - who have known each other since they were teenagers - weeks later indicated that they were preparing to celebrate not only Trump's election victory, but also the potential Russia deal.
Sater boasted of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the emails, which were obtained by The New York Times, telling Cohen that he would "get all of Putins team to buy in" on the Moscow deal.
Slater email to Cohen: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," Sater wrote. "I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected."
Two months later, Cohen emailed Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, asking for his "assistance" in pushing the deal through, according to emails submitted to congressional investigators..
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Cautionary lessons from the past. The threat that Trump poses to our democracy is real and eminent. Semper Fi..
“The German and Russian state apparatuses grew out of despotism. For this reason the subservient nature of the human character of masses of people in Germany and in Russia was exceptionally pronounced. Thus, in both cases, the revolution led to a new despotism with the certainty of irrational logic..
In contrast to the German and Russia state apparatuses, the American state apparatus was formed by groups of people who had evaded European and Asian despotism by fleeing to a virgin territory free of immediate and effective traditions. Only in this way can it be understood that, until the time of this writing, a totalitarian state apparatus was not able to develop in America, whereas in Europe every overthrow of the government carried out under the slogan of freedom inevitably led to despotism.
This holds true for Robespierre, as well as for Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. If we want to appraise the facts impartially, then we have to point out, whether we want to or not, and whether we like it or not, that Europe's dictators, who based their power on vast millions of people, always stemmed from the suppressed classes. I do not hesitate to assert that this fact, as tragic as it is, harbors more material for social research than the facts related to the despotism of a czar or of a Kaiser Wilhelm.
By comparison, the latter facts are easily understood. The founders of the American Revolution had to build their democracy from scratch on foreign soil. The men who accomplished this task had all been rebels against English despotism. The Russian Revolutionaries, on the other had, were forced to take over an already existing and very rigid government apparatus. Whereas the Americans were able to start from scratch, the Russians, as much as they fought against it, had to drag along the old.
This may also account for the fact that the Americans, the memory of their own flight from despotism still fresh in their minds, assumed an entirely different—more open and more accessible—attitude toward the new refugees of 1940, than Soviet Russia, which closed its doors to them. This may explain why the attempt to preserve the old democratic ideal and the effort to develop genuine self-administration was much more forceful in the United States than anywhere else.
We do not overlook the many failures and retardations caused by tradition, but in any event a revival of genuine democratic efforts took place in America and not in Russia. It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves. Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
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DJT does not care about anyone or anything other than himself, and his own desires.
A Trump quote from 2004, in response to a Larry King Live caller asking him how he handles stress during a crisis.
Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. And Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily, and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, Rudy) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all the boxes.
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Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of DT's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with DT's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
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vaughn rasmussen
The Trump criminal organization is pushing back against a proposed provision that would require the Secret Service to disclose how much it's spending on Trump's golf trips to his resorts.
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is battling with Dem senators in negotiations over legislation that would move the Secret Service back to the Treasury Department, where it was first housed before moving to the DHS.
The legislation is set to include a stipulation that the Secret Service disclose on a semiannual basis the amount being spent on presidential travel for the president and his adult children. “Mnuchin came to me last year with a proposal to move the Secret Service to the Treasury Department,” Sen Feinstein said in a statement. “As part of that effort, I proposed that the cost of presidential travel be included for greater transparency, accountability and oversight associated with protection during travel of presidents and their families.”
Mnuchin agreed to the financial disclosure provision, but like a true Trump sycophant, Mnuchin is against the 120-day requirement, and instead wants to hold off on revealing the cost of the president’s trips until after the election. 😲
That's like a used car salesman telling you that he will tell you the past mechanical problems of a car, but only after you've purchased it from him.
The Secret Service is required to report semiannually the cost of protecting Trump's Children of the Corn, or non-White House residence, the Trump criminal organization failed to do so in either 2016 or 2017. The White House also dodged questions from the Government Accountability Office about the issue for two years, after the GAO sought information on the cost of Trump's travel to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump spent one out of every five days on one his golf course last year. The GAO found that Trump's first four trips to Mar-a-Lago in 2017 cost the Secret Service $1.3 million per trip (and $3.4 million in total government spending), and the Secret Service requested $60 million in additional funding in 2017. Federal charge card expenditures revealed the Secret Service also spent at least $250,000 at Trump properties in just the first five months of Trump's term alone, and the agency has paid a king's ransom for golf carts on Trump's golf outings, spending $588,000 on golf carts since 2017. The GAO report found that Trump's sons Uday and Qusay's travel to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and the UAE in 2017 cost the Secret Service $396,000 in total—and they've done plenty of traveling since.
Trump has spent nearly a third of his "presidency" at his properties. The GAO report reports that the Secret Service may have spent as much as $28 million JUST on Trump's trips to Mar-a-Lago by now. But that would be still just a fraction of his total travel costs. President Obama—whom Trump criticized for golfing too much—cost the government $96.9 million over 8 years with his travel, for comparison. So far Trump's golfing has cost American taxpayers more than 102 million dollars in just 3 years. Taxpayers have paid at least 81 million for Trump play on his golf course in FL, 17 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in NJ, 1 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in Los Angeles, and 3 million for Trump to play on his golf course in Scotland. And to add insult to injury, Trump is pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars from accommodations, lodging, and rental fees. The more trips to his properties, the more money he makes.
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The GOP is the party of voter suppression and voter fraud.
Trivia question: Which party was caught engaging in the worst case of voter fraud in modern US history?
That's right, you guessed it. It was Republicans!!!👏👏👏
A basic manipulation tactic of Trump and the GOP, is to accuse your opponent of the exact thing that you are doing, so when you get caught doing that thing yourself, it doesn’t seem that drastic. Republicans know that when everyone votes they lose. Trump admitted it himself. The Repub party may not have the numbers, but they most certainly have the money. A large majority of money from Big Business and billion dollar corporations is funneled to Repub candidates. This money is used to buy republican politicians for the purpose of giving corporations control over our government.
In 2019, the NC Republican operative at the center of an absentee ballot fraud scheme that led the state to order a rerun of a congressional election was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. The operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, was charged with three felony counts of obstruction of justice, two counts of conspiring to commit obstruction of justice and two counts of possession of absentee ballots.
Allegations that operatives working for Dowless illegally collected, and sometimes filled in, absentee ballots on behalf of Republican Mark Harris’ campaign emerged shortly after the Nov. 6 election. They caused the state to hold off certifying Harris’ apparent narrow victory over Democrat Dan McCready.
During 4 days of hearings, the state Board of Elections heard evidence of a well-funded and well-organized campaign to tip the election for the state’s 9th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which stretches southeast from Charlotte.
Ballot fraud is extremely rare. But when this case was uncovered in a congressional race in 2018, orchestrated by Republicans, Trump and other republicans looked the other way.
The election fraud committed in NC was the largest case in modern American history. Republican Mark Harris, hired a felon, Leslie McCrae Dowless, who promised to deliver unbelievable absentee ballot margins, as he had done in past elections. Dowless hired workers who went to voters’ doorsteps in poor, rural Bladen County, N.C., and “helped” them request, fill out and turn in their ballots. That help included forging signatures and filling in vote choices, and possibly even discarding ballots. The operation mostly targeted black voters. It also appeared the county elections board may have also leaked early vote totals to Republicans.
Altogether, it was an egregious attack on our democracy, in an election where the margin was only 905 votes. Voters on both sides of the aisle were horrified. But not the Republican Party. When evidence of fraud emerged in the party’s primary, it's state director, Dallas Woodhouse, turned a blind eye; later, when evidence emerged in the general-election race, he backed Mark Harris, in a lawsuit to be seated in Congress without an investigation 😲 while attacking the bipartisan state elections board and blaming Dems for the fraud. 😲
It turned out that even the local U.S. attorney, who was appointed by Trump, had failed to act on warnings by the state elections board that Dowless had stolen votes in a different race two years before. Instead, the attorney’s office went on a fishing expedition for fraud committed by immigrants, under the guidance of Jeff Sessions.
Trump and the GOP love to claim that voters commit fraud, even though it almost never happens, BUT, when one of their own was caught committing the worst case of voter fraud in modern history, they weren’t concerned at all. Just one more page from the Republican Party’s dirty elections playbook.
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From the very beginning, Trump's presidency has always been about using the office to enrich himself, ingratiating himself to authoritarian rulers who had something to offer him personally (Saudi Arabia, China, Russia) And at the same time, insulting America's longtime allies, because they had nothing to offer him personally. ( The UK, Australia, Canada, France)
Trump and his grifter family are running their criminal enterprise out of the white house . That's what the entire Trump administration has been about since the very beginning. It's why Jared and Ivanka were brought into the white house. They aren't working for the country, or the American people, they are working for themselves. They are working to enrich themselves even more. Every move they make is a calculated business move for their own financial gains.
It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, Australia, UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president.
Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab. All anyone has to do is take a step back and open your eyes, and you'll see that what Trump and his family are doing is happening right in front of our faces.
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Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
The optimism was part of a larger embrace by Russia of Trump's "America First" outlook, which emphasizes U.S. business interests and national security over promoting freedom and democracy, said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a researcher who has worked with the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Initiative.
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said.
2 years later, the sanctions are still in place😂😂😂😄 and the thrill of Trump's election has faded amid an intensifying federal investigation of possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. Thanks Robert Mueller. America will forever be in your debt. Make Traitors Fear Again!!!!!😄
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Harold Bolin
Trump's tariffs will accomplish nothing other than hurting American farmers, truck drivers, steel workers, and auto industry workers. In fact it's already begun. No other president has done what Trump is doing because no other president has been as criminally incompetent as him. The nation would have been better if he had simply done nothing. But if Trump was so determined to go after China, he should have taken the time and effort to build a coalition of countries to go after China together as one. That would have put far more pressure on China, and would have yielded better results. But unfortunately, Trump being the lunatic that he is, has damaged the relationships with practically all of our allies.
Nothing makes Trump happier than not knowing what he's talking about. The less he knows, the happier he is. I never believed that you needed to be a genius in order to be president, but you should at least have a curious mind. Trump is possibly the most intellectually incurious person I've ever seen. He knows less than nothing, and yet he refuses to listen to the experts with years of experience in their fields. Instead of surrounding himself with highly qualified experts, he has surrounded himself with C and D list sycophants like Kudlow and Peter Navarro. His entire administration is filled with the most unqualified and unprincipled staff of neophytes ever assembled. It's a recipe for disaster.
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Twitter has shut down multiple accounts that it says were operated by a white supremacist group posing as liberal groups encouraging violence..
A white supremacist group created a fake Twitter account, posed as the Antifa movement and called for violence during the ongoing protests sweeping the nation, Twitter said.
“Tonight’s the night comrades," the group tweeted on Sunday. “Tonight we say ‘f--k the city’ and we move into residential areas... the white hoods... and we take what’s ours.”
Twitter said the white supremacist group Identity Evropa used one fake account, @Antifa_US, to call for violence in majority white suburbs, in the name of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"This account violated our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. We took action after the account sent a Tweet inciting violence and broke the Twitter Rules" the company said.
Twitter said it has also targeted other fake accounts run by Identity Evropa. The company said the accounts posted hateful tweets targeting race, religion and sexual orientation.
Twitter has seen a wave of fake accounts spreading false information about the ongoing protests in recent days.
Trump and his supporters have claimed, without evidence, that Antifa is behind the violence seen in some of the protests nationwide.
In an internal FBI situation report, the FBI’s Washington Field Office found no intel evidence indicating Antifa involvement or presence in the violence that occurred on May 31 during the D.C.-area protests. That same day, Trump announced on Twitter that he would designate “Antifa” a terrorist organization, even though antifa is not an organized group.
But not surprisingly, the report did warn that individuals from a far-right social media group had called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, and use automatic weapons against protesters. A Department of Homeland Security intelligence note warned law-enforcement officials that a white supremacist channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram encouraged its followers to incite violence to start a race war during the protests.
Antifa, short for anti-facist, poses a threat to a devout fascist like Trump, so it only makes sense that Trump would want to go after them. Adolf did the same thing to opponents of his fascist regime. It's only natural that a fascist would view any anti-facist group has his enemy.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructiveCult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
A ccult environment like Trump ism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displayingDogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called brain washing. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many ccults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it, because he doesn't believe in science or facts, so he didn't understand it..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018..
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump..
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
No amount of lies, spin, or deflections will wash away the facts of Trump's historic failure as president, and as a human being..
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Trump is more than happy to make 800 thousand Americans suffer until he gets what he wants, even if what he wants has been rejected by the majority of Americans.
Trump: " My immature and petulant needs, far outweighs the needs of 800 thousand Americans who will go without a pay check."
If we have so many terrorists coming across the border, why haven't we seen massive terrorist attacks across the country from these terrorists? The answer is simple...terrorists are not crossing into America at our southern border. The only terrorist attacks in America, are coming from Americans. American right-wing extremists who are plowing cars into crowds of people, and shooting up concerts, schools, clubs, bars, grocery stores, pizza parlors, movie theaters, churches, and Synagogues.
Right now, you or your child, are far more likely to be gunned down by an American in a mass shooting, than being the victim of a terrorist attack at the hands of some foreigners who snuck across the southern border. REALITY MATTERS.
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The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The unredacted emails were secured through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act launched by the Center for Public Integrity. The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB.
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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Trump lies a little bit more than waaaay too much.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
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It's no secret that Trump has absolutely no respect for our men and women in uniform. Trump waited two whole years after being sworn in before he ever visited our Troops in Iraq. President Obama visited our troops in Iraq just 3 months after taking office. Trump did however find time to make Saudi Arabia his first overseas trip as president. But of course, that was for personal and financial business reasons.
An immoral man like Trump, who clearly has no honor, is naturally drawn to other men like Eddie Gallagher, who has no honor.
On the flip side, Trump has nothing but contempt for men and women of honor, like General Mattis, John McCain, Lt.Col. Vindman, Ambassador Bill Taylor, Ambassador Yovanovitch, and Dr. Fiona Hill.
Trump wants people around him who will throw their morals, principles, and integrity out the window whenever he demands it. Ultimately, Trump wants people around him who will always choose him, over the oaths that they have taken.
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Ali Alexander, formerly, known as Ali Akbar, the Stop the Steal organizer who claimed three sitting U.S. congressmen helped plan the rally that came before the insurrection, has been subpoenaed by the January 6th Select Committee along with fellow rally organizer Nathan Martin. The committee is seeking records from Stop the Steal LLC in addition to Alexander and Martin.
Alexander bragged on live streams last December that he and Trump-supporting Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) were working on a plot to exert “maximum pressure on Congress” during the vote to certify Biden’s electoral victory. The day before the attack, Alexander led a group in a “victoryORdeath” chant at a rally, the committee said. During the events at the Capitol, Alexander filmed a video of himself looking over the crowd from afar and saying, “I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this.”
Following the events of January 6th, Alexander went into hiding and frantically tried to erase his affiliation with numerous Stop the Steal web domains he owned.
Alexander and his cohort, Brandan Straka were also both named in a lawsuit brought by the Capitol Police harmed by the January 6 insurrection. According to Damon Hewitt, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, “As this lawsuit makes clear, the January 6 insurrection was not just an attack on individuals, but an attack on democracy itself. It was a blatant attempt to stifle the votes and voices of millions of Americans."
In the suit, Alexander, along with other defendants, are accused of “violating two provisions of the federal KuKluxKlan Act, which forbids conspiracies to use force, intimidation, and threats to prevent federal officers from doing their jobs or to injure them in the course of their work.”
Alexander has made some changes in his life in order to hide his past. Previously, he went by Ali Akbar. And a search of that named shows he was found guilty on several charges to prior changing his name.
Court documents indicate he found trouble with the law back in 2007 when he pled guilty to a felony property theft charge out of Fort Worth, Texas. He was sentenced to 12 months probation, according to documents. Again, in 2008, Alexander pled guilty to a credit card abuse felony charge out of Texas.
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@petepattschull3108
Trump repeatedly lied to his supporters that Mexico would pay for the border wall. The President of Mexico disagreed; on Jan. 25, the Mexican president told his nation in a televised address that they "would not pay" for the wall
The transcripts of Trump’s January 27 call with Nieto along with transcripts have been revealed.
Peña Nieto told Trump it was “completely unacceptable” for Mexico to fund the wall.
Trump demanded he cease making that claim.
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Nieto: “I understand, Mr. President, the small political margin that you have now in terms of everything you said you established throughout your campaign. But I would also like to make you understand, President Trump, the lack of margin I have as President of Mexico to accept this situation. And this has been, unfortunately, the critical point that has not allowed us to move forward in the building of the relationship between our two countries,” Peña Nieto told Trump.
Trump replied that it was very important politically for him to follow through on this promise.
Trump: “This is what I have been saying for a year and a half on the campaign trail. I have been telling this to every group of 50,000 people or 25,000 people – because no one got people in their rallies as big as I did,” he said. “I got elected on this proposal (LIE) – this won me the election." 🤣
When Peña Nieto continued to push back, Trump told the Mexican president that he could not tell the press of his opposition to the wall because Trump could not “negotiate under those circumstances.”
Trump: "I have to have Mexico pay for the wall — I have to," he said. "I have been talking about it for a two-year period." 🤣
On the wall itself, Peña Nieto stood firm.
Nieto: "My position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall," he said.
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“The United States must lead. We must lead to open the eyes of those still blinded by despotism, to emboldened those who remain oppressed, and bring out from the dungeons of tyranny those who still live in darkness. The question remains whether the United States will meet its responsibilities of leadership beyond peace as it did to defeat the communists in the Cold War. History thrusts certain powers at certain times on to center stage. In this era, the spotlight shines on the United States. How long it stays with us – – and how brightly it shines – – will be determined by us alone."
"A new attempt by Moscow to rebuild its empire would be a tragedy for Russia and its neighbors alike. In view of the Russian-Soviet historical legacy, it is understandable that Russia’s neighbors are sensitive to any signs of new assertiveness on Moscow’s part.
At the same time, Moscow has to be told unequivocally that there is a line beyond which unscrupulous conduct in the “near abroad” will be incompatible with good relations with the United States. In this context, it should be explained in particular that Ukraine and the Baltic States occupy a special place in the American heart and—because of their location in the center of Europe — strategic thinking. The Russian government is entitled to be made aware that encroachments in that region would seriously damage U.S.-Russian relations.
If Russia were to revert to authoritarianism, a strong Ukraine would be a vital deterrent to aggression. Also, Ukraine is far more likely to follow through on its disarmament commitments if our relations with it remain strong. We should move forward on the full range of cooperative policies, including military-to-military contacts, economic assistance, and wide-ranging educational exchanges.
Russia, at the present time, is at a crossroad. It is often said that the Cold War is over and the West has won it, that is only half true.
Because what has happened is that the communists have been defeated but the ideas of freedom now are on trial. If they don't work there will be a reversion to not communism–which has failed–but what I call a new despotism, which would pose a mortal danger to the rest of the world.
This is because it would be infected with the virus of Russian imperialism which of course has been a characteristic of Russian foreign policy for centuries."
-- Richard Nixon’s Beyond Peace, published in 1994
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Ryan Zinke, another one of Trump's " very best people" who is facing an ethics probe over land dealings, insisted a month ago that he still has Trump’s full support.
While Zinke was in CA touring the deadly Camp Fire damage in Paradise with Gov. Brown, He told The Sacramento Bee he has no recollection of meeting in 2017 with wealthy Sacramento land baron Angelo Tsakopoulos, as first reported by the Washington Post.
Zinke is being investigated on multiple fronts. In what is considered the most serious matter, the Interior Department’s acting inspector general has referred to the DoJ, an investigation into whether Zinke acted improperly in connection with a land deal in Whitefish, Mont., with the head of oil-services conglomerate HALLIBURTON. As secretary, Zinke oversees oil and gas drilling operations on federal lands.
In the interview with The Sacramento Bee, Zinke said: "I talk to the president, he understands. These are vicious attacks.” Zinke said the president backs him “100 percent.”
The main probe, centers on Zinke’s involvement with a Montana land deal backed by David Lesar, the chair of Halliburton, an oil field services company. A foundation established by Zinke and run by his wife, Lolita Zinke, owns land in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana. Lesar’s developer is planning to build on some of the land, Politico reported this summer. The proposed hotel and retail stores that the developer wants to build in Whitefish also stand to boost property values in a nearby parcel of land owned by the Zinkes.
As an oil field service firm, Halliburton has direct and indirect business involving the Interior Department, which manages mining and drilling rights on federal lands.
Zinke remained involved with his foundation even after he took office as secretary of the interior, violating an ethics pledge he signed in Jan 2017. Emails showed that he was still coordinating the land deal as late as August 2017. The investigation, now in the hands of the DoJ, could result in criminal charges.
BUT WAIT...THERE'S MORE!!! The IG is also investigating whether Zinke improperly used agency funds to pay for travel for his wife. There are several other probes into Zinke’s conduct by other government oversight groups, including the US Office of Special Counsel and the House Oversight Committee. In total, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tallied 17 federal investigations around Zinke. It puts him on par with Scott Pruitt, who was forced to resign after a tsunami of scandals caught up with him.
Even Zinke’s aboveboard actions are just as alarming. Zinke has presided over the largest rollback of federal land protections in US history, approved new development in wilderness areas, and opened up NEARLY ALL, US coastal waters to offshore drilling.
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The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes.
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"Stop playing politics with people's lives" Pence says.
It was Trump who admitted to playing down the seriousness of the coronavirus. He lied to the American people because he thought it would help his chances of getting reelected. Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences..
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
March 19: Trump again talked with Woodward. He acknowledged emerging evidence that a wide age range can be gravely impacted by the coronavirus.
Trump: "Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old -- it's plenty of young people," he said.
Aug. 5: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children at this point, Trump told this lie during an interview:
Trump: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." He adds "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."
Trump knew that what he was telling the American was NOT true. And at least 100 thousand American citizens have died because of his lies.
Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history..
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and Republicans are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we the Amercan, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
Will we keep are constitutional republic, or will we lose it, and see it replaced with a monarchy? Will we still have a democracy, or will we be ruled by a tyrant without boundaries? These are the questions that will be on the ballot box in 2020. This election will be the most important election in our nation's history.
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In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.”
The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement.
Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment..
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his crime family had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, Trump used his charity foundation to pay-off a $158,000 lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
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For the last four straight years, Trump, along with his surrogates, have adopted and used the most fiendish propaganda tactics on his followers. They have told so many lies, that Trump’s followers can no longer distinguish truth from fiction.
Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition, and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
-- Joseph Goebbels
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set you free...
"Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will."
-- Joseph Goebbels
It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
-- Joseph Goebbels
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Trump tricks his kool-aid guzzling cult into believing that he's going to be tough on China, he then turns around and drops to his knees at President Xi's feet, sobbing, blubbering, groveling, and pleading with him to do whatever he can to help him get reelected. 😂
This is the same so called tuff guy that used brute force on peaceful protesting American citizens just so he could have a 5 minute photo op. Utterly disgusting
Make no mistake, most republicans on Capitol Hill are fully aware of exactly who and what Trump is. They know that Trump is an existential threat to America, to our Constitution, and to our democratic institutions. Trump is a criminal minded, narcissistic sociopath who never puts anyone or anything before himself, unless he's physically using that person or thing as a shield. What most of us would call treason or betrayal, Trump calls it " looking out for the only thing that matters" himself.
Trump has always been a self-absorbed extreme narcissist. Every decision Trump has ever made in his entire life, before and and since he became president, has been based solely on his own best interests. Ego rules supremely in a narcissist’s life. And What motivates Trump is whatever fuels his ego, things like power, control, adulations, praises, cruelty to others, and personal monetary gain.
Another way that an extreme narcissist like Trump energizes his ego is through playing the role of the victim. The goal of Trump's deception is to make you believe that he suffers more than you, or anyone for that matter.
Trump is incredibly adept at the game of manipulation, especially when it comes to his gullible and cultish base. So instead of taking responsibility for his actions, and the consequences that results from them, he tries to make others feel responsible for his plight. Because In the eyes of an extreme narcissist like Trump, their actions and behavior are always right and totally justified.
Trump and republicans continue to rage against the Constitution in their ongoing war with our democratic republic. They have made it abundantly clear that we must vote them out of office in order for our democracy to survive.
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In a CNN interview, Rudy Giuliani said that Trump Tower Moscow “was a real estate project. There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it.” 😂
There's proof online that Trump signed it. The letter of intent with Trump signature has been available to every media outlet.
Trump himself signed the letter of intent, which is dated October 28, 2015 — five months after Trump launched his presidential campaign, and during a period in which he was lavishing praise on Putin.
Michael Cohen testified under oath to Congress that Trump signed the document.
The letter of intent, which was also signed by Andrey Rozov, owner of the Russian firm that would have partnered with the Trump criminal organization on the project, I.C. Expert Investment Co. — outlined a deal that would have given Trump’s company a $4 million upfront fee, no upfront costs, a percentage of the sales and control over marketing and design. The deal also included an opportunity to name the hotel spa after Trump’s daughter/muse, Ivanka.
The reason why Trump never went through with the Moscow hotel was because President Obama placed economic sanctions on the Russian bank that Trump needed to finance the hotel. Once that happened, the deal was officially dead. Trump never had enough money to finance the building of such a massive hotel. The sanctions Obama placed on the Russian bank prevented any Americans from doing business with it. The Russian VTB bank is partially owned by the Kremlin, and remains under US sanctions.
Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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Recently Captain Sully, the pilot who saved all 155 lives on board his flight, when he landed his plane on the Hudson River, announced that he would be voting BLUE 💙, for the 1st time this election.
Capt,Sully: “For the first 85 percent of my adult life, I was a registered Republican. But I have always voted as an American. And this critical Election Day, I will do so by voting for leaders committed to rebuilding out common values and not pandering to our basest impulses.”
Capt Sully said that he feels the current administration has fostered a culture of “fear, anger and hatred," He stated that “leaders must take responsibility and have a moral compass grounded in competence, integrity and concern for the greater good.”
“Many are cowardly, complicit enablers, acting against the interests of the United States, our allies and democracy; encouraging extremists at home and emboldening our adversaries abroad; and threatening the livability of our planet.”
The result, according to Capt Sully, is a “struggle for who and what we are as a people.” The former pilot feels that the country has lost “unit cohesion,” and that the very fabric of American society is being threatened by the current leaders of the country.
Well, if voting BLUE💙 is good enough for Captain Sully, a man who singlehandedly saved 155 lives, then it's certainly good enough for this Marine veteran. So BLUE it is!!!💙💙💙
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The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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How do you know when America's democracy is under siege? It's when our president believes he is above the law, and brags about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
Semper Fi...
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess.
On Jan. 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first briefed Trump on the threat of the virus in a phone call. Trump made his first public comments about the virus on Jan. 22, saying he was not concerned about a pandemic and that "we have it totally under control."
On Jan. 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House in a memo addressed to the NSC that COVID-19 could take more than half a million American lives and cause nearly $6 trillion in economic damage.
On Jan. 30, Azar warned Trump in a call that the virus could become a pandemic. Trump dismissed Azar as alarmist and rejected the idea of criticizing China. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency.
On Feb. 5, senators urged Trump in a briefing to take the virus more seriously and asked if additional funds were necessary. The administration made no requests at the time for emergency funding.
On Feb. 14, a memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with the NSC that recommended the targeted use of quarantine and isolation measures. Officials planned to present Trump with the memo when he returned from India on Feb. 25, but the meeting was canceled.
On Feb. 21, the White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives.
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable..
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing. While in the real world, America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 20k deaths. Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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A cult of personality, or a cult leader like Trump, arises when an individual uses the media, propaganda, the big lie, spectacle, counterfeit patriotism, demonstrations and rallies, to create an idealized, heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery,
praise.
The term came to prominence in 1956, in Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, given on the final day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the speech, Khrushchev criticized the lionization and idealization of Stalin, and by implication, his Communist sidekick Mao Zedong. Mao's cult of personality, like Stalin’s, portrayed him as larger-than-life and endowed with unrivaled wisdom. Cults of personality fell out of favor in the 1950s after Khrushchev's speech, but Trump's handler Putin, has revived the practice, guiding a wave of nostalgia for Stalin as he advocates for Russian nationalism and anti-West sentiment.
A main feature of Stalinism was its cult of personality. Whereas Lenin had claimed that the workers suffered from false consciousness and therefore needed a vanguard party to guide them, Stalin maintained that the Communist Party itself suffered from false consciousness
and therefore needed an all-wise leader—Stalin himself—to guide it. The resulting cult of personality portrayed Stalin as a universal genius in every subject, from linguistics to genetics.
The best modern-day example of a cult of personality comes to us from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un, the despotic dictator that Trump admires so much.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background. And when architects design new apartments and shops, he is given credit for doing so.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
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“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it."
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham, May 3, 2016
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
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The New York Times, on Wednesday, analyzed the Trump-Epstein friendship, and uncovered a jaw-dropping anecdote about a party at Mar-a-Lago for which Trump had two-dozen women flown in for a “calendar girl” competition.
Florida businessman George Houraney said he was the one who fulfilled Trump’s request in 1992 for the beautiful women to attend a VIP party at the Trump property. “I arranged to have some contestants fly in,” Houraney told the Times in an interview this week. “At the very first party, I said, ‘Who’s coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.’ It was him and Epstein.”
That the party wasn’t really a party at all surprised Houraney. “I said, ‘Donald, this is supposed to be a party with V.I.P.s. You’re telling me it’s just you and Epstein?’ ” Houraney recalled. “I said, ‘Look, Donald, I know Jeff really well, I can’t have him going after younger girls.’ ” Houraney told Trump that he had “pretty much had to ban Jeff from my events” but said “Trump didn’t care about that.”
Houraney had a falling out with Trump after his girlfriend accused Trump of making unwanted advances in the early 1990s.
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In 1856, Lincoln forged the Illinois Repub party out of a mixture of contending factions, including abo.litionists, dis.sident anti•s.l.a.v.e.r.y Democrats, and liberal German immigrants. Lincoln despised Know-Nothingism, which is identical to Trump.ism today.
In 1855, Lincoln wrote that if the "Know-Nothing" movement ever won power, it would rewrite the Declaration of Independence: “When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, EXCEPT for blks, and foreigners, and Ca.tho.lics.’ When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy," Lincoln stated.
The 1856 Republican platform provides NO similarities to the modern day Republican party. Its longest plank listed the trampling of constitutional rights of the anti•s.la.very forces in the Kansas territory, including voter suppression, attacks on freedom of the press, instigation of vio.lence, and vio.lence by armed m.i.l.i.tias. This platform, sounds very similar to the Democrat platform today.
Lincoln promised to restore the rule of law after the election by bringing members of the current administration before the bar of justice for their crimes.
But the Republicans lost the election of 1856, so there were no prosecutions. The early platform stood as a warning of greater danger to come. But after Lincoln’s election in 1860, many of those identified in the first Republican platform as the enemies of democracy, presidential advisers among them, would not accept the results of the election, and helped precipitate the civil war.
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TJ
I would have started by not calling the virus a hoax, and pretending it didn't exist for 2 months. I would have listened to the medical experts,
And would not have dismantled the National Security Council directorate that President Obama set up to deal with pandemic outbreaks.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
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Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from fox, the current president, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy. It should be reported that these traitors are all willing partners in Russia's disinformation campaign on America. And they should be treated as a threat to America, because that's exactly they are. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America.
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@jw4972
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."
-- David Frum
And that's exactly what we're seeing now.
If the Republican party were to ever achieve their goal of turning America into an authoritarianDystopia, the very first thing they're going to do, is take away your right to bear arms. They won't have any other choice. Just look at every other AuthoritarianRegimes throughout history. They didn't allow their people to haveGuns. Because that would be an existential threat to their power over you. Just look atChina, NorthKorea, theSovietUnion, and evenRussia today. Your right to vote and your right to free speech will be the next thing they take. And don't make the mistake of thinking that you'll be spared simply because you vote republican.
I'm sure this is something that supporters of the attempted coup have never considered or even contemplated.
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be with his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves that they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence along the narrow path, leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments.
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For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News...
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How can Trump make America great again, when he doesn't even know American history.
Trump's take on the Civil War: "the whole thing could have been avoided; President Andrew Jackson was upset by the war. And why didn't someone stop it anyway?"
This is odd, when consider that Jackson passed away 16 years before it began. And then there was the time he thought Frederick Douglass was still alive, and the time he bought a "fixer-upper" golf course that was once home to a Civil War battle site that never took place.
Trump bought the course in Virginia—now renamed the Trump National Golf Club—back in 2009, and got to work getting it up to The Trump Standard. That included building a flagpole along the river complete with a plaque commemorating the "River of Blood," a dramatic name for a harrowing event that never happened. But the plaque begged to differ:
"Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot," the inscription reads. "The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as 'The River of Blood.'"
This actually sounds like it was dictated by Trump, who in a phone interview with the Times called himself "a big history fan." Reporters from the paper told him they'd spoken with multiple local historians, all of whom said there was no Civil War battle within 11 miles of the plaque. The exchange that followed was quintessentially Trumpian:
Trump: "That was a prime site for river crossings. So, if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot — a lot of them." 😂
"People crossed there, so surely, if there was a war, people were shot while crossing. It just makes sense."
"How would they know that?" Trump asked when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. "Were they there?"
"How else could they know? It's not like there are writings and contemporary accounts from the time, and anyway, who would read them?"
Trump repeatedly said that "numerous historians" had told him that the golf club site was known as the River of Blood. But he said he did not remember their names.😂
Then he said the historians had spoken not to him but to "my people." But he refused to identify any underlings who might still possess the historians' names.
"Write your story the way you want to write it," Trump said finally, when pressed unsuccessfully for anything that could corroborate his claim. "You don't have to talk to anybody. It doesn't make any difference. But many people were shot. It makes sense." 😂😂
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Sen Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and other republicans on Capitol Hill, have been unmasked as Russian operatives for disseminating Russian conspiracy theories, and for aiding and abetting Putin's efforts to interfere in the 2020 election..
Last month, four lawmakers who make up the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight, the group of congressional and intelligence committee leaders who are privy to top-secret intelligence, demanded a briefing for all members of Congress focused on foreign interference in the 2020 election, based on their assertions that lawmakers are being targeted by those meddling efforts. They also have urged Trump to publicly reveal additional information about the nature of the foreign-influence campaign. Intelligence officials told House lawmakers last week that the Russians are seeking to boost Trump in the 2020 campaign.
The public version of the letter was vague about those threats, but the classified addendum to the letter specifically names Sen Ron Johnson’s investigation as a vehicle for “laundering” Russian propaganda for the foreign influence campaign aimed at denigrating Biden.
The addendum states that the Ukrainian lawmaker linked to the Kremlin, Andrii Derkach, sent information packets about Biden to Johnson, Grassley and other Trump stooges who have pushed similar Russian conspiracy theories, as part of Putin's disinformation campaign on America.
NCSC Director William Evanina, along with other senior national security officials, briefed lawmakers in multiple classified sessions in late July and August. His statement explicitly accused the Ukrainian politician, Derkach, of undermining Biden through weaponized leaks. Derkach is known to have met late last year with Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
The packets were sent by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who met with Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani in Ukraine last December. Andrii Derkach, who was formerly aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, is also an alumnus of Moscow’s FSB academy, formerly known as the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. Andrii Derkach’s father Leonid was a KGB operative who later became the head of Ukrainian intelligence, and who was fired in 2004 shortly before Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
The packets were sent late last year to Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declined to answer a colleague's question about whether he had received derogatory information about Joe Biden from Andrii Derkach.
During that closed-door meeting in late July — a transcript of which was made publicly available — Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of Russian propaganda were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham. Nunes refused to answer the question.
Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received" by Nunes. 😲
That evidence, according to committee officials, is in the form of a DHL shipping receipt that was sent to the Intelligence Committee’s majority office shortly after the package was sent to Nunes..
"If any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation-state, or anybody acting on behalf of a nation-state, about influencing or interfering with an election then that's something the FBI would want to know about,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on June 12, 2019 — a day before Trump rebuked him and said he would probably accept such help.
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First of all let's be clear, America doesn't currently have a president. In fact, we haven't had a president since January 2017. What he have now is a mentally impaired con-man who doesn't believe in science or facts. And he has literally told Governors and Mayors that he's not responsible for anything, and that they are on their own during this national health crisis.
As a Marine veteran, my heart goes out to you doctors and nurses on the front lines of this virus. America will forever owe you all a debt of gratitude. There's no shame in having a breakdown due to fear or exhaustion. The only shame is in not getting up from it, and letting it control you. Hold the line!!!
Semper Fi..
During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like many of our Governors, and especially the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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In December 2015, Russian spy, Maria Butina’s Russian gun-rights organization sponsored an NRA delegation to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials ( aka, Russian spies) including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.
The convoy to Moscow included David Keene, Trump campaign surrogate Sheriff David Clarke, president and CEO of the Outdoor Channel Jim Liberatore, soon-to-be NRA president Peter Brownell and NRA donors Jim Gregory, Arnold Goldschlager and Hilary Goldschlager.
Alexander Torshin — a Russian politician and longtime associate of Butina who has since come under U.S. sanctions — played a key role in the trip, and Russia’s decade-long operation of infiltrating American conservative groups. A conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV who has done business in Russia claims that he first introduced David Keene to Torshin in 2011 while Keene was NRA president. Keene and Torshin quickly forged an alliance based on mutual interests.
In 2013, Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the Right to Bear Arms conference in Moscow. Paul Erickson, who became Butina’s asset, accompanied Keene to the 2013 conference, where he reportedly first crossed paths with Butina.
Senate intelligence and finance committees have requested documents on the NRA’s connections to Russia, including documents related to whether the NRA took Russian money and the 2015 delegation. After spending a record $54.4 million to put Trump in the White House and support Republicans in Congress, the NRA’s membership dues dropped precipitously the following year.
The NRA’s lawyers initially lied about the Russian money, they eventually admitted to receiving “a total of approximately $2,512.85 from people associated Russian addresses” and “about $525” from two Russian nationals living in the United States in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The NRA also acknowledged “membership dues” from Alexander Torshin, who has been a non-voting life member of the NRA since 2012 — the year after he first connected with Keene. Butina's partner, GOP operative Paul Erickson, has lawyered up in light of reports that he too may be targeted by federal prosecutors as a covert Russian agent. Signs that Butina has reached a plea deal follows a September filing by federal prosecutors indicating that Butina offered to provide information to the the feds about Erickson’s illegal activities.
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July 16, 2018. That was the day Traitor Trump betrayed America. That was the day that every deceased American president, from Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Bush, sat straight up in their graves.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Putin was extremely strong and powerful by the way he resisted the urge to burst out laughing when Trump uttered those words.
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Rand Paul isn't even qualified to speak to Dr. Fauci without permission. Especially when you realize that Rand Paul isn't even a real doctor himself.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done.
Paul earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C.. After that, he completed his general surgery internship at Atlanta-based Georgia Baptist Medical Center, followed by a residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center. Despite his medical training, Paul does not hold a bachelor's degree. He attended Waco, Texas-based Baylor University to study biology and English, but left a few courses short of a diploma after he was accepted into medical school.
Rand Paul is not even a board-certified ophthalmologist, as he reportedly claimed. Paul's certification comes from a board he created himself. 😂 but he hasn't been certified by an organization recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties for years.
The now-defunct board was not recognized by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, so Paul was not board certified by a board recognized by the state since 2005, and since Paul's board dissolved in 2011, he has had no certification from an active body,
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In order for America to survive, Trump must be defeated.
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Today, Trump and Republicans are telling the American people that we can no longer keep it.
America's democracy and Constitutional republic, has never been in more peril than it is right now. Trump and republicans, are attempting to reverse our victory in our War of Independence, that began 1775 and ended in 1783. They are attempting to throw it all away, like it never happened, and install a new King, a new monarch, a new tyrant, to rule over the American people.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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On more than one occasion, Trump falsely accused President Obama of doing, what he is now doing:
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran. I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic?”
--Trump, Nov 16, 2011
"Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!"
--Trump, Oct 22, 2012
"I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!"
--Trump, Sep 16, 2013
"Remember what I previously said--Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is."
--Trump, Sep 25, 2013
"Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"
--Trump, Nov 10, 2013
We now know that as usual, Trump was only fantasizing about what he would do if he were president.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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Many Russian mobsters used Trump's apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.
With Trump's constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. Public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all, Semion Mogilevich.
In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. Mogilevich’s greatest talent, the one that places him at the top of the Russian mob, is finding creative ways to cleanse dirty cash. According to the FBI, he has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world. In 1991, he made a move that led directly to Trump Tower. That year, the FBI says, Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring a fellow mob boss, Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. If Mogilevich was the brains, Ivankov was the enforcer.
The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. “He was like a ghost to the FBI,” one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years.
The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. “We were looking around, looking around, looking around,” James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section, told Friedman. “We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.”
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Johnny Almager
Trump is nothing more than a walking talking ponzi scheme.
Trump is a complete fraud, and he loves putting on a great production, and the bigger the spectacle, the better. The only thing that matters to him is that YOU believe that it's real.
In a 1996 Manhattan ribbon-cutting ceremony for a charity called the Association to Benefit Children. The association was celebrating the grand opening of a nursery school that would serve children with AIDS. Trump unexpectedly appeared at the event and took a seat on on stage alongside top donors, even though he had never donated to the charity. The seat he took belonged to Steven Fisher, a developer who had donated a hefty sum to help the charity build the nursery.
“Nobody knew he was coming,” Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais, told the Post. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down.” Trump had never donated to the charity.
Trump played the part of a big donor convincingly. Photos from the event show Trump smiling, right behind Giuliani, as the mayor cut the ribbon.” Trump later performed the macarena with Giuliani, Kathie Lee Gifford, and crowd of children, and then slipped out of the function without donating one red cent to the charity.
The time Trump's now defunct charity foundation gave $264,631 to fix a fountain outside one of his hotels. The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
The time Trump grabbed the spotlight at an event honoring an employee. For years, Trump relied on longtime employee Barbara Res to convince contractors to donate to charity galas sponsored by then-wife Ivana. But when she got an award, Trump didn’t buy any tables at the gala or sponsor the event as was customary for the employers of the honorees. He bought a $100 ticket to the event and then managed to convince someone to give him the microphone. He spoke for 15 minutes and made it seem like he had been a big contributor to the event.
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This is no secret. Trump had already been warned, by the DoJ, President Obama, and others that the FBI was investigating Flynn.
KT McFarland corrected a claim she made to the FBI about what she knew during the presidential transition about Russia sanctions after Flynn's guilty plea in the Russia investigation contradicted her lie.
In court papers accompanying his plea agreement, federal investigators disclosed that Flynn had coördinated his contacts with Kislyak with an unnamed senior transition official, who was later identified as McFarland.
McFarland, who served as Flynn's deputy on the NSC, was first interviewed by the FBI in summer 2017. She said at that time she didn't have a precise memory of whether Flynn had spoken to the then-Russian ambassador or what they may have discussed.
But shortly after Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators about his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions, McFarland spoke to the special counsel's office. She had reviewed her notes and documents by then and walked back what she previously said — this time saying that she did remember from a conversation with Flynn that he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak. 😂 Well no sh-.t.
On Dec 29 2016, McFarland wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours earlier by President Obama in retaliation for Russian meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump's victory, and would make it hard for Trump to ease tensions with Russia.
“If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote.
Trump was at Mar-a-Lago on December 29 when McFarland — who was also at Mar-a-Lago — and Flynn spoke by phone about Kislyak.
Trump picked Flynn for the fact that he had close ties to Putin. Flynn's crimes and betrayal have been well reported and documented. In a now infamous video, Flynn is seen applauding and toasting Putin, Trump's benefactor, and America's adversary. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 Moscow dinner Flynn attended was swarming with ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs. In the video, Flynn is seated next to Putin at the head table.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI even prompted the DoJ to warn Trump about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, acting AG Sally Yates, personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, Trump decided to reward Sally Yates for doing her job, and for her due diligence in warning him about Flynn, by firing her 3 days later. Let that sink in for a moment..
On Nov 10, 2016, during a White House meeting 2 days after Trump’s election, President Obama ONCE AGAIN tried to help dumb Donald by warning him about Flynn, but Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie also directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn. “If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017..
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"What President Obama left Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
Trump, being the stable genius that he is, believed it was smarter to wait and put together a fire department, AFTER a five alarm fire starts.
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Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not..
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
The optimism was part of a larger embrace by Russia of Trump's "America First" outlook, which emphasizes U.S. business interests and national security over promoting freedom and democracy, said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a researcher who has worked with the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Initiative.
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Boris Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said...
It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when American banks stopped loaning Trump money. It was a win-win for both sides.
In an interview, Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Putin’s boss at one point, was asked about the Russain mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government. The Russian mafia is totally different than the American mafia. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor."
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So while Cruz was in Cancun, and fox, the governor of Texas, McCarthy, and other republicans were busy trying to blame AOC for the crisis in Texas, she was actually busy being productive, being a leader, and being a public servant of the people.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) helped raise more than $2 million in less than 24 hours to help bring relief to the state of Texas.
On Thursday evening, Ocasio-Cortez announced she was partnering with several Texas charities and encouraged her millions of Twitter followers to donate money to help residents in Texas.
"Team AOC is launching relief efforts for Texas starting today,” the New York Democrat tweeted Thursday evening. “Our first effort is a partnership w/5 Texas orgs getting on-the-ground relief to Texans ASAP. If you’re able, please donate here - it’ll split your contribution to all 5.”
By Thursday night, more than $1 million had been raised, and by Friday morning, the charities raked in more than $2 million. The funds are being split between The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, Ending Community Homeless Coalition, Family Eldercare, Houston Food Bank, Feeding Texas and several other charities.
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Trump praised China in a Feb 7 tweet:
"Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!"
Before that, Trump praised China and President Xi in a Jan 24 tweet....
"China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!"
Helsinki July 16, 2018
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
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Trump is successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
"Lying is second nature to Trump . More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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Some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.
Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is the first account detailing their role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence.
The two sources, both of whom have been granted anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, describe participating in “dozens” of planning briefings ahead of that day when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol as his election loss to President Joe Biden was being certified.
“I remember Marjorie T.G. specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”
Rolling Stone has confirmed that both sources were involved in organizing the main event aimed at objecting to the electoral certification.
These two sources also helped plan a series of demonstrations that took place in multiple states around the country in the weeks between the election and the storming of the Capitol. According to these sources, multiple people associated with the March for Trump and Stop the Steal events that took place during this period communicated with members of Congress throughout this process.
Along with Greene, the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).
“We would talk to Boebert’s team, Cawthorn’s team, Gosar’s team like back to back to back to back,” says the organizer.
And Gosar, who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters, allegedly took things a step further. Both sources say he dangled the possibility of a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.
“Our impression was that it was a done deal,” the organizer says, “that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval … in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House Freedom Caucus to sign on as a show of support.”
The organizer claims the pair received “several assurances” about the “blanket pardon” from Gosar.
“I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing,” Gosar said, according to the organizer.
In another indication members of Congress may have been involved in planning the protests against the election, Ali Alexander, who helped organize the “WildProtest,” declared in a since-deleted livestream broadcast that Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs helped him formulate the strategy for that event.
“I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said at the time. “We four schemed up on putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that — who we couldn’t lobby — we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside.”
The rally planner, who accused Alexander of ratcheting up the potential for violence that day while taking advantage of funds from donors and others who helped finance the events, confirmed that he was in contact with those three members of Congress.
“He just couldn’t help himself but go on his live and just talk about everything that he did and who he talked to,” the planner says of Alexander. “So, he, like, really told on himself.”
The sources plan to share that information with congressional investigators right away. While both sources say their communications with the House’s Jan. 6 committee thus far have been informal, they are expecting to testify publicly.
“I have no problem openly testifying,” the planner says.
--Rolling Stone
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If your loyalty, and allegiance is to Trump, then vote red. If you're ok with unchecked nepotism in the white house, then vote red, if you're OK with the most corrupt administration in American history, then vote red. If you're ok with republicans cutting social security, medicare and Medicare, in order to pay for the massive tax cut Trump and republicans gave to corporations, and the most wealthy, then vote red. If you're ok with a pathological narcissist in the Oval Office, who has now told more than 5000 lies in his 2 years in office, then vote red. But if your loyalty is to America, and her ideals, then voting BLUE💙💙💙. It's literally that simple. America vs Trump. Make a decision.
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Does this sound like a man who has seen the light, and has learned his lesson, or does he sound like a full blown sociopath?
Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
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This had the feel of speeches given by one the world's most despotic dictators in history.
Trump criticized Dems who did not applaud during his first State of the Union address. “They were like death and un-American,” he said. “Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?”
Trump is very reminiscent of Stalin in this way. You can see it in him during this SOTU address. He literally pauses for the applause, and he even applauds himself.
During Stalin's reign of terror, he demanded a long and enthusiastic applause, and standing ovations whenever he gave a speech. As a result, the applause and ovations he received became largely panic-driven. People feared that the first person to stop clapping would be the first to be called an enemy of the state, and be hauled off to a gulag. The clapping and ovations would last up to 10 minutes. Failure to applaud could certainly be considered treason. So the sheeple went on and on, clapping and shouting “Long live Comrade Stalin,” “Glory to our beloved Comrade Stalin," clapping to the point of exhaustion, and until the palms of their hands bled.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described what the surreal scene looked like in his book, The Gulag Archipelago:
“The applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly…Nine minutes! Ten!…Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers.”
At last, after eleven minutes of non-stop clapping, the director of a paper factory finally decided enough was enough. He stopped clapping and sat down—a miracle!
“To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down,” Solzhenitsyn says.
That same night, the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years. Authorities came up with some official reason for his sentence, but during his interrogation, he was told: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”
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Hundreds of former federal prosecutors have signed onto an open online letter that says Trump's behavior toward the Russia investigation more than justified an indictment—for obstruction of justice. The open letter organized by the nonprofit group PROTECT DEMOCRACY, had roughly 400 signatures when it was initially posted. The letter now has more than 700 signatures.
The letter's second paragraph states, “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
In making the case that Trump obstructed justice, the letter singles out three of his alleged actions that are detailed in the Mueller report: his effort to get Don McGahn, the White House counsel, to fire the special counsel; his attempt to limit the scope of the inquiry by instructing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to carry a message to then Attorney General Sessions; and his repeated efforts to tamper with witnesses, including Cohen and Paul Manafort, by, among other things, raising the prospect of pardons.
The letter says Trump’s actions “satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge” and asserts that the evidence of “corrupt intent”—a key element of any obstruction case—is overwhelming.
The full list of names shows that more than three hundred of the signatories served at the Department of Justice for at least a decade. A hundred and sixty of them racked up twenty years or more. More than sixty did at least thirty years. And two of them did forty years: John Kolar, a former senior trial counsel, and E. Thomas Roberts, who headed the narcotics division in the District of Maryland.
Many of the signatories worked for different parts of the DoJ, in many parts of the country, at many different levels. There are former heads of major divisions, such as the financial-crimes and civil-fraud units, and former U.S. Attorneys. But there are also countless trial attorneys, appellate attorneys, and assistant U.S. Attorneys—the anonymous figures who prosecute cases on a day-to-day basis. And all of them are agreed that if Trump were sitting anywhere except the Oval Office, he would be facing a lengthy rap sheet.
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In July 2018, Trump told another blatant lie about his father being born in Germany.
Trump gave an interview in which he threatened to impose tariffs on European countries that did business with Iran.
“I was there many, many years ago,” he said. “Meaning, my parents were born in the European Union. I love these countries; Germany, Scotland, they are still in there right?”
As Trump was traveling across Europe, he repeated that same blatant lie In an interview recorded in Scotland, he said: “Don’t forget both of my parents were born in EU sectors – my mother was Scotland, my father was Germany.”
Trump’s mother, Mary MacLeod, was indeed born in Scotland, on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. But his father, Fred Trump, was born in NY. This is well known by everyone.
So if Trump would repeatedly lie about something so irrelevant, and inconsequential, like where his father was born, something that can easily be disproved, it means that he will lie about AN - Y- THING.
This is not normal. And it's something that should concern every American.
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@bartjargengarblbargeler1980
Another perfect example of whataboutism. 😂😂
Deflecting or changing the subject is called "what-aboutism" — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. It's an attractive tactic for Putin, Trump, and Russian trolls. Whataboutism allows them to be vague, but appear straight-talking at the same time. What-aboutism is essentially a schoolyard taunt, brought to a national and global level.
The idea behind what-aboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A's faults — "Yeah? Well WHAT ABOUT that bad thing you did?"
It's not a complicated tactic — any grade-schooler can master it. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia.
One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it's a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings..
Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a black-and-white worldview. But in this worldview, it's very difficult to be the good guy; idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be "unmasked" as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency. If nobody is perfect, then it means that Trump and Putin should get a pass for any wrongdoings.
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Never forget, Trump is a sociopath.
Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath.
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices, who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, etc) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blames Dems for his government shutdown, after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown.
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@raccoonlittlebear6476
An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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Trump’s failure to respond to the coronavirus pandemic didn’t begin with the administration’s inability to send out the millions of test kits and the protective medical gear for health care workers. It didn’t start with Trump’s reckless and irresponsible messaging downplaying the crisis even as it’s worsened, nor with his mid-March insistence that social distancing measures could be lifted by Easter.
It began in April 2018 — more than a year and a half before the SARS virus. The Trump administration began dismantling the team in charge of pandemic response, firing its leadership and disbanding the team in spring 2018.
The cuts, along with Trump’s repeated calls to cut the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other public health agencies, made it clear that the Trump wasn’t prioritizing the federal government’s ability to respond to disease outbreaks.
Trump is now doing everything that he can to try and deflect blame and rewrite history.
Testing is one of the most crucial steps in battling epidemics. It lets health officials identify the infected and isolate them. They can then trace that sick person’s recent contacts to make sure those people aren’t sick and to get them into quarantine as well.
March 30, Trump said, "We have done more tests, by far, than any country in the world, by far."
He complained that his administration wasn't getting enough credit for overcoming what he claimed was a broken test system that he inherited. Both of those claims were blatant lies.
South Korea, which has been widely praised for its response to coronavirus, tested more than 66,000 people within a week of the first community transmission within its borders. By comparison, the US took roughly three weeks to complete that many tests.
And it was impossible for Trump to have inherited a broken testing system for COVID-19, when the coronavirus did not exist until late last year.
"What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
Trump, being the stable genius that he is, believed it was smarter to wait and put together a fire department, AFTER a five alarm fire starts.
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Let's face it, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS THE PROBLEM....and it's okay to admit it.
"We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska called his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. “I think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.”
Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site."
By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
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That letter was a plea for mercy. Unfortunately for Trump, it's much too late for that now. He has betrayed America, the Constitution, and his oath of office, and for that, he will be held accountable.
If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Boris Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said..
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This is at least the 2nd time Trump tried to pull a repeat of Nixon's Saturday night massacre. We already know from McGahn's interview with Mueller that Trump tried to get him and Sessions to do a repeat of Nixon's Saturday night massacre, and fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. McGahn even threatened to quit because he said that Trump was trying to get him to "do some crazy sh"t."
What Trump tried was a repeat of Nixon's Saturday night massacre, but in slow motion.
During the Watergate scandal, Nixon ordered the Attorney General Richardson to fire Archibald Cox, the head of the Special Counsel investigation on Watergate. Richardson refused, and resigned on the spot, effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General Ruckelshaus to fire the Special counsel prosecutor, Ruckelshaus also refused, and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then turned to the Justice Department Solicitor, General Robert Bork. Nixon ordered him to fire Cox. Bork initially considered resigning as well, but eventually did as Nixon asked.
This exercise in criminal incompetence, and abuse of power, all happened within a matter of hours on one Saturday evening on October 30, 1973. A new special counsel was appointed 11 days later. A mere 13 days after that, the courts ruled that the firing of special counsel Cox was illegal. This was the final nail in Nixon's coffin, and he drove that nail in himself.
Trump fired two AGs and at least 2 acting AGs in just four years because they refused to break the law on his behalf.
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. The congressional oversight committee will begin hearings, and taking the testimony of those who were in the loop. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.. The truth will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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Trump Dec 7, 2019:
“People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water. We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where it rushes out to sea because you could never handle it. And you don’t get any water. You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. You can’t wash your hands practically, there’s so little water comes out of the faucet” and then you “end up using the same amount of water.”
😂😄😂😅
On Dec 23, at turning point USA, Trump gave what could be considered his most stupefying soliloquy to date.
“I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. (Don Quixote disagrees) I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?"
--Trump
Trump at a rally in Milwaukee, Jan 14, 2020
"I'm also approving new dishwashers that give you more water so you can actually wash and rinse your dishes without having to do it 10 times — four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN.😄
"Anybody have a new dishwasher? I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for that. It's worthless. They give you so little water. You ever see it? Air comes out. So little water."
"Sinks, toilets, and showers — you don't get any water. You go into a shower — and I have this beautiful head of hair. I need a lot of water," (to wild cheers from the crowd) "And you go into the shower, right? You turn on the water. Drip. Drip. Drip. I call the guy: 'Is something wrong with this?' 'No, sir, it's just the restrictor.'"
"We're getting rid of the restrictors!!! You're going to have full shower flow!!" Once again, his crowd of cultists goes wild!!!
Just let all of that sink in for a moment. Trump really enjoys giving the world little peeks inside of his diseased riddled mind. I dare any Trump cultist to try and explain to me exactly what it was that Trump was trying to say, or what salient point he was trying to make. I dare you...
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@jasonwilson3057
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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@jasonwilson3057
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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@jasonwilson3057
DJT sat in the White House, and watched theVio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
AndVio.lence was the only option they had left. DJT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, theViolence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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Trump’s campaign chairman Manafort, shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies. Manafort was also accused of covering up other meetings and contacts with the Russian, an elusive man named Konstantin Kilimnik who worked for Manafort on election campaigns for pro-Kremlin politicians in eastern Europe.
Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the the election. US Intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian operation was ordered by Putin to help Trump’s campaign.
Mueller has also said that Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign, described Kilimnik as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU”
Manafort’s attorneys did not deny that Manafort gave Kilimnik the data, instead stating that he had not lied about it but was merely “unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed”. The attorneys also confirmed that Manafort had met Kilimnik in Madrid, claiming he “had not initially remembered” the meeting but recalled it when confronted with records showing the two were in the Spanish capital at the same time. LOL!!!😂 So Manafort tried to pretend that he didn't remember taking a flight across the Atlantic Ocean to meet up with a Russian agent in Spain in order to pass polling data on to him.😂😂
It was previously known that Kilimnik and Manafort had met twice during 2016 in the US. The date of the Madrid meeting was not stated, but a source familiar with Manafort’s team said it was in early 2017 after Trump had entered office.
Trump said he knew “nothing” about his then-campaign chief Paul Manafort sharing polling data with a Russian spy during the 2016 presidential campaign. 😂 Sure Donnie....we believe you.😄
The disclosure that Manafort had given Kilimnik polling data is the strongest piece of public evidence that a high-ranking Trump campaign official may have been coordinating with Russians in an illegal effort to get Trump elected. Such data could have been used by Russia as part of a broad-ranging scheme, which involved bogus social media accounts, to manipulate public opinion in Trump’s favor.
Mueller has charged that Kilimnik, who worked for Manafort for years, tried with Manafort to tamper with potential witnesses against Manafort.
Mueller has alleged that Kilimnik — who remains at large — has ties to “a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.”
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Twitter has shut down multiple accounts that it says were operated by a white supremacist group posing as liberal groups encouraging violence.
A white supremacist group created a fake Twitter account, posed as the Antifa movement and called for violence during the ongoing protests sweeping the nation, Twitter said.
“Tonight’s the night comrades," the group tweeted on Sunday. “Tonight we say ‘f--k the city’ and we move into residential areas... the white hoods... and we take what’s ours.”
Twitter said the white supremacist group Identity Evropa used one fake account, @Antifa_US, to call for violence in majority white suburbs, in the name of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"This account violated our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. We took action after the account sent a Tweet inciting violence and broke the Twitter Rules" the company said.
Twitter said it has also targeted other fake accounts run by Identity Evropa. The company said the accounts posted hateful tweets targeting race, religion and sexual orientation.
Twitter has seen a wave of fake accounts spreading false information about the ongoing protests in recent days.
Trump and his supporters have claimed, without evidence, that Antifa is behind the violence seen in some of the protests nationwide.
In an internal FBI situation report, the FBI’s Washington Field Office found no intel evidence indicating Antifa involvement or presence in the violence that occurred on May 31 during the D.C.-area protests. That same day, Trump announced on Twitter that he would designate “Antifa” a terrorist organization, even though antifa is not an organized group.
But not surprisingly, the report did warn that individuals from a far-right social media group had called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, and use automatic weapons against protesters. A Department of Homeland Security intelligence note warned law-enforcement officials that a white supremacist channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram encouraged its followers to incite violence to start a race war during the protests
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Naomi Ogle
LMAO!!😄 You do realize that this is all public information.
The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!!
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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Trump is indifferent to the truth, and so are his followers.
Trump begged Georgia's secretary of state to overturn the election results in an astounding hourlong phone call. Trump offered up a smorgasbord of lies and false claims about voter fraud and repeatedly berated state officials for not violating the constitutional on his behalf.
The phone call featured Trump, days before he is set to leave office, pleading with Raffensperger to alter the vote total and launching into a tirade of farcical conspiracy theories about the election. Trump even suggested that Raffensperger, who is a Republican, may face criminal consequences should he refuse to intervene in accordance with his wishes.
"So look," Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state." 😂😅
Raffensperger and his office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, pushed back against Trump's claims and said President-elect Joe Biden's victory of about 12,000 votes was accurate.
"The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry," Trump said in the call. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated." 😂
Translation: Trump wanted the Secretary of State for Georgia to illegally overturn the election in his favor.
Raffensperger responded, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong."
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also present on the call.
Meadows at one point suggested that the secretary of state's office and Trump's team find a path forward to resolve the dispute that did not involve the courts. Raffensperger said he did not believe there was one.
Translation: Trump and Meadows tried to violate the constitution and the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.
Trump also brought up a flurry of debunked conspiracy theories.
Raffensperger said Trump was being misled by claims on social media.
"Mr. President, the problem you have with social media is that people can say anything," he said.
"I know this phone call is going nowhere other than ultimately, you know — look, ultimately I win, okay?" Trump said. "Because you guys are so wrong. ... You've treated the population of Georgia so badly."
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Donald Gump doesn't even know what a nationalist is. He's a con-man who will literally say anything at any given moment. That's how a con-man survives. And Donald Gump has been doing exactly that he's entire fraudulent life. He knows that he his cult followers will believe anything that he says, no matter how absurd. He nows says that he's going to pass a 10% tax cut for the middle class next week. But wait, I thought the last tax cut was for the middle class? Forget the fact he won't be passing any tax cut for the middle class at all. The other day he claimed that the weapons deal with Saudi would create 400 thousand jobs ,which is patently absurd. He then raised that number from 400 thousand, to 450 thousand, and then to 500 thousand, to 600 thousand, to finally stopping at 1 million jobs. Lies like that, are just an example of how little Trump thinks of his followers. Because to lie to someone, in such an egregious manner, is beyond insulting.
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The Republican party has been replaced by a destructive cult known as Trumpism. It's a cult rooted in lies, absurdities, wild conspiracy theories, self-deception, hypocrisy, pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience to the "Chosen One."
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are 10 warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• There are records, books, news articles, or broadcast reports that document the abuses of the group/leader.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
It's like their minds have been infected with some sort of mental virus that blocks out logic, reasoning, and critical thinking, which inevitably transforms them into simply horrible human beings.
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For some strange reason, Kavanaugh, and Lindsey Graham, seem to be under the impression that he is somehow entitled to hold a seat on the Supreme Court. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kavanaugh is not entitled to a goddamn thing. However, the more than 320 million people in this country, are in fact entitled. We are entitled to have the very best people on the Supreme Court. That means that anyone, who's character, integrity, judgment, morals, and temperament is in question, has no business being a member of only 9 people who will hold sway and judgment over 320 million people.
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House.
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable..
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing. While in the real world, America now has more than 400k confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, and more than 15k deaths. Because of Trump, America has the absolute WORST failed national response to the coronavirus in the world. I sh¡t thee nay.
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said it was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Trump tried to do exactly that on January 6. He failed.
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As we've seen time and time again, Trump, Rudy, Graham, Nunes, Gaetz and others, are wilfully aiding and abetting Putin and his Russian security services in propagating their false narratives and propaganda here in America. What's worse is that they are attacking America's democratic institutions and our intelligence agencies, the very same institutions and agencies that exists to protect America from foreign adversaries like Russia. This constitutes an immediate threat to America's national security. This is something that should concern every American, regardless of party affiliation...
Trump and his republican sycophants had a choice between serving America and it's Constitution, or serving Putin. They have clearly chosen Putin. So in 2020, it will be time for the American people to make a choice. Will we bow our heads in silent defeat, and surrender to the unconstitutional phuckery that Trump and his republican sycophants have been trying to normalize and force upon us? Or will we stand-up and vote for ourselves, for America's future, for our kid's future, and for the future of their kids, and for the democratic ideals that this country and our Constitution were built on. The stakes could not be higher.
Semper Fi...
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Trump and his crime family have many lucrative business deals with China. Trump's products are manufactured in China. And Ivanka has conveniently received more than 30 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. This is what happens when you have a president who from day one was compromised by greed and his own self-serving interests.
The Trumps are the landlord to one of China’s top state-owned banks, which has occupied the 20th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan since 2008. The bank’s lease is worth close to $2 million annually, according to industry estimates and a bank filing.
And despite Trump's rhetoric about American manufacturing, assembly-line workers in China still produce blouses, shoes and handbags for the clothing line created by Ivanka. Trump’s business interest in China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Trump business relationships with China are among the main examples plaintiffs in multiple court cases have cited in allegations that Trump is violating the Constitution’s “emoluments clause” by accepting payments from foreign governments.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf.
Days later, Trump announced his support for Chinese-backed telecommunications firm ZTE, a departure from his previously aggressive stance toward Chinese industry that prompted ethical experts to question whether the two actions were related. But of course they were related. This is Don the con we're talking about.
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A letter of intent forwarded by Russian-born businessman Felix Sater to the Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, outlines the terms of a licensing agreement to purchase property to build a "Trump World Tower Moscow."
Sater sent the letter of intent - dated October 13, 2015, and signed by a Russian investor named Andrey Rozov - to Cohen for then-candidate Donald Trump's signature.
Emails exchanged between Cohen and Sater - who have known each other since they were teenagers - weeks later indicated that they were preparing to celebrate not only Trump's election victory, but also the potential Russia deal.
Sater boasted of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the emails, which were obtained by The New York Times, telling Cohen that he would "get all of Putins team to buy in" on the Moscow deal.
Slater email to Cohen: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," Sater wrote. "I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected."
Two months later, Cohen emailed Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, asking for his "assistance" in pushing the deal through, according to emails submitted to congressional investigators..
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As we've seen time and time again, Trump, Rudy, Graham, Nunes, Gaetz and others, are wilfully aiding and abetting Putin and his Russian security services in propagating their false narratives and propaganda here in America. What's worse is that they are attacking America's democratic institutions and our intelligence agencies, the very same institutions and agencies that exists to protect America from foreign adversaries like Russia. This constitutes an immediate threat to America's national security. This is something that should concern every American, regardless of party affiliation...
Trump and his republican sycophants had a choice between serving America and it's Constitution, or serving Putin. They have clearly chosen Putin. So in 2020, it will be time for the American people to make a choice. Will we bow our heads in silent defeat, and surrender to the unconstitutional phuckery that Trump and his republican sycophants have been trying to normalize and force upon us? Or will we stand-up and vote for ourselves, for America's future, for our kid's future, for of their kids, and for the democratic ideals that this country and our Constitution were built on. The stakes could not be higher.
Semper Fi...
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Two days after the insurrection on Capitol Hill, Trump sent what turned out to be his last ever tweet before he was hit with a permanent ban for inciting the insurrection. “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20,” he wrote on Jan. 8. But, according to a new book, that wasn’t entirely Trump’s own decision. Jonathan Karl writes in Betrayal, that Trump only announced that he wouldn’t attend the inauguration after he caught wind of Mitch McConnell’s plan to disinvite him from the event. “McConnell felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” Karl reported. “McConnell wanted to get a letter together from the top four congressional leaders informing Trump that he had been disinvited.” However, before the letter could be written, Kevin McCarthy reportedly blabbed about the plan to Trump, who then sent his final tweet to make it appear as if he had made the call. 🤣
Ali Alexander, formerly, known as Ali Akbar, the Stop the Steal organizer who claimed three sitting U.S. congressmen helped plan the rally that came before the insurrection, has been subpoenaed by the January 6th Select Committee along with fellow rally organizer Nathan Martin. The committee is seeking records from Stop the Steal LLC in addition to Alexander and Martin.
Alexander bragged on live streams last December that he and Trump-supporting Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) were working on a plot to exert “maximum pressure on Congress” during the vote to certify Biden’s electoral victory. The day before the attack, Alexander led a group in a “victory” or “death” chant at a rally, the committee said. During the events at the Capitol, Alexander filmed a video of himself looking over the crowd from afar and saying, “I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this.”
Following the events of January 6th, Alexander went into hiding and frantically tried to erase his affiliation with numerous Stop the Steal web domains he owned.
Alexander and his cohort, Brandan Straka were also both named in a lawsuit brought by the Capitol Police harmed by the January 6 insurrection. According to Damon Hewitt, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, “As this lawsuit makes clear, the January 6 insurrection was not just an attack on individuals, but an attack on democracy itself. It was a blatant attempt to stifle the votes and voices of millions of Americans."
In the suit, Alexander, along with other defendants, are accused of “violating two provisions of the federal KuKluxKlan Act, which forbids conspiracies to use force, intimidation, and threats to prevent federal officers from doing their jobs or to injure them in the course of their work.”
Alexander has made some changes in his life in order to hide his past. Previously, he went by Ali Akbar. And a search of that named shows he was found guilty on several charges to prior changing his name.
Court documents indicate he found trouble with the law back in 2007 when he pled guilty to a felony property theft charge out of Fort Worth, Texas. He was sentenced to 12 months probation, according to documents. Again, in 2008, Alexander pled guilty to a credit card abuse felony charge out of Texas.
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It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when American banks stopped loaning Trump it money. It was a win-win for both sides. The Russian mafia is totally different than the American mafia. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. In an interviewed, Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Putin’s boss at one point, was asked about the Russain mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.”
In 2005, Manafort started working for billionaire Russian Oleg Deripaska. Manafort, a Republican operative who had hired himself out to a variety of global villains, promised he would “influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the US, Europe, and former Soviet Republics to benefit Putin’s government.
Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
The question now is why did Manafort continue to lie for Trump? Why would Manafort, who has a law degree from Georgetown and years of experience around white-collar crime, behave like this? What incentive does he have to spend most or all of his remaining years in prison rather than betray Trump? One way to make sense of his behavior is the possibility that Manafort is keeping his mouth shut because he’s afraid for his life.
Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not...
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Trump was elected president, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Konstantin is Putin's Internet/propaganda expert, and the person who created Putin's troll army that has spread across social media...
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Trump's administration buried a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places. The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day." Once again Trump is dismissive of scientific facts because they get in the way of the BS he's trying to sell to the country. Instead of sharing this vital information which can literally save lives, he hides it.
Trump's cult has bought into his commitment to willful ignorance. Trump feeds them lies and misinformation on a daily basis, and they accept it without questioning the validity of anything he says. And at the same time, they will say that they are protesting for their "freedom." What they don't realize is that no man or woman can ever truly be free without factual information....without the truth. Without the facts and the truth, they are nothing more than tools for the person feeding them lies.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
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September 11, 2001
Trump bragged in a TV interview that one of the buildings he owns, 40 Wall Street, became the tallest building in downtown Manhattan after the Twin Towers came down, but it’s actually 25 feet shorter than 70 Pine Street, just one block away.
Trump acted as if OBL did him a favor by bringing down the Twin Towers.
November 23, 2015
During another campaign rally, Trump lied about witnessing people jumping from the towers, even though he said on the day of the attacks he was at home when the planes hit—and Trump Tower is four miles north of Ground Zero.
April 18, 2016
Trump told campaign rally attendees he “helped a little bit” to clear rubble at Ground Zero with other first responders, though there’s no reports this ever happened.
July 29, 2019
Before he signed a bill extending the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, Trump claimed he “spent a lot of time down” at Ground Zero with first responders, but was not a presence there according to a former FDNY chief deputy.
"Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. And I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you," Trump said July 29 in the Rose Garden.
"I was there for several months — I have no knowledge of his being down there," Richard Alles, a New York Fire Department battalion chief during 9/11, told PolitiFact.
"There would be a record of it," Alles continued. "Everybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services."
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Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania..
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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Parnas should have listened to Michael Cohen's warning about getting close to Trump. Just imagine that you're a loyal MAGA hat wearing Trump cultist like Parnas. And for more than a year, you worked for Trump by partnering with Rudy to help carry out Trump's bribery scheme in Ukraine. You even put yourself in legal jeopardy for Trump by illegally funneling tons of Russian money into his super-PAC, and republican campaigns.
Parnas received a $1 million payment from Russia and tried to hide it from investigators, prosecutors have now stated. Parnas, who was charged with illegally funneling foreign cash to Republican politicians, including a pro-Trump super PAC, received $1 million from a mysterious account in Russia in September, which he conveniently forgot to disclose to the government.
So then you get caught, arrested, and indicted. Then you turn on the TV one day, to see your cult leader, the man you loved and admired, the man that you risked everything for, announce to the world, that he's never met you, and has no idea who you are. 😲 How would you feel? 😄
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Trump admitted to being a Russian asset in Helsinki as he stood next to Putin. And now we've learned from the report, that Trump and his people were not only fully aware that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election, but Trump and his people actually encouraged it.
I'll stop calling Trump a Russian asset when he finally stands-up for America, and condemns Putin for engaging in cyber-espionage against America during the election. In other words, I'll be calling Trump a Russian asset for the rest of my life.
Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory.
The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle, by exploiting their hubris, their insatiable greed, naivety, lack of patriotism, and by exploiting Trump's malignant narcissism. Trump and his people presented themselves as easy targets.
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Exactly who does Kellyanne think she's fooling?😄 She and Trump actually believe they can get away with lying during the age of the Internet. WRONG!!!! Fact checking Trump and Kellyanne's lies are too easy.
In Trump's book, The Art of the Deal, he brags about being an out of comtrol violent kid.
"Even in elementary school, I was a very assertive, aggressive kid. In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye — I punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled. I'm not proud of that but it's clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way."
During his rally In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the day of the Iowa caucuses, he told his crowd of cultists he would pay their legal fees if they engaged in violence against protesters.
"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise," he said on Feb. 1, 2016.
At a Las Vegas rally later that month, he said security guards were too gentle with a protester. "He's walking out with big high-fives, smiling, laughing," Trump said. "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you."
A similar situation unfolded at a rally that month in Warren, Michigan.
"Get him out," he said of a protester. "Try not to hurt him. If you do, I'll defend you in court. Don't worry about it."
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Michael Wilson
Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it is that Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency by meeting with the most despotic, and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and his presidency? Nothing. Trump is fool who doesn't have the slightest clue what he's doing.
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No one, and I mean no one, knows more about cheating than Trump. In her new book, Trump's niece describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life."
Last Dec, Trump was forced to wire $2 million to pay a court-ordered fine for misusing his illegitimate Trump Foundation to further his business interests and 2016 presidential run. The money will be distributed to eight charities.
"Charities are not a means to an end, which is why these damages speak to the president’s abuse of power and represent a victory for not-for-profits that follow the law." New York Attorney General said in a statement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the NY's attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political. interests.
Trump and his children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible.
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DJT tried his best to create an America in his own image. One that is vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, malignant, grotesque, ignorant, selfish, indecent, malicious, debased, indifferent, and malevolent.
He has been a cloven hoofed purveyor of fear & loathing. He has been a provocateur of mayhem & upheaval, and a merchant of lies & deception.
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Terrorism is defined as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
It's being reported that Trump wants to start his own political party to challenge anyone who refused to destroy our Constitution and democracy, and insert him as an American dictator. If he does create his own party, it should immediately be labeled as a terrorist organization. Because that's exactly what it will be.
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The GOP should have realized a long time ago that they were hitching their wagon to an extreme narcissist, and a complete sociopath. He does not care about anyone or anything other than himself, and his own desires.
Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily, and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all the boxes.
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Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What happened in New Zealand, the Synagogues in Pittsburgh and Cali, and with those bomb packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedo started in a Facebook post, and spread to Twitter, and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts...
It all led to a man named Edgar Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred.
Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. I'm going to open up the country soon. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when May 1 is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. There is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I singlehandedly shutdown MIT. Ignorant people like Trump are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I don't recognize anyone's authority."
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What we've learned so far from Bolton’s book is that obstruction of justice is not the exception in Trump's White House, it's the #1 rule. And apparently, it only gets worse from there. Asking countries like Russia, China and Ukraine for quid pro quos to help him get reelected seems to be the #2 rule.
Trump unwittingly admitted to obstruction of justice in his May 2017 interview with Lester Holt. In the interview, Trump said he fired James Comey because he wouldn't shutdown the Russia investigation. I say unwittingly because Trump doesn't believe he obstructed justice, because he doesn't actually believe in the concept of justice to begin with. And he certainly doesn't believe in law & order.
Trump: "I do solemnly swear, that I will faithfully desecrate the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, pervert, offend, and violate the Constitution of the United States. So help me Putin...OR Gyna....if you're listening."
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Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, Americans (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania..
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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The biggest threat to America is not Iran. The biggest threat to America is the very desperate, panicked, deranged, cornered, and currently impeached man-baby in the Oval Office.
Only someone as criminally incompetent as Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
Under the deal, the Atomic Energy Agency would have cameras installed to provide 24-hour monitoring at the Natanz facility, and inspectors will have daily access to the facility for 15 years. Within a year, there would be 130 to 150 inspectors in Iran.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice.
He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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Trump's entire campaign was practically being controlled by the Russians. And Trump, Jared, Flynn, Manafort, Don Jr, and Roger Stone were all in on it..
Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency, said Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
On December 13th, 2016, at Russian Ambassador Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had to Trump's people —“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Russian Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
Hayden was also convinced Don Jr's Trump Tower meeting, and Kushner’s secret meetings with the Russian Ambassador was a classic “soft approach” by Russian intelligence. Hayden argued that the meeting “is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like,” and that it may have been the “green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election.”
Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach.
No. 1 “Would they take the meeting? So, then you get the willingness.. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. Not only did they not report the meeting, they lied about the meeting when asked. Kushner even lied about the meetings on his security clearance application. So, while Kushner and Don. Jr claimed that the meetings were irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
When the full extent of Trump's treachery, crimes, and betrayal of this country are revealed, it will be far worse than most people ever imagined...
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free...
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Trump's golfing has cost American taxpayers at least 102 million dollars so far.
Trump: "I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf, believe me."
Trump has taken 175 trips to play golf since being in office. And all of his golfing trips were to his own golf resorts except one.
Trump: "I'm not gonna play much golf, because there's a lot of work to be done."
At this time in his presidency, President Obama had only played 70 rounds of golf, compared to Trump, who has now played almost 200 rounds of golf.
So far, American taxpayers have paid 81 million for Trump play on his golf course in FL,
17 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in NJ, 1 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in Los Angeles, and 3 million for Trump to play on his golf course in Scotland.
Of the 70 golf trips that President Obama took at this point in his presidency, 48 of them were to golf courses on military bases, which clearly saves taxpayers money, and it benefits the military bases as well.
Since Trump the grifter and con-man, only visits his golf resorts, he's pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars from accommodations, lodging, and rental fees. On Average, Trump has golfed every 4.9 days as president. At this pace, he will spend almost 600 days golfing if he serves 2 terms, compared with President Obama, who spent 302 days golfing in 2 terms.
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Last year during an interview with Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked about his opinion on Article 5, NATO’s joint defense agreement, in relation to NATO’s newest member, Montenegro.
Trump: “Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. They have very aggressive people. They may get aggressive and congratulations, you’re in World War III, now I understand that. But that’s the way it was set up.”
Trump's comments about Montenegro were perplexing at best, and at worst, they were dangerous and provocative. Montenegro has a population of only 630k, with practically no military to speak of. Naturally Trump's comments drew criticism.
Fabrice Pothier, formerly NATO’s director of policy planning stated: “Once more I think President Trump is doing Putin’s job.”
John McCain had a similar reaction. “By attacking Montenegro and questioning our obligations under NATO, the President is playing right into Putin’s hands,” McCain wrote on Twitter the next morning.
Andrew Weiss, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the President was “parroting Kremlin talking points.”
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In May of 2018, when Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely. Trump, who admires dictators, and has ambitions of being a dictator himself, said it was a good idea, and dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
NEVER FORGET.....
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
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At the turn of the 18th century, John Adams, the newly elected president of the United States—only the 2nd in the nation’s then-brief history—cautioned the American people about “the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.” In particular, John Adams pointed to threats from abroad, warning that if a changed election outcome “can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the Government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign nations. It may be foreign nations who govern us, and not we, the people, who govern ourselves.” Speaking before a joint session of Congress, he pleaded with the Senate and the House to preserve our Constitution from its natural enemies,” including “the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments.”
The threat of foreign influence over our elections did not go away in the 220 years since John Adams spoke those words. Today we have a president whose election was aided by the fraud and Malice of a foreign nation. Americans who watched how Trump, in the words of John McCain, “abased himself … abjectly before a tyrant” in Helsinki, cannot be faulted for wondering whether John Adams’s long-ago warning has become a reality.
US law bans foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns, but they can circumvent the restrictions by routing financial support through anonymous bank accounts, shell corporations, and front companies. it is easy to set up a company without disclosing its purpose or the identity of its true owners.
Foreign adversaries can then use these companies to execute anonymous financial transactions that facilitate attacks on free and fair democratic elections.
A network of shell corporations could be used to hide the origin of foreign funds pumped into a political action committee, or a social media political ad campaign. The Kremlin has long had expertise in this area. During the Soviet Union’s heyday, the KGB perfected the craft of anonymously moving funds to seed foreign political campaigns. The FSB and the GRU, the KGB successors, are well-versed in these techniques as well.
Law enforcement and congressional investigations have revealed that Kremlin-linked actors paid considerable sums of money to support Trump and curry his favor. A Russian organization controlled by an oligarch close to Putin spent more than $1 million a month just on social media campaigns favoring Trump, according to the special counsel.
A Russian American energy tycoon—who boasted to a Kremlin official in July 2016 of being “actively involved in Trump’s election campaign”—donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Victory fund. And a company affiliated with a sanctioned Russian oligarch paid $1 million to Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, for unspecified services after the election. These and other transactions examined throughout the report establish that, during the campaign and presidential transition, Trump had several compromising financial entanglements with actors representing a hostile foreign power.
Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov’s transferred $20 million to an American bank account just days after a meeting that he organized between Trump senior campaign officials, including Manafort, Kushner, and a Russian government attorney. Hackers, troll farms, and spies cannot operate without money. Following the money trail helps investigators discover who is funding these entities.
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, isa dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papersin 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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All 44 presidents before trump would have been impeached and removed from office for what Trump has done, and for what he is still doing.
A sociopath like Trump, with no impulse control, who doesn't know right from wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible, and completely incapable of being corrected.
Trump is like a child who has never been told no, and has never been told that what he is doing is wrong. He doesn’t know right from wrong because he's never been punished for his wrong doings, instead, he is like a child who is rewarded for his bad behavior. This child will inevitably grow up to be an incorrigible monster without boundaries, and republicans are continuing to feed this monster..
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The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did they do the right thing? So far, Trump has failed. And Trump has never failed to fail, because failing has always been the easiest thing for him to do.
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another.
So to bring order and harmony to the chaos, he create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront. Building on the Ebola experience, President Obama set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council, and another in the Department of Homeland Security—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health, and the CDC, and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.
But that’s all gone now. In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down. This was the directorate charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of shock. Because experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
In the spring of 2018, Trump pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated..
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Remember when Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David? I do.
Ultimately the "deal" Trump made with the Taliban wasn't just a deal, it was also a double-cross. The double-cross was baked into the deal. Because he betrayed the Afghan government, the Afghan army, and the Afghan people with that deal.
History will record Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over that troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
This only emboldened the Taliban. They started taking even more territory, and more quickly than it had in years. As the Taliban's power increased, it had even less reason to engage in peace negotiations with the Afghan government.
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up the 20 year debacle that is Afghanistan would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the "deal" that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have done something that's never been done before.
They've evacuated more than 109,000 people by airlift since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an historic number, especially considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
Keep it up President Biden.👍👍
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What Trump tried to do really was far worse than Watergate. As corrupt as Nixon was, he never incited a violent insurrection on our nation's Capitol in order to stay in power. John Dean warned us about Trump back in 2016.
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73. He was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he could possibly get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
100 years from now, kids in our schools will still be learning about the events that took place on January 6, 2021, the day our nation's Capitol came under attack from insurrectionists, the same way our kids are still taught today about the events that took place on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, and the events that took place on 9-11. These are dates that will forever live in infamy.
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COVID-19: "So just so we're clear, I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting. Ignorance, and misinformation from Trump and Fox only makes me stronger. I can't be defeated with phony patriotism, guns, flag waving, or denial. I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, maturity, unselfishness, and common sense. I am nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. I can't be defeated with thoughts and prayers, so going to places of worship won't save you. Currently there is no vaccine for me, and that's the problem. I recognize no one's authority. Selfish ignorant people like Trump and his cult are the wind beneath my wings, they give me life. I may have lost some strength in other countries, but thanks to Trump, America is making me great again." 💪😆
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Traitor Trump is terrified that Roger Stone won't be able to do a long stretch in prison, and will decide to cut a deal instead, and reveal all of Trump's crimes. Stone could corroborate Rick Gates' testimony that Trump did in fact collude with WikiLeaks.
Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump?
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Trump said he’d clean the Washington swamp. His cultists bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
Trump said he would drain the swamp. His cultists bought it. Then he proceeded to drain the swamp directly into his white house..
Trump said he'd be the most transparent president ever. His cultists bought it. Trump has now told more than 10k documented lies since taking office, making him the most prolific liar in history, and for any foreseeable future imaginable.
He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. His cultists bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge, and no one knows what's going on.
Trump said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. His cultists bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration. Trump then proceeded to give himself and his wealthy friends, the biggest tax cut in history, which has ballooned America's debt to 22 trillion. which the American people are going to have to pay for.
Trump said he would be working so much that he wouldn't have time to play golf. His cultists bought it. Trump has now played golf more than any other president before him. Trump actually plays more golf now, than he did before he became president. Trump's golfing has cost American taxpayers at least 102 million dollars so far.
Trump: "I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf, believe me."
Trump has taken 175 trips to play golf since being in office. And all of his golfing trips were to his own golf resorts except one.
Trump: "I'm not gonna play much golf, because there's a lot of work to be done."
At this time in his presidency, President Obama had only played 70 rounds of golf, compared to Trump, who has now played almost 200 rounds of golf.
So far, American taxpayers have paid at least 81 million for Trump play on his golf course in FL, 17 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in NJ, 1 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in Los Angeles, and 3 million for Trump to play on his golf course in Scotland.
Of the 70 golf trips that President Obama took at this point in his presidency, 48 of them were to golf courses on military bases, which clearly saves taxpayers money, and it benefits the military bases as well.
Since Trump the grifter and con-man, only visits his golf resorts, he's pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars from accommodations, lodging, and rental fees. On Average, Trump has golfed every 4.9 days as president. At this pace, he will spend almost 600 days golfing if he serves 2 terms, compared with President Obama, who spent 302 days golfing in 2 terms.
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Let's face it, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS THE PROBLEM....and it's okay to admit it.
"We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska called his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. “I think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.”
Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site."
By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
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If Trump and republicans withhold witnesses and evidence that are directly connected to what Trump is being accused of, it will be clear to the world that the Senate trial is an egregious sham. It will go down as the biggest cover-up in American history..
The evidence is clear.
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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Darren Widas
WRONG!!!!!
Because it's not business as usual. Name another president who used the presidency to make millions for himself and his kids while he was in office? I dare you.
Trump has grossly violated the Emolument Clause. He has clearly not divested from his businesses, and he has been caught red-handed using the Presidency to boost his own personal financial gains.
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, and Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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garrett21
The Founders agreed on articles of impeachment, and they placed those articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy from any corrupt would-be dictator. Those articles were tailor made for someone like Trump. Someone who clearly has no respect for our democracy, and who is systematically trying to tear it apart.
We already know that Trump bribed the President of Ukraine with taxpayer money. This fact has been corroborated by the whistleblower, by official documents, texts messages, by the under oath testimony of multiple witnesses, by Trump's own senior white house aides and staff, by Mulvaney, and by State Department officials, and by Trump's own words. Trump's own National Security Adviser Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Ukraine scandal began in the spring of 2019, with a series of contacts between Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy, and Ukrainian officials. In mid-July, Trump decided to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine that had already been appropriated by Congress. The White House offered no explanation, except to blame “interagency delay.” A week later, Trump spoke by phone to the recently elected Ukrainian president, Zelensky. The memorandum released by the White House describing that call—which is consistent with the accounts of the whistleblower complaint that first brought this scandal to light—reads like a classic shakedown.
According to the memo, after exchanges of flattery, Trump states that “we do a lot for Ukraine” and that “we spend a lot of effort and a lot of time,” before he complains that the relationship is not always “reciprocal.” Zelensky then raises the question of military aid to Ukraine, to which Trump immediately responds, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” and proceeds to ask Zelensky to investigate two unfounded conspiracy theories: one involving the server containing emails stolen from the DNC during the 2016 election, and the other involving the thoroughly debunked claim about then-VP Biden, his potential reelection opponent.
Trump asks Zelensky to work with Giuliani and AG Barr to investigate his potential opponent and so aid his own reelection campaign. There can be no misunderstanding that Traitor Trump was abusing his official power in the conduct of foreign policy to get a foreign government to investigate his political rival.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from fox, the current president, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy. It should be reported that these traitors are all willing partners in Russia's disinformation campaign on America. And they should be treated as a threat to America, because that's exactly they are. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America.
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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One of the most revered leaders of my beloved Marine Corps denounced Trump for his divisive and authoritarian actions against American citizens, and against our Constitution.
Semper Fi..
"I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that ‘The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine General James Mattis
June 3, 2020
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Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
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Jack O’Donnell is author of the memoir "Trumped!" The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall. Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino..
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican" Trump said.
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke.
Trump: "Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife."
Jeb Bush’s wife is Mexican-American
During the campaign, Trump impugned the character of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a native-born American, hailing from Indiana, who was hearing a class action case against Trump's now-discredited fake Trump University..
"He's a Mexican," Trump said to CNN of Curiel. "We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can't even believe."
Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. And It's the type of comment that only a racist would applaud..
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For decades, raitor Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia are connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which he’s compromised..
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had trillions of dollars that have to be laundered. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians want, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him but he was actually in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t loans from American banks, except some from Deutsche Bank. He was so bankrupt that almost no Western bank could loan him a dime.
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was built, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with the Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin.
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David Bogatin:
In 1984, Soviet Army veteran David Bogatin purchased five luxury condos in Trump Tower for $6 million. The purchase was so substantial that Trump himself attended the closing. Three years later, he absconded to Austria and Poland after the discovery of his gasoline-bootlegging scheme, and his five apartments were seized by the government because he bought them to hide and launder money. In 1992, he became the first criminal returned to the US from Poland since the extradition treaty signed in 1927. A Senate investigation indicated he was a major figure in the NY Russian mafia..
Anatoly Golubchik, Vadim Trincher and Michael Sall:
These three individuals were convicted of taking part in an enormous illicit betting and money-laundering syndicate that ran out of Trump Tower. Each of them was a Trump condo owner, and operated out of Vadim Trincher’s Trump Tower apartment just three floors down from Trump’s penthouse. The Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization was a “nationwide criminal enterprise with strong ties to Russia and Ukraine” run by Anatoly Golubchik and Trincher, according to the Justice Department. They ran a sportsbook catering to Russian oligarchs and laundered tens of millions in proceeds through shell companies in Cyprus. Michael Sall helped them make domestic investments with the laundered capital.
Tevfik Arif:
Tevfik Arif was a former Soviet economist that built a chain of luxury hotels in Turkey and Kazakhstan, and a Bayrock partner involved in the Trump SoHo deal, which operated out of the 24th floor of Trump Tower NY In 2010, Arif was arrested by Turkish prosecutors and charged with setting up a prostitution ring.
Vyacheslav Ivankov:
Vyacheslav Ivankov implemented a money laundering scheme set up by the “boss of bosses” in the Russian mafia, Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich arranged Ivankov’s release from a Siberian gulag, and soon afterward he went to NY where he presided over the Russian mob’s expansion in the States. He was known for torturing victims, and bragging about the murders he arranged. Ivankov was notoriously difficult to track, compared to a ghost by one FBI agent. The FBI discovered he made regular visits to the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and was living in a luxury condo at Trump Tower. After being convicted of extortion in 1997, he was jailed for nine years and seven months. He died in 2009 at the age of 69 after being shot several times leaving a restaurant in Moscow..
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Only an illiterate imbecilic like Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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In an interview on CNN, Longtime Trump Organization executive Barbara Res raised questions about how, and where, Trump’s term in office will come to an end. Trump’s finances, and that of The Trump Organization, are the focus of multiple investigations in the state of NY. Res believes Trump may leave the country before he leaves office to escape the legal jeopardy he could face as a citizen.
“I think catastrophe comes except for Donald. You know, as much as it’s almost impossible to think how he’s gonna weasel his way out of it, I think he will,” Res said. “If there are real legitimate charges leveled against him or hanging over his head the minute he becomes a citizen, I think he may leave the country. I think he may leave the country before the end of his presidency.”
Trump's niece, Mary Trump, was on with Res agreed that Trump leaving the country is a real possibility, though she doesn’t believe it’s likely.
“I do also think that’s a possibility. I don’t know if it’s the most likely thing, but again, we don’t know how the next 45 days are gonna play out,” Trump said. “If the walls really do start closing in on him, right before the inauguration will be his last, best opportunity to get away unscathed. So it’s gonna be fascinating, but also pretty terrifying.”
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful Liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes in her book. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes in the book.
Mary Trump, a 55-year-old psychologist, blames Trump's father for giving Donald his bad habits. Fred Trump Sr was a cold and forbidding patriarch who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps – demanding Trump to follow less-than-scrupulous real estate practices and eventually propping him up if his own initiatives failed.
"When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son's brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested," Mary Trump writes.
"His monster had been set free."
In the book she says that after Trump announced his White House run in 2015, Trump's sister, retired appeals court judge Maryanne Trump Barry, mocked him.
“He’s a clown – this will never happen,” Judge Barry said.
She also writes that In order to get into the prestigious University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, the future president paid someone to take his SAT.
"To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him," Mary Trump wrote. "That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records."
"The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor," she said. "Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."
Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mitch McConnell, "all whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred," recognized after the election that Donald Trump's personal history and personality flaws made him vulnerable to manipulation, Mary Trump writes.
"His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he's the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it's imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that's contributed to the United States' rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy."
Trump's initial response to the coronavirus "underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs," Mary Trump writes.
"Fear – the equivalent of weakness in our family – is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old," she said.
She points to Gov. Cuomo's response to his state's outbreak of COVID-19 cases as an example of "real leadership," further revealing the president as a "petty, pathetic little man – ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost to his own delusional spin."
At the end, Mary Trump writes "Donald isn't really the problem after all" – it is his enablers, from his father to the celebrity media to the congressional Republicans who acquitted him of impeachment.
"This is the end result of Donald's having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions – against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against fellow human beings," she writes.
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@vladtheinhaler8940
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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@SCUMCHRIST888
In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said he thought the Chinese president’s power grab was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
On January 6, Trump tried to do exactly that. He failed.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
We almost lost our democratic republic on January 6.
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Trump’s failure to respond to the coronavirus pandemic didn’t begin with the administration’s inability to send out the millions of test kits and the protective medical gear for health care workers. It didn’t start with Trump’s reckless and irresponsible messaging downplaying the crisis even as it’s worsened, nor with his mid-March insistence that social distancing measures could be lifted by Easter.
It began in April 2018 — more than a year and a half before the SARS virus. The Trump administration began dismantling the team in charge of pandemic response, firing its leadership and disbanding the team in spring 2018.
The cuts, along with Trump’s repeated calls to cut the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other public health agencies, made it clear that the Trump wasn’t prioritizing the federal government’s ability to respond to disease outbreaks.
Trump is now doing everything that he can to try and deflect blame and rewrite history.
Testing is one of the most crucial steps in battling epidemics. It lets health officials identify the infected and isolate them. They can then trace that sick person’s recent contacts to make sure those people aren’t sick and to get them into quarantine as well.
March 30, Trump said, "We have done more tests, by far, than any country in the world, by far."
He complained that his administration wasn't getting enough credit for overcoming what he claimed was a broken test system that he inherited. Both of those claims were blatant lies.
South Korea, which has been widely praised for its response to coronavirus, tested more than 66,000 people within a week of the first community transmission within its borders. By comparison, the US took roughly three weeks to complete that many tests.
And it was impossible for Trump to have inherited a broken testing system for COVID-19, when the coronavirus did not exist until late last year.
"What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
Trump, being the stable genius that he is, believed it was smarter to wait and put together a fire department, AFTER a five alarm fire starts.
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How can Trump claim that President Obama was behind a conspiracy concerning Flynn , when it was President Obama who personally warned Trump about Flynn on Nov 10, 2016, when he visited the White House after winning the election? Trump was not only warned by President Obama, he was warned about Flynn by the Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. They were trying to warn Trump that Flynn could very well be compromised by the Russians, and giving him a high ranking cabinet position like National Security Adviser would be beyond insane.
Even Trump's longtime ally Chris Christie directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017..
But Trump ignored all of those warnings, and made Flynn his National Security Adviser anyway.
It's like Obama warning Trump that there's a landmine right in front of him, but instead of heeding Obama's warning, Trump walks straight ahead and steps on the landmine, and blows his legs off. Now Trump wants to accuse Obama of setting him up.😂
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The Narcissist:
Unfortunately, history has shown that this kind of person at times manages to attain tremendous power--examples being Stalin, AdolfH, and Pol Pot. The only way to avoid falling victim to the damage such personalities have wrought, he asserts, is democracy.
While these ideas might seem obvious to some of us, sadly, it seems they are not at all familiar to others, and they need to be.
We are living in the age of the narcissistic leader. Leaders with dangerous personality disorders.
“The key point of democracy is the avoidance of dictatorship…the avoidance of a form of rule that is not the rule of law.” -'-'Karl Popper
"The problem before us is how to get rid of the greatest hindrance to civilization – namely, the constitutional inclination of human beings to be aggressive towards one another.”
---Sigmund Freud
“Dictatorship is morally wrong because it condemns the citizens of the state – against their better judgment and against their moral convictions – to collaborate with evil if only through their silence."
--Karl Popper
“In our democratic societies a man who believes in democracy seems to us an ordinary man. Maybe even a dull man…Let there be a banality of good, and let it be powerful.”
--Rithy Panh
“Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity.”
'---Naomi Klein
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.”
― DaShanne Stokes
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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The Founders understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
What Trump did, is the equivalent of a Mayor of a city, taking funds that have been allocated for the city's local Police Department, and withholding it until they launch a bogus investigation on one of his political opponents in the upcoming elections.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia...
A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. We now know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers had or were at least aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself, Don Jr, Manafort, Flynn, Jared, Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone, just to name a few. But what's worse, is the fact that they all lied about these contacts. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover them up, every single one of them.
The question every American should be asking is why were there so many contacts(272) between Trump’s people and Russian officials and operatives, and why did Trump and his people lie about those contacts?
Helsinki July 16, 2018.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Make no mistake, Putin is America's enemy, and not because we want him to be, he's America's enemy because that's what he has chosen to be. Trump is a Russian asset, and not because that's what we want him to be, he's a Russian asset because that's what he has chosen to be. We should treat them both accordingly with the choices that they have made..
Semper Fi...
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The firehose of falsehood, or firehosing, is a Soviet era propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels without regard for truth or consistency This tactic was successfully used by Russia during its annexation of Crimea.
The characteristics that distinguish this technique from Soviet Cold-War era propaganda techniques are a large number of messages and channels, and a "shameless" approach to disseminating falsehoods and contradictory messages. The immediate aim is to confuse, and overwhelm the audience. The "firehose" takes advantage of modern technology, such as the Internet and social media, and recent changes in the way people produce and consume news.
Russia disseminates propaganda using dozens of proxy websites whose connection to RT is "disguised or downplayed. People are also more likely to believe a story when they think many others believe it, especially if those others belong to a group with which they identify. Thus, an army of trolls can influence a person's opinion by creating the false impression that a majority of that person's neighbors support a given view.
Using the firehose model, the Russian government, along with Fox, have had some success in getting people to believe and spread falsehoods and disbelieve truthful reporting.
Although the firehosing technique takes advantage of modern technology, it is informed by the thinking of Lenin.
Lenin once explained that his heated language was "calculated not to convince, but to break up the ranks of the opponent, not to correct the mistake of the opponent, but to destroy him, to wipe his organization off the face of the earth." In his biography of Lenin, historian Victor Sebestyen described him as the "godfather" of "post-truth politics."
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Trump says that his phone call with the president of Ukraine was a "perfect phone call."
Well if it's as perfect as he says it was, then he should release the entire unedited transcript to the public, so that we all can revel in the glory of such a perfect phone call.
here's a good example of what a "perfect" phone call from Trump sounds like.😄
January 27, 2017 transcript of Trump's phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto had insisted publicly his country would not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump actually tried to get the President of Mexico to cover for his massive lie about the wall.
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The Republican party has been replaced by a cult known as Trumpism. It's a cult rooted in lies, absurdities, wild conspiracy theories, self-deception, hypocrisy, pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience to the "Chosen One."
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• There are records, books, news articles, or broadcast reports that document the abuses of the group/leader.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior.
I began this book with the assumption that Trump is a malignant narcissist. Actually, watching him and listening to him reminded me of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the cult I joined in college, in that both have a kind of God complex where they’re the only one with the answers, the only one who can fix things. Moon was going to create a theocracy and Trump was going to “drain the swamp.” But the way they carry themselves is similar.
But what really made me think of Trump as a cult was the way the groups who supported him were behaving, especially religious groups who believed that God had chosen Trump or was using Trump. There are actual pro-Trump religious groups, like the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders were saying, “We’re of God. The rest of the world is of Satan, and we need to follow our chosen leaders who are connected to God.”
There was this blind-faith aspect to the whole thing and an unwillingness to look at any inconvenient facts. That’s all very cult-like.
The bottom line is that I see very sophisticated mind-control techniques being used through the media, through religious broadcasters and radio talk-show hosts. It’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil, authoritarian view of reality that is mostly fear-based. And there’s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the image of the leader."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
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In the video of a December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin's propaganda network RT at a Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who would later become Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's campaign when he was being paid $45,000 to speak at the gala.
"It is not coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin," said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Flynn's Moscow jaunt, like his oddly timed phone chats with the Russian ambassador, has been well reported. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 dinner, was attended by a healthy serving of ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs.
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin.
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats. Like Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
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Trump looks, acts, and sounds like a mad man, and he's turned his white house into Barter Town from Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.. It's nonstop chaos, pandemonium, betrayal, back-stabbing, buffoonery, thievery, treason, upheaval, nepotism, cronyism, bedlam, and sanctioned lawlessness.
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Ingraham: "So Mr. President, you clearly have a deficit among female voters, because they say you're too aggressive with your tone, your tweets. What would you say to them directly, about what you'll do in a second term?
Trump: "I would say that I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and ef her. She was married. And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’”
I moved on her like a beetch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony teets and everything. She’s totally changed her look.
Yeah, that’s her, with the gold. I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do whatever you want. Grab them by the p. You can do anything."
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Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency, said Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
On December 13th, 2016, at Russian Ambassador Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had to Trump's people —“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Russian Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
Hayden was also convinced the Trump Tower meeting and Kushner’s secret meetings with the Russian Ambassador was a classic “soft approach” by Russian intelligence. Hayden argued that the meeting “is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like,” and that it may have been the “green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election.”
Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach.
No. 1 “Would they take the meeting? So, then you get the willingness.. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. Not only did they not report the meeting, they lied about the meeting when asked. Kushner even lied about the meetings on his security clearance application. So, while Kushner and Don. Jr claimed that the meetings were irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
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On May 17, 2017, during a White House meeting days after Trump’s election, Obama warned Trump about Flynn, but Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie also directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017.
A number of red flags were raised about Flynn, beginning with his unusual paid trip to Moscow for an RT gala in December 2015 — an event in which he infamously sat directly next to Putin.
Both US and British intelligence officers were troubled about Flynn’s role in the Trump administration, given his dealings with Russia. But Trump being a traitor, and the very "stable genius" that he is, ignored all the red flags and decided to make Flynn his national security adviser anyway.
During the transition period, Flynn had phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in which he advised Kislyak not to respond to new sanctions Obama had placed on Russia for interfering (on Trump’s behalf) in the presidential election. Not only did Flynn undermine Obama’s (a sitting President) foreign policy, he then lied about it, telling FBI investigators during an interview conducted days after Trump’s inauguration that he and Kislyak did not discuss sanctions.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI prompted the DoJ to warn Trump ONCE AGAIN about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, acting AG Sally Yates, personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, Trump instead rewarded Sally Yates for doing her job, and for her due diligence in warning him about Flynn, by firing her 3 days later. Let that sink in for a moment....take your time.
And now Trump the traitor has the unmitigated gall to try and blame Obama, and everyone else under the sun, for not warning him about Flynn.
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DJT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of Trump's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day.
The truth of the matter is, if DJT had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with Trump's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. Trump had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card Trump had left, and he played it.
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What Trump tried to do really was far worse than Watergate. As corrupt as Nixon was, he never incited a violent insurrection on our nation's Capitol in order to stay in power. John Dean warned us about Trump back in 2016.
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73. He was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he could possibly get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, isa dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papersin 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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It shouldn't surprise anyone that the most corrupt president in American history, would pick someone like Kavanaugh. If I'm the president, and I find out that my scotus nominee might actually be a rapey sexual predator , and someone who displayed a hostile and belligerent attitude towards the hearing committee, while committing perjury, I would simply pull his nomination. Because as the president, I wouldn't want my name attached to something like that. But then again, I actually have at least a modicum of morals, and integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Trump on the other hand, has never been burdened with anything resembling a conscience, or morals. This is a man after all, who tried to rewrite his ailing father's will in order to claim his father's entire fortune for himself. Now if Trump would do that to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the American people?
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President Biden had two options. He could stick to the agreement that Trump made with the Taliban, or break the agreement and escalate, which would mean starting a new surge.
Trump agreed unconditionally to bring down U.S. troop levels to 8,600 by mid-July 2020 and totally withdraw by May 2021.
In August, Trump voluntarily cut troop levels down to 4,500, even more quickly than required by the agreement, even though negotiations had not even begun. This was a clear signal there would be no linkage between withdrawals and peace. Trump had already announced that there would be only 2,500 troops in Afghanistan by the time he left office.
This only emboldened the Taliban. They started taking even more territory, and more quickly than it had in years. As the Taliban's power increased, it had even less reason to engage in peace negotiations with the Afghan government.
Facts matter.
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Today, Trump claimed that his authority is total. He finally admitted to seeing himself as a dictator.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Today, Trump and Republicans are telling the American people that we can no longer keep it.
What say you my fellow Americans?
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you, would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem & upheaval. I am a merchant of lies & deception. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, malignant, grotesque, selfish, indecent, malicious, debased, indifferent, inept, and malevolent.
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They say that "the fish rots from the head." This is true, and so does a nation. And the insidious rot that has gripped this nation, can be traced directly to the occupant in the Oval Office.
"I think my rhetoric brings people together," Donald said that last year, just four days after Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old MAGA supporter posted an anti-immigrant message online and then opened.fire at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, taking the lives of 22 people, and injuring dozens of others.
A nationwide review conducted has identified at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
After a La.tino gas station attendant in Gainesville, Florida, was suddenly pu.nched in the head by a MAGA supporter, the victim could be heard on surveillance camera recounting the attacker’s own words: “He said, ‘This is for Trump.'" Charges were filed but the victim stopped pursuing them.
When police questioned a Washington state man about his threats to murder a local immigrant, the suspect told police he wanted the victim to "get out of my country," adding, "That’s why I like Trump."
Reviewing police reports and court records, the review found that in at least 12 cases perpetrators hailed DJT in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting innocent victims. In another 18 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant's violent or threatening behavior.
The review could not find a single criminal case filed in federal or state court where an act of violence or threat was made in the name of Obama or Bush.
The 54 cases identified are remarkable in that a link to DJT is captured in court documents and police statements, under the penalty of perjury or contempt. These links are not speculative – they are documented in official records. And in the majority of cases, it was the perpetrators themselves who invoked DJT's name in connection with their case, not anyone else.
Trump and his followers are exactly what Voltaire was talking about when he said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
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Trump was caught bribing Ukraine into opening up a bogus investigation into Biden and his son, while he and his own family members are engaged in real crimes in the White House.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂😲😆
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At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. a visibly angry and hostile woman took to the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists.
It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in our liberty, our democracy, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly wants America to have a dictator, who will force his will upon the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
On January 6, the world watched in horror and disgust as Trump's horde of insurrectionists stormed our nation's Capitol.
They said that like 1776, they were leading a revolution. But here's the problem with that, in 1776, this nation fought a revolution to remove a King, Trump's horde led an insurrection in order to insert a King.
This impeachment is not about removing Trump from office, the American people have already done that. This is all about holding him accountable for the events of January 6, and his attempt to take down our Constitution, and our democracy.
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From the beginning, Trump built a vanguard of lying sycophants around him. These people were all told to leave their morals, ethics, and integrity at the door.
Trump is using the same tactics that the pig Napoleon used in George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. Every tyrant has his loyal propagandist, and Napoleon had one in his mouth piece known as Squealer in the novel. And Fox, Kellyanne, Graham, and others have been acting as Trump's "Squealer." Squealer was a clever propagandist, who (as the animals said) could turn night into day.
Every time an act of Napoleon's is questioned by the other animals - regardless of how selfish or severe it may seem, Squealer is able to convince the animals that Napoleon is only acting in THEIR best interest. And like Squealer, Trump's propagandists use lies, deflections, projections and gaslighting to turn day into night...to turn black into white. Trump himself even told his followers that they shouldn't believe what they hear or see with their own eyes. He said they should only believe what he tells them.
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Psychologist Frank DiPrima:
Trump's Professor, William T. Kelley taught marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence:The Management of Marketing Information..
Professor Kelley stated that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*ddam student I ever had.”
Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest g*ddam student I ever had.” Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity, but long before he was considered a political figure. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told the story that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything
Professor Kelley’s view seems to be shared by other University of Pennsylvanians, from the Daily Pennsylvanian, stating:
Biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. They officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy..
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don, was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
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Jerry Artz
Thanks again for proving that Trumpism is very real.
The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!!
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The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
AndVio.lence was the only option they had left. DJT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, theViolence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Trump will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 57 thousand American lives..
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Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Since the 1930s, the modern conservative movement has tried to restrict majority rule at every turn — because they know a mass democratic movement poses an existential threat to their power.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of stateTerror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact taking it from you..
What is wrong with conservatism?
Answer: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructiveSystem of inequalityandPrejudice, that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world...
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DJT tried his best to create an America in his own image. One that is vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, malignant, grotesque, ignorant, selfish, indecent, malicious, debased, indifferent, and malevolent.
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Deepdown, republicans in Congress and the Senate can't stand Trump. They've never liked him. They know that he's unethical, immoral, criminally incompetent, and totally unfit to be president. If they were smart, they would realize that Dems have handed them a gift with this impeachment. Because this impeachment is their "out." This is how they can rid themselves and the country of this menace, a menace that they know is destroying their party, and the country.
Let's say that republicans don't vote to remove Trump from office, and then let's say that Trump somehow gets reelected, do republicans really want to live through another 4 year long nightmare of trying to defend Trump? And make no mistake, if Trump is reelected, he will definitely be impeached again, because he will definitely do something impeachable again. The man simply can't help himself. He would be more brazen, emboldened, and out of control than ever before. So the question now is, will republicans have the moral courage to finally do the right thing.
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Trump actually got caught trying to do basically the same thing that Avanatti did.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times. The lies Trump told were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
What Avenatti did was deplorable. It's almost as bad as Trump creating a fake charity foundation, and then using money from it to payoff lawsuits, pay for repairs on his properties, and for purchasing a 60k dollar portrait of himself.
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Trump and fox, his ministry of propaganda, have been using the same tactics that the pig Napoleon used in George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. Every tyrant has his loyal propagandist, and Napoleon had one in his mouth piece known as Squealer in the novel. And Fox is acting as Trump's "Squealer." Squealer was a clever propagandist, who (as the animals said) could turn night into day..
Every time an act of Napoleon's is questioned by the other animals - regardless of how selfish or severe it may seem, Squealer (fox) is able to convince the animals that Napoleon is only acting in THEIR best interest. And like Squealer, fox uses lies, deflections, projections and gaslighting to turn day into night...to turn black into white. Trump himself even told his followers that they shouldn't believe what they hear or see with their own eyes. He said they should only believe what he tells them.
"Ignorance is Strength." This is the official moto of the cult known as Trumpism. We know this because of Trump sycophants like Kellyanne, who promotes the idea of "alternative facts." And Rudy Giuliani, who famously declared that " truth isn't truth."
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party (Trump) is always right."
-- George Orwell, 1984
In George Orwell's novel 1984, a Thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding beliefs that oppose or question the Party. Thoughtcrime is thinking of anything that the Thought Police and the Party deem is illegal. Doubting the party line, or thinking anything contrary to the Party's message..
Within Trump's cult, he has a name for those who commit "Thoughtcrimes" against him, like questioning his actions, and calling out his lies, Trump refers to these people as "Never Trumpers."
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The January 27 transcript of Trump's phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto had insisted publicly his country would not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full..
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham..
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for with Russian money.
It's why repubicans are fighting so hard to defend him instead of the Constitution. It's also why Republicans have been repeating the exact same lies and propaganda of the Russian government and Russian security services like the GRU.
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The multiple times Trump praised China and his idol President Xi, the leader of the Communist party, on his handling of the coronavirus:
Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Feb. 10, Fox Business interview:
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Feb. 10, campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Feb. 13, Fox News interview:
“I think they've handled it professionally and I think they're extremely capable and I think President Xi is extremely capable and I hope that it's going to be resolved."
Feb. 18, remarks before Air Force One departure:
“I think President Xi is working very hard. As you know, I spoke with him recently. He’s working really hard. It’s a tough problem. I think he’s going to do — look, I’ve seen them build hospitals in a short period of time. I really believe he wants to get that done, and he wants to get it done fast. Yes, I think he’s doing it very professionally.”
Feb. 23, remarks before Marine One departure:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Feb. 27, Coronavirus Task Force press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
Feb. 29, Coronavirus Task Force press conference:
“China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down. … I think our relationship with China is very good.
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So far Trump's presidency as amounted to nothing more than a 3 year long smash and grab for him and his pointless kids...Jared included.
There needs to be a special counsel investigation into Ivanka and Jared's business dealings (GRIFTING) while being members of Trump's administration.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Kushner also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
China approved several Ivanka trademarks at the same time that Trump was agreeing to drop sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE. Days before Trump’s decision, China agreed to invest half a billion dollars in an Indonesia theme park resort linked to the Trump Organization through a licensing deal. A major Israeli insurer loaned Kushner Cos. $30 million just days before Kushner visited Israel to work on a peace plan.
In June 2018, Charles Kushner attacked ethics officials for questioning Jared and Ivanka's shameless and egregious grifting, by calling them “j€Rks” who can’t get a “real job.” He also talked about the “sacrifices” his son and daughter-in-law had made. 😲😂😲
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RonnieAllen00
Let's be perfectly clear, Trump does not believe in democracy, justice, or the rule of law, because those American ideals and institutions are his biggest enemies. Trump has spent his fraudulent life believing that he is above the law, and therefore he should be allowed to do whatever he pleases, without any criticism, or repercussions,,which is why he believes he can actually pardon himself. This mindset is one of the reasons he's been sued more than 4000 times. Trump University is a perfect example. If it were not for justice and the rule of law, his fake University would still exist, and he would still be conning Americans out of thousands of dollars. The same goes for his fake charity foundation, which is now being sued by the state of NY. He and his kids were using it for their own personal gain. That's not how charity foundation are suppose to work. Once again, he was thwarted by his enemies, justice, and the rule of law. The best example of Trump's contempt for democracy, justice, and the rule of law, is his unconscionable admiration for dictators like Putin and Kim Jung Un. These two dictators are above the law in their own countries, and Trump clearly sees himself as one of them. How else would one explain Trump's shameless fawning over Kim Jung Un, and Putin, or the way he seems to long for their approval of him, the way a child longs for the approval of his parents.
September 2016 Trump praises Putin's 'strong control' over Russia and said he was 'far more' of a leader than Obama, during a commander in chief forum on NBC.
"I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing' -- the man has very strong control over a country. I think when he calls me brilliant I'll take the compliment, okay?' If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.'
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
Last but not least, Trump has a pathological fear, and visceral hatred of the truth. Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal" stated that "Lying is second nature to Trump. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true. Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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RonnieAllen00
A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.
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RonnieAllen00
For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away, and today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower, even after Interpol issued a red notice for Tokhtakhounov. And then, in Dec 2013, this fugitive from American justice, appeared seated near Trump in the VIP section of Trump's Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News.
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RonnieAllen00
Trump 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
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RonnieAllen00
The FBI obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with the NRA, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, in 2016.
José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said the FBI requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.
“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”
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Trump and his grifter family are running their criminal enterprise out of the white. That's what the entire Trump administration has been about since the very beginning. It's why Jared and Ivanka were brought into the white house. They aren't working for the country, or the American people, they are working for themselves. They are working to enrich themselves even more. Every move they make is a calculated business move for their own financial gains.
It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, Australia, The UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president.
Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC since he became president. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab right in front of our eyes.
America has never seen a president as compromised, crooked and unethical as Trump. This is without a doubt new territory for our nation.
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Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, Americans (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania..
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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The insurrection on January 6 proved that phony patriotism poses a threat to America, and to our democracy.
Samuel Johnson, the 18th century English writer said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Gore Vidal wrote, “When tyranny comes to the United States, she will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible.” How stunningly appropriate those quotes are in describing Trump's tyrannical one term as president.
Trump and his followers falsely believe that wrapping themselves in the American flag, screaming FREEDOM, or standing for the anthem makes them super patriots. It no more makes them patriots than me standing in the middle of my garage makes me a Ford F-150.
I have never seen patriotism reduced to such hollow and irrelevant stupidity. To them, patriotism is all about empty childish gestures that show a misunderstanding of America, rather than honoring it. Real Patriotism is caring about what happens to your fellow American citizens. It's about sacrifice and service to others, it's about our shared humanity, while the best of America is about kindness, hospitality, and benevolence.
A true American patriot would use our flag, and everything it's suppose to represent, to unite our country, not to divide it, and not as a weapon against those who have different views or different skin colors.
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At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely. Trump said it was a good idea, and dreams of doing the same thing.
In remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
NEVER FORGET...
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President Obama said that when making a decision, it's helpful not to watch TV or read social media.That's because that "creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment," He also said it's important to "have a team with a diversity of opinion" to help with making decisions and providing context.
President Obama had two important tips for any president to help make good decisions.
First, Obama said, you should "make sure you have a team with a diversity of opinion sitting around you."
"The other thing that's helpful is not watching TV or reading social media," he said. "Those are two things I would advise, if you're our president, not to do. It creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment."
Obama spoke about entering office during the Great Recession, and he said that the presidency is like "drinking out of a fire hose."
"That's doubly true when you're in the middle of a crisis," Obama said.
A president can't absorb all the information on their own when making a decision, so it's important to have teams to provide information and context about the problem, he said.
"Then what you have to do is create a process where you have confidence that whatever data is out there has been sifted and sorted," Obama said.
Obama said that because there's so much information out there now, including "opinion wrapped up as fact" and clickbait, it's important to filter through the noise.
"What it does mean is that if you are susceptible to worrying about what are the polls saying or what might this person say about this topic, or you start mistaking the intensity of the passion of a very small subset of people with a broader sense about your country or people who know something about the topic, that will sway your decision-making in an unhealthy way,"
"I am asking you to hold fast to that faith that is written into our founding documents...that ideal whisper...by slaves and abolitionist, that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders, and those who marched for justice. That creed...reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battle fields, to the surface of the moon. A creed at the core of every American, who's story is not yet written....YES WE CAN!!"
--President Barack Obama
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What Trump tried to do really was far worse than Watergate. As corrupt as Nixon was, he never incited a violent insurrection on our nation's Capitol in order to stay in power. John Dean warned us about Trump back in 2016.
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73. He was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Back in 2016, Dean said that Trump could easily be the most corrupt presidents ever.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he could possibly get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, to be unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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So nearly everyone in Trump's inner circle and campaign, were in some way, in contact with, or secretly meeting with the Russians, and they ALL lied about it. There were more than 100 contacts between people in Trump's campaign, and Russians. Enough said.
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
What Kushner tried to do is exactly what American traitors have done in the past when they've decided to start working for the Russian government. It's basically what Aldrich Ames did in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Union Embassy in DC, and turned over highly classified information to the Russians.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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Ex-Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas slammed Trump and his associates for pushing what he said were false allegations against the Biden family during the House Oversight Committee's hearing Wednesday in the GOP impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
Parnas, a businessman who worked closely with former Trump attorney Giuliani in 2018 and 2019 to try to find damaging information on Joe Biden, appeared as a witness at the invitation of committee Democrats alongside Hunter Biden’s former business partners Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis.
“The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions,” Parnas said in his opening statement. “They created falsehoods to serve their own interests knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation."
Parnas called out Trump allies in Congress such as former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., as well as some prominent right-wing media figures for spreading misinformation about the Bidens.
“Congressman Pete Sessions, then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Senator Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative,” he said. “The same goes for John Solomon, Sean Hannity and media personnel, particularly with Fox News, who use this narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 elections. Sadly, they are still doing this today as we approach the 2024 elections.”
Parnas maintained during the hearing that there was no evidence of Biden family corruption involving Ukraine and that the baseless accusations against the president came from the Russian government.
“I believe that what we are facing now is the culmination of a much larger plan for Russia to crush Ukraine by infiltrating the United States,” Parnas said.
Parnas’ attorney, Joe Bondy, said that since his client first appeared in the Southern District of New York in October 2019, he had been prepared to meet with federal prosecutors and provide information to them, including about Trump and his private counsel.
“We asked (then-Attorney General) Bill Barr to recuse himself over what we believed was his actual conflict of interest, with no response,” Bondy said. “We reached out to former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady’s Office to proffer information, with no reply at all. Had anyone let Lev speak back then, perhaps America would have been in a vastly different place today.”
Throughout his testimony, Parnas insisted Giuliani understood the origins of the information they were receiving in their efforts to find dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. He said he had tried to warn Giuliani about the lack of credibility of those sources of information, and that Giuliani agreed with his take but continued to work with those individuals.
Parnas compared his time working with Giuliani and others on behalf of Trump to being in a “cult” and described his arrest for wire fraud and campaign finance violations as a wake-up call.
“Eventually you’ve brainwashed yourself to believing certain things that are not true,” he said, adding that he had time to reflect when he was arrested and “really understand what was going on.”
Parnas previously urged the House Republican-led Oversight Committee to end its probe into the Biden family, saying in a letter to Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., last year that there was no evidence to implicate the president or his son Hunter Biden.
“With all due respect, Chairman Comer, the narrative you are seeking for this investigation has been proven false many times over, by a wide array of respected sources,” Parnas wrote. “There is simply no merit to investigating this matter any further.”
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Trump has been encouraging violence in this country since he was on the campaign trail in 2016. There is proof of him giving a full throated green light for his cult followers to engage in violent acts.
MARCH 2016:
" Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said " You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
FEBRUARY 2016:
" Knock the krap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees." Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
This is the same man that used brute force against peaceful protesting American citizens in Lafayette Square, just so he could stage a 5 minute photo-op. He treats Putin like he's a fellow comrade, and treats American citizens like we're the enemy. Let that sink in for a moment...
Has anyone ever heard of a president behaving in such a manner? Has anyone ever heard of a president inciting Americans to engage in violence against other Americans?
In Trump’s second book, Surviving at the Top (released as Trump’s empire was crumbling under massive debt in 1990), he described his temperament in ways that wouldn’t seem to bode well for America.
“I get bored too easily,” he wrote. “My attention span is short and probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable.”
This is Trump openly admitting to being an agent of chaos and destruction. Placing an extreme narcissistic sociopath like Trump into any position of leadership, where his actions will have a direct affect on people's lives, constitutes a criminal act. Nothing good has ever resulted from anything that Trump has ever touched or been involved with. He is void of any and all goodwill or human decency. He is a purely toxic, insidious and malevolent being, who constitutes a malignant affliction on this country.
The safety and national security of America should have never been placed into the hands of a mentally impaired, and emotionally unstable demagogue, who will take a wrecking ball to anything, simply because he was bored.
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A big question is why did Kushner ignore the intelligence community’s warnings about Russia. Once it became public that they were interfering in our election, which was in June, why did you continue to have contacts with them?
White house whistle-blower Tricia Newbold, who reported that Trump and his white house endangered national security by breaking security procedures in issuing security clearances to Jared, Ivanka and more than 20 white house aides and officials, who were deemed untrustworthy by intelligence agencies.
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by Jared Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
In fact, Kushner never raised Russia’s meddling during his two post-election meetings with Russians, according to his own accounts. Kislyak contacted Kushner on November 16th, and they met on December 1st. Once again, the Russians seemed to have a level of access to the Trump campaign that other countries, including Western allies, could only dream of. In his testimony, Kushner confirmed that at this meeting, which took place in Trump Tower, he and Kislyak and Michael Flynn, the incoming national-security adviser, who also attended, discussed using communications equipment at the Russian Embassy.
Gen.Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach. “Would they take the meeting?” he said. “So, then you get the willingness. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. So, while Kushner claimed that the meeting was irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
The Kushner-Kislyak relationship continued. On December 13th, at Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had—“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
The reason why Trump never went through with the Moscow hotel was because Obama placed economic sanctions on the Russian bank that Trump needed to finance the hotel. Once that happened, the deal was officially dead. The sanctions were placed on the bank after the Russian hacking was discovered. Trump never had enough money to finance the building of such a massive hotel. The sanctions Obama placed on the Russian bank prevented any Americans from doing business with it. True story. Trump conveniently left all of that out. The Russian VTB bank is partially owned by the Kremlin, and remains under US sanctions.
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Trump: "I happen to know more about vaccines than any doctor. In fact, I have my own people, the best people by the way, working on a coronavirus vaccine at TUMC, Trump University Medical Center. We should have the vaccine ready within the hour, if not sooner. Plus my vaccine will come with a bonus....it also cures gout. However unfortunately, some minor side effects of the vaccine may include hallucinations, loss of teeth, permanent blindness, elephantiasis, and a somewhat mild death."
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According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
Meanwhile, Trump's is continuing his mission of gaslighting to oblivion, the feeble and atrophied minds of his cultists, with lies about how great of a job he's doing.
Every American should be outraged and horrified by the fact that we have a president with the cognitive capacity of a toddler, and the intellectual curiosity of a dungbeetle.
Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout December for policymakers, National Security Council, and the White House.
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those is anyone's guess. Either way, his indifference and inaction, constitutes criminal negligence, and a violation of his oath of office, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
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Mary Trump said that Trump’s post-election behavior “makes perfect sense,” given his personality, psychology, and lifelong disdain for losers.
“This is somebody who’s never won legitimately in his life,” she said. “But he’s never lost either. Because in his view, winning is so important and he always deserves to win that it’s OK to lie, cheat and steal.”
Mary Trump said that Trump’s inherited his acerbic behavior from his father, Fred Trump. She called her grandfather “a horrible human being who just reveled in other people's humiliation."
“It’s not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel, it’s that he’s been allowed to be,” she said. “Every transgression that’s gone on unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further. That’s partially why we’re going to see him smashing as much stuff on his way out the door as he can.”
Trump’s niece says her uncle is “criminal, cruel and traitorous” and belongs in prison after he leaves the White House.
Mary Trump, a psychologist, rejects the notion that putting a former president on trial would deepen the nation’s political divisions.
“It’s quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can handle it and that we just need to move on,” Mary Trump told The Associated Press in an interview.
“If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald," she added. "(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is.”
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The motivating factors that drives a person to betray their own country, and become a willing agent of another hostile country are broken down into the acronym MICE.
M oney
I deology
C ompromise/Coercion
E go
Trump clearly has no ideology, because he believes in nothing. But he is clearly susceptible to the other 3. Money, Ego and being Compromised. There's no doubt that Putin, being a KGB agent, recognized those weaknesses in Trump from a mile away. People like Manafort, Kushner, Don Jr, Moscow Mitch, and many other Trump associates fell prey to at least 3 of those factors as well. Trump and his inner circle presented a target rich environment for Russan agents. I have no doubt that Putin was both dumbfounded, and elated at how many of Trump's people were so eager to betray America..
On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia...
A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings..
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A letter of intent forwarded by Russian-born businessman Felix Sater to the Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, outlines the terms of a licensing agreement to purchase property to build a "Trump World Tower Moscow."
Sater sent the letter of intent - dated October 13, 2015, and signed by a Russian investor named Andrey Rozov - to Cohen for then-candidate Donald Trump's signature.
Emails exchanged between Cohen and Sater - who have known each other since they were teenagers - weeks later indicated that they were preparing to celebrate not only Trump's election victory, but also the potential Russia deal.
Sater boasted of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the emails, which were obtained by The New York Times, telling Cohen that he would "get all of Putins team to buy in" on the Moscow deal.
Slater email to Cohen: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," Sater wrote. "I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected."
Two months later, Cohen emailed Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, asking for his "assistance" in pushing the deal through, according to emails submitted to congressional investigators
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Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections, and is continuing to meddle in our elections today. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
A newly discovered Russian-led network of professional trolls was being outsourced to Ghanaian and Nigerian operatives, according to Facebook and Twitter, who removed the network’s accounts.
The network was small: just 49 Facebook accounts, 85 Instagram accounts and 71 Twitter accounts in question. But it marks the first time that a Russian information operation targeting the US has been found to be run from Africa.
Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said the company believes it was such a small network because it was disrupted in the early stages of building its audience. It was, Gleicher said, “operated by local nationals – some wittingly and some unwittingly – in Ghana and Nigeria on behalf of individuals in Russia.
“The people behind this network engaged in a number of deceptive tactics, including the use of fake accounts … to manage pages posing as non-government organisations or personal blogs, and post in groups,” Gleicher added.
The troll's objectives were to post content that would grow their audience, while also inflaming contemporary American divides.
“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their purpose and coordination, our investigation found links to EBLA, an NGO in Ghana, and individuals associated with past activity by the Russian InternetResearch Agency (IRA),” Gleicher said.
The Twitter accounts shared many similar traits. But an archive of the messages posted by the fake accounts, shared by Twitter, offers extra insight into how Russian information actors are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic for their own ends.
Most of the tweets simply reflect an urge to jump on popular topics to gain more followers, a reflection of how early the network was discovered.
“These 71 removed accounts, operating out of Ghana and Nigeria and which we can reliably associate with Russia, attempted to sow discord by engaging in conversations about social issues, like race and civil rights,” said Twitter’s safety team in a statement.
The Russians posed as a grassroots group, "Black Matters US". In February 2017, a Russian troll using the persona "Black Fist" even hired a self-defence instructor in New York to give classes to black Americans, Mueller reported.
The Mueller report revealed that the Russian offensive to disrupt the 2016 elections began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
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So while Trump is responsible for the 800 thousand Americans that won't be getting paid, he is also busy providing economic relief to billionaire Russian Oligarchs by lifting sanctions on them. If that doesn't make your blood boil, then nothing will.
Trump has announced he is removing sanctions on Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum company, United Co. Rusal. Oleg Deripaska, who has deep connections to Paul Manafort. Deripaska invested $18.9 million into a Ukrainian telecom venture ran by Manafort, but was never paid back. Mueller has investigated the links between the two men.
Deripaska, who is close to Vladimir Putin, was “accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering” when the Treasury hit him with sanctions in April. In 2005, Manafort started working for Oleg Deripaska. Manafort had hired himself out to Deripaska, promising he would “influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet Republics to benefit Putin’s government.
Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
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Former White House chief economic advisor Gary Cohn lashed out at some of his former colleagues, charging in a radio interview that the U.S. is losing the trade war as administration officials pursue a strategy that hasn’t worked.
Cohn, who was Trump’s first director of the National Economic Council, specifically pointed his finger at Peter Navarro, who serves as director of the National Trade Council, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for drawing the country into a misdirected tariff battle.
“Tariffs don’t work. If anything, they hurt the economy because if you’re a typical American worker, you have a finite amount of income to spend. If you have to spend more on the necessity products that you need to live, you have less to spend on the services that you want to buy.”
Cohn said he also had several high-profile disagreements with the administration, including one point where he nearly resigned following Trump’s comments on the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
Among the other revelations from his time in the White House, Cohn said a tipping point for him leaving was a meeting Navarro and Ross secretly set up with heads of the steel and aluminum industry to notify them that the administration was planning to levy tariffs on imports of the metals.
“What happened in the White House is we got to a point, unfortunately, where one or two people decided that they were going to no longer be part of a process and a debate,” he said.
When asked to confirm if it was Navarro and Ross who set up the meeting, Cohn said, “Yes. Those are the two people. When the process breaks down, then you’re, sort of, in my mind, living in chaos. I don’t want to live in a chaotic organization.”
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If we have so many terrorists coming across the border, why haven't we seen massive terrorist attacks across the country from these terrorists? The answer is simple...terrorists are not crossing into America at our southern border. The only terrorist attacks in America, are coming from Americans. American right-wing extremists who are plowing cars into crowds of people, and shooting up concerts, schools, clubs, bars, grocery stores, pizza parlors, movie theaters, churches, and Synagogues.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
Nixon was all but certain to be removed from office for far less than what Trump has done.
Earlier on Capitol Hill, McCarthy said that Trump's impeachment was the weakest and thinnest impeachment in the history of America. Well that is just patently absurd. The weakest and thinnest impeachment in the history of America was when republicans impeached a sitting President for lying about a BJ. If lying about a B-J was the worst thing a president ever did, America would have no problems at all.
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In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life,” he added.
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Cheating and lying are his only tools for survival. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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From day one most Americans knew that Trump's presidency was going to be one of the worst in modern history, but I don't think any one ever imagined it would be an unmitigated catastrophe of this magnitude.
The crux of Trump's total and complete failure as a leader and president, is not so much that he refuses to do his job as president, Trump's problem is that he was never capable of doing his job to begin with. He is not equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. He was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failure on someone or something.
Trump's complete and utter failure as a president, and as a leader, was inevitable.
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In August 1989, just two months after Trump launched his Trump Shuttle Airline, one of his Boeing 727s made a crash landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The shuttle was to fly white-collar passengers between New York, Washington and Boston. The passenger jet had malfunctioning nose gear that failed to deploy. The nose and underbelly of the plane scraped and dragged along the runaway upon landing with sparks flying. The pilots had to perform an emergency dumping of fuel to avoid a greater catastrophe. It's all on video.
Trump purchased the airline for 365 million, and in 3 years, it never turned a profit.😄
And when Trump was asked by reporters about the crash landing in Boston, he said, and I quote: “It was the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen." 😲
Back in 1986 and likely for many years before, Trump colluded in tax evasion with Bulgari Jewelry Store in NY, a high-end posh location with tony clientele right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here's how the scam worked:
Trump would go into the store with his wife, his girlfriend, his...whatever (to use his vernacular). He would then buy her an expensive necklace or wristwatch. Normally, such a transaction would face the NY and state sales tax, which would be pretty high on luxury jewelry.
In an illegal attempt to evade the tax, Trump "asked" the store to instead ship the jewelry to an out of state location, where no NY sales tax could be collected. In fact, the store would merely send an empty jewelry box to the location, while Trump and his lady friends walked out the door with the jewelry that very day.
The state and city tax collectors eventually caught onto this scheme, and Trump promptly testified against his erstwhile tax evasion colluding partners at the jewelry store in order to save his own skin.😲
The empty box scam is just one example of Trump's history of illegal tax evasion. Another story can be told about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida by local reporter Frank Cerabino.
Trump bought the property from the estate of breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. He got it for a relative bargain at $7.5 million, something he bragged about in The Art of the Deal. Yet he refused for years to pay local property taxes on the actual value of the property, $11.5 million at the time he bought it. He tried to have it both ways--buy the property for a steep discount and also pay property taxes at that same under-valued price.
Try that with your town's property tax assessor sometime and see what he says.😲
This is who Trump is in a nutshell. He's always been a con-man, and that's all he will ever be.
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@jw4972
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "patriots."
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@jw4972
Nope!! Election fraud happens on the Republican side.
As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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So after Republicans broke their own rules and went back on their word about picking a Supreme Court Justice during an election year, when millions of Americans have already voted, Dems have every right to pack the court, and Republicans have absolutely no room to talk. Republicans made a promise to the American people, and they broke that promise without even blinking an eye or giving it a 2nd thought. So If Dems decide to pack the court, republicans have no one to blame but themselves. Because it didn't have to be this way. All republicans had to do, was honor the promise they made.
Because let's face it, if the situation were reversed, and Dems broke their promise, and went back on their word, what would republicans do? We all know the answer to that question.
So, by breaking their own rules and going back on their word, Republicans are giving Dems a green light to pack the Supreme Court. I love it!!!!😆 👏👏👏
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At the time of his deth, Jim Jones held such power over his followers that he was able to direct more than 900 of them to participate in a ma55 mur.der-sui.cide.
Jones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"I thought he could heal because I saw healings and I thought they were real," said former Peoples Temple member Leslie Wagner-Wilson. "He was a master of manipulation, but you saw him with this dark hair, the sunglasses, and the way that he spoke -- he was a great orator -- and it moved you, it inspired you because he was so passionate. And so I was just enthralled."
As time went on, former members said Jones became more extreme.
"His behavior became totally irrational," said Williams, one of the former members. "You begin to just go with the flow out of fear. Fear of the fact that if you left the church, what you might experience, what danger might be brought to you."
In 1974, Jones leased more than 3,800 acres of isolated land in the jungle from the Guyanese government. By 1978, nearly 1,000 followers had moved to the Guyana compound, former members said, and food started to run out. Having been forced to give up their passports and money upon arrival, some former members said they were cut off from the outside world.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
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Flynn's crimes and betrayal have been well reported and documented. In a now infamous video, Flynn is seen applauding and toasting Putin, Trump's benefactor, and a known tyrant. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 Moscow dinner Flynn attended was swarming with ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs.
In the video of a December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin's propaganda network RT at a Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who would later become Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's campaign when he was being paid $45,000 by Putin to speak at the gala.
"It is not a coincidence that Flynn was placed next to Putin," said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin.
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats. Like Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
Like Trump, Flynn proudly betrayed his country, and they both did it for nothing more than greed.
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The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Donald's criminal organization, and they expected a return on their investment. Protection being one of the things the Saudis expected in return, and they received that protection from Trump and Jared.
Donald's presidency amounted to nothing more than a 4 year long smash&grab for him and his pointless kids...Jared included.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Jared also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia.
Jared's family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
The 9/11hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, they also received funding from Saudi Arabia to plan their attack while they were here in America. But none of that mattered to Trump and Jared. His first trip abroad as President was to Saudi Arabia, so he could do the sword dance, and kiss the rings of his Saudi benefactors.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violated the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
After Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and Saudi lobbying groups became lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of 2018, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Confusing 9/11 with 7 Eleven
You would think, that a man running for the most powerful office in the world would be clued up on when the atrocity took place? Not the Donald.
At a rally in Buffalo, NY April 18, 2016, Trump told the crowd:
"I wrote this out, and it's very close to my heart. Because I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7/11 — And I saw the greatest people I've ever seen in action. I saw the bravest people I've ever seen."
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
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The notion that Trump was actually concerned about corruption in Ukraine, or corruption in general, is laughable. He even had the audacity to call himself the "law & order" president.
Trump is not only the most corrupt president in American history, he's the most corrupt president imaginable. If someone had told me years ago that we would ever have a president this immoral, unethical, deceitful, and sociopathic, I would have laughed. Well....I'm not laughing now. 😔 Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, because Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 m in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing the money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment.
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his talentless children, had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
In addition, the charity foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
But let's be honest, what Trump did wasn't just improper, it was downright criminal and reprehensible..
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
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Why isn't Trump, the draft dodging champion, here in America on Memorial Day weekend honoring our fallen? Oh that's right, Trump has no respect for our veterans, PoWs, our fallen, or their gold star family members. Trump didn't even bother to visit Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day last year.
Trump didn't even bother to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is a presidential tradition. Just imagine if Obama and skipped Arlington or laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.😲 And just the day before, Trump didn't bother to attend the commemoration ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France while he was there. He said the rain prevented him from paying his respects to the American soldiers who died in WW1, however, the rain didn't prevent other world leaders from attending the ceremony.
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Sean Hannahs
Steve Bannon, Trump’s ex chief political strategist, once said proudly: “I am a Leninist.” Bannon said that Lenin wanted to destroy the Russian state (which was true) and that he had the same goals for Amerca. “I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment" Bannon said.
From the look of Trump’s time in White House, Bannon installed a bevy of Leninist political tactics that could have come straight from the Bolshevik leader’s playbook.
Two days after Lenin seized power in Russia a century ago, he began an assault on the free press – and his successors in the USSR did not let up for the next 70 years. Putin is literally following in Lenin's footsteps.
Three days after Trump’s inauguration Bannon told the NYT: “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen … I want you to quote this. "The media here is the opposition party." This was the beginning of Trump's war on the free press, which is a must for any demagogue.
Since information from the press can undermine a dictator's spell over his cultists, they will often attack and demonized the free press. They will usually claim that the media can't be trusted. They have even called out for violence against news outlets that oppose them, claiming that the press is part of a deep state conspiracy against them, or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get him. No dictator can survive in a country that has a free press. This fact was no lost on Lenin, and neither is that fact lost on Trump. The truth has been, and will always be, Trump's nemesis
Bannon helped to creat the hate-filled language of alt-right politics, which is decidedly Leninist in tone. Above all, Lenin needed to invent enemies he had to be seen to defeat. In post- revolutionary Russia it was the kulaks – richer farmers who were “sucking the blood” of poorer peasants, bankers who were war profiteering, the “elite” (a word Lenin used frequently) who treated the majority with contempt. He despised so-called “experts” who claimed a monopoly of knowledge. He often said that a worker with five days’ training could run a government department. He scapegoated opponents and labelled them “enemies of the people”.
Lenin abolished the existing legal system and started afresh. Within a few weeks his regime closed down the first freely elected parliament in Russia’s history – and the Soviets never allowed another one. It would be wrong to assume that the next step for Trump is the abolition of Congress, or the construction of labour camps. But the unprecedented war by tweet between the administration and the judiciary over the president’s executive order on immigration has real echoes of Bannon’s revolutionary hero...
Lenin would very likely have identified 2017 as a revolutionary moment. He matters today not because of his flawed and bloody answers, but because he was asking questions similar to those we are asking today. In his quest for power, Lenin promised people anything and everything. He offered simple solutions to complex issues. He lied unashamedly. He justified himself on the basis that winning meant everything; the ends justified the means. Lenin was the godfather of post-truth politics. Powerful people have learned depressing lessons from him.
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Sean Hannahs
A cult of personality, or a cult leader like Trump, arises when an individual uses the media, propaganda, the big lie, spectacle, counterfeit patriotism, demonstrations and rallies, to create an idealized, heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery,
praise.
The term came to prominence in 1956, in Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, given on the final day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the speech, Khrushchev criticized the lionization and idealization of Stalin, and by implication, his Communist sidekick Mao Zedong. Mao's cult of personality, like Stalin’s, portrayed him as larger-than-life and endowed with unrivaled wisdom. Cults of personality fell out of favor in the 1950s after Khrushchev's speech, but Trump's handler Putin, has revived the practice, guiding a wave of nostalgia for Stalin as he advocates for Russian nationalism and anti-West sentiment.
A main feature of Stalinism was its cult of personality. Whereas Lenin had claimed that the workers suffered from false consciousness and therefore needed a vanguard party to guide them, Stalin maintained that the Communist Party itself suffered from false consciousness
and therefore needed an all-wise leader—Stalin himself—to guide it. The resulting cult of personality portrayed Stalin as a universal genius in every subject, from linguistics to genetics.
The best modern-day example of a cult of personality comes to us from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un, the despotic dictator that Trump admires so much.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background. And when architects design new apartments and shops, he is given credit for doing so.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
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rapskallion77
We have a Constitution built on democratic institutions, which is the way the Founders intended it to be. It has worked for hundreds of years. Today it is under threat from a wannabe dictator who praises other dictators like Kim Jung Un.
On July 23, 2019, Trump said this: "I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."😲
This is clearly a man who sees himself as a dictator. Since his campaign, Trump has been trying to tell us that he doesn't believe in democracy or our Constitution. He said it when he bragged about shooting someone on 5th Ave. He said it when he bragged about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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If Trump's supporters were capable of critical thinking, they would have known that he had a slim chance of winning reelection with his horrible approval ratings. In 4 years, Trump's approval rating never rose above 50%. He had the worst approval ratings of any president in modern history. So what does Trump do? He created the BIG LIE that the election was stolen from him, and his cultists swallowed the BIG LIE hook line and sinker.
POLITICO, Gallup, and Quinnipiac University polls reported that Trump's last job approval rating is a personal low of 34%. He averaged a 41% job approval in office, a record low by four points. A Pew Research Center poll even had his final job approval rating as low as 29%. No president has ever won reelection with job approval ratings that low. And let's be clear, the only reason Trump won in 2016, was because millions of Americans stayed home and did not vote.
Trump sowed the seeds of the BIG LIE even before election day. He told his followers that the only way he could lose the election, was if it was stolen from him. Because deep down, Trump knew that he was going to lose, so like the sociopath that he is, he poisoned the well, and sowed the seeds of anger, vengeance, and extremism.
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What do you call a trial without witnesses and evidence? It's called a farce and a cover-up.
What do you call a country that would allow something like this to happen? You would call it a banana republic, and a failed State.
If this is allowed to happen, It will be yet another example of Trump and republicans giving a middle-finger to the American people, and the Constitution. 70% of Americans want to hear from the witnesses themselves. Republicans are essentially saying that what the American people want doesn't matter. The American people have spoken, and we will be watching.
The travesty that's taking place before our very eyes will go down as one of the biggest cover-ups in American history, second only to the JFK assassination. Just imagine if republicans had blocked witnesses like John Dean, Nixon's White House Counsel, from testifying against Nixon. Just imagine if Republicans had blocked the Nixon tapes from being released. Nixon would have never been held accountable for his crimes, and in all likelihood, he would have gone on to commit even more crimes. That same exact scenario of injustice, is what we are facing today. But this time, it's with a president who is far more corrupt and immoral, than Nixon ever dared to be.
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Marine Sgt, Maj. Dan Daly is known for being one of the most decorated service members of all time. He was awarded not one, but TWO medals of honor.
He coined an expression that will forever live on in books, movies, and among troops He almost earned a third for his part in a counter-attack against the enemy in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood. Instead, Daly was given the Distinguished Service Cross and, later, the Navy Cross.
In June 1918 at the battle of Belleau Wood in WW1, the Marines were pinned down under heavy artillery barrage. At one point in the battle, the now 44 year old Daly, led his Marines in a counter-attack against machine gun emplacements with a battle cry that has become Marines lore “Come on, you sons of B——, do you want to live forever?!” In the course of that battle he was wounded three times. 1,800 Marines died in the battle of Belleau Wood.
These are the types of Americans that our current sitting president refers to as "losers."
And Putin's asset in the Oval Office STILL hasn't uttered one word about the bounties that Putin has placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.
Since then we learned that a violent collision took place in Syria between US and Russian troops that left American troops with concussions, two U.S. officials said. Two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet the vehicle.
The injuries occurred when one of the Russian vehicles deliberately sideswiped an American vehicle in a convoy, causing the crew to suffer "concussion-like injuries." Initial reports indicate as many as four Americans may have been injured.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
―President Theodore Roosevelt
Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes in nothing, honors nothing, and respects nothing. As a veteran, the oath I took would never allow me to vote for a domestic threat to my country like Trump. Trump has repeatedly betrayed America, it's people, as well as his oath of office. And as a Marine veteran, his betrayals to this country are unforgettable, and unforgivable.
Semper Fi.
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JimJones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"He was a master of manipulation, but you saw him with this dark hair, the sunglasses, and the way that he spoke -- he was a great orator -- and it moved you, it inspired you because he was so passionate. And so I was just enthralled," said former Peoples Temple member Leslie Wagner-Wilson.
As time went on, former members said Jones became more extreme.
In 1974, Jones leased more than 3,800 acres of isolated land in the jungle from the Guyanese government. By 1978, nearly 1,000 followers had moved to the Guyana compound. Having been forced to give up their passports and money upon arrival, some former members said they were cut off from the outside world.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
A cult environment like "Qanon" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing." The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
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Romney stayed true to his oath of office. No Senator or Congressman swears an oath to the president. They swear an oath to the Constitution, and to the people of this country. However Trump, being the megalomaniac that he is, believes that everyone should swear an oath to him. And anyone who doesn't, should be called a "never Trumper." As if being a never Trumper comes with some sort of negative connotation. Being called a never Trumper is like having a badge honor bestowed upon you. It simply means that you put your country, and the Constitution before an undeserving and illegitimate con-man. Being a never Trumper is something we should all aspire to be. For there is nothing more righteous, than being a never Trumper. I salute Romney, Schiff, and all of his colleagues, for having the courage and the integrity to remain true to their oaths, and for standing up for our Constitution, the country, and the American people.
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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We already know that Trump bribed the President of Ukraine with taxpayer money. This fact has been corroborated by the whistleblower, by official documents, texts messages, by the under oath testimony of multiple witnesses, by Trump's own senior white house aides and staff, by Mulvaney, and by State Department officials, and by Trump's own words. Trump's own National Security Adviser Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution clearly states, that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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@louk597
Rittenhouse: "Sure, I may only be 17, and although I have no formal, let alone informal training in the use of deadly force, I believe I am more than qualified to take my AR-15, and go into a town embroiled in chaos and disorder, and regulate the streets of Kenosha. What could possibly go wrong?
You can't argue with that logic.
Rittenhouse came to Kenosha that night with ill-will, and malice in his heart. And even though they'll never admit it, his supporters know that it's true. He used the chaos and disorder of that night, as an opportunity to live out his Call of Duty fantasies. And in the process, he took two lives.
There's no way Rittenhouse should have walked away scot-free after taking two lives. At the very LEAST, he's guilty of manslaughter.
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 200 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences.
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.?
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This is the 3rd time that Trump has asked another foreign country to interfere in our elections. And if he gets away with it this time, he will absolutely do it AGAIN!!! Because a sociopath like Trump, with no impulse control, who doesn't know right from wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible, and completely incapable of being corrected.
If and when Traitor Trump is acquitted of his crimes by republicans, he will be on the phone the very next day trying to get another foreign country to interfere in our elections again for a 4th time. Trump is like a child who has never been told no, and has never been told that what he is doing is wrong. He doesn’t know right from wrong because he's never been punished for his wrong doings, instead, he is like a child who is rewarded for his bad behavior. This child will inevitably grow up to be an incorrigible monster, and republicans are continuing to feed this monster..
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Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency, said Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
On December 13th, 2016, at Russian Ambassador Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had—“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Russian Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
Hayden was also convinced the Trump Tower meeting was a classic “soft approach” by Russian intelligence. Hayden argued that the meeting “is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like,” and that it may have been the “green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election.”
Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach.
No. 1 “Would they take the meeting? So, then you get the willingness.. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. Not only did they not report the meeting, they lied about the meeting when asked. So, while Kushner and Don. Jr claimed that the meetings were irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
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. Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and InfectiousDiseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectiousDiseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emergingDiseases such as Ebola and Zika.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectiousDiseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019.
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A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake..
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. And over the last 3 years, he fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire.
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure within White House national security council, and in typical Trump fashion, he got rid of it simply because he didn't understand it, and didn't care enough to even try to understand it.
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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Why should anyone believe Trump when he can't even tell the truth about whether or not he ever met Putin before the election?
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
LOL!!!....😄😂. Trump tells lies that a 5 year old would tell.
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For decades, Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia is connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which Trump has been compromised.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took outt full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him but he was actually in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mafia..
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin.
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Trump won the election by a landslide in that dystopian society called Bizarro World.
Donald's followers were led down a dark rabbit hole, chasing the BIG LIE that was fed to them morning noon and night, lies from the mouth of a well established con-man. What happened to them is similar to what happened to members of the Donner party.
In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly 90 emigrants left Springfield, Illinois, and headed west, led by brothers Jacob and George Donner. The Donner party decided to leave the well established trail and take a new and supposedly shorter route to California. They were instructed to get off of the main trail, and take a so called shorter route by an unscrupulous huckster named Lansford Hastings.
They soon encountered rough terrain and numerous delays, and they eventually became trapped by heavy snowfall high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They were soon reduced to mur.der and cann.ibalism to survive through the winter, only half of the original group reached California the following year.
The moral of this story is simple, stay on the main roads that are well marked, and well lit. And never listen to con-men. They will only lead you down dark roads and rabbit holes.
As Virginia Reed, a survivor of the Donner party, said in a letter of advice to a relative traveling to California a year later:
"…Remember, never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can."
This summary statement contains good life lessons for all of us.
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A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
At the time of his deth, Jim Jones held such power over his followers that he was able to direct more than 900 of them to participate in a ma55mur.der-sui.cide.
Jones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
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In April 2018, a federal judge finalized the $25 million settlement between Trump and students of his now defunct fake Trump University with New York's attorney general claiming “victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve.”
The order from a U.S. District Judge came a year after he first approved the settlement. It marks the end of two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit from NY accusing Trump of "swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars through Trump University," in the words of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," Schneiderman said in a statement.
Trump University was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar scam, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.
November of last year, Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million in damages for illegally using funds intended for charity to boost his 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump had to admit to personally misusing charity money, according to the New York’s attorney general office, despite having previously denied any wrongdoing. The fine adds to several other investigations into allegations that he is using public office for self-enrichment..
The lawsuit last year states that Trump, and his three money grubbing useless children - Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric - broke campaign finance laws in 2016 by using Trump Foundation’s tax-exempt status “as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.
Trump and his crime family had violated their fiduciary duties as officers and directors of the now-shuttered Trump Foundation. As a result of that failure, charitable dollars — consistently and over many years — often benefited Trump rather than the causes he repeatedly claimed he supports.
There was “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation – including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” the suit claimed.
In the agreements, Trump admitted to misusing funds from the foundation, which he dissolved last year, including to pay for a portrait himself that cost $10,000. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.
Trump also directed the foundation to use money for charity to buy a Tim Tebow helmet for himself, and to settle a couple of lawsuits.
Trump also admitted in the agreements to directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket..
The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute $264,632 to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
In addition, Trump used his charity foundation to pay-off a $158,000 lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course, and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events. Trump admitted these transactions were also improper.
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Trump is currently going through the 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety. Currently Trump is stuck between this stage and stage 1 of grief.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, hostility, flight.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
This is the stage that a malignant narcissist like Trump will never reach, because he will NEVER allow himself to truly admit that he lost the election. In fact, Trump may spend the rest of his life waking up every morning at stage 1, and slowly working his way down to stage 4 by the end of the day, and starting the process over again the next morning. 😄
Trump reminds me of Gollum when he lost his precious. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either. 😄
"He stole it from us!!!! Trixie Bidenses!!!!!"😭😭
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June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino..
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican" Trump said.
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke.
"There is no question that Charlottesville wouldn’t have occurred without Trump. It really was because of his campaign and this new potential for a nationalist candidate who was resonating with the public in a very intense way. The alt-right found something in Trump. He changed the paradigm and made this kind of public presence of the alt-right possible.
--Richard Spencer, Alt-right leader and white-supremacist
David Duke, the former Klan leader, who participated in the Charlottesville rally, called it a “turning point” for his own movement, which seeks to “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.”
― Tiffany Madison
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Trump's phone call with a survivor of the Parkland mass shooting back in Feb of 2018, actually angered the student, who said her conversation with the president "didn't make me feel better in the slightest."
Samantha Fuentes, a High School student who was shot in both legs during the attack, recounted her call in an interview:
"He said he heard I was a big fan of his, (she wasn't) and then he said, 'I'm a big fan of yours, too,' " Fuentes told the Times.
"I'm pretty sure he made that up," she continued. "Talking to the president, I've never been so unimpressed by a person in all my life.😂 He didn't make me feel better in the slightest."
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“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama
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@joycebrewster5807
If conservatives truly believed in liberty and freedom, they wouldn't be conservatives, they would be liberals.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years..
Since the 1930s, the modern conservative movement has tried to restrict majority rule at every turn — because they know a mass democratic movement poses an existential threat to their power.
The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
Yet for all their wealth and power, the Right’s ideas are only growing more unpopular with time. When progressive policies appear on the ballot in a direct referendum, conservatives lose, time and again, be it right-to-work laws, minimum wage hikes, or Medicaid expansion, even in Republican strongholds.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, andAttacking civil liberties in the next.
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society..
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of stateTerror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted toTerror when internalized domination has not worked.
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular, conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly meansAttacking someone by falsely claiming that they areAttacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly.
Conservatives like referring to liberals as communists, when in reality it's nothing more than pure projection. Conservatism is practically in lock step with communism.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
Conservatives have even taken a page right out the communist playbook. Controlling the reproductive rights of women is an old and well document communist tradition.
Because if a government can prevent you from having anAbortion, it can also force you to have one. That's what happens when the choice has been taken away from you. It doesn't get more communist than that.
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The National Rifle Association appears to have shot itself in the foot.
A massive new report by The Trace, in conjunction with The New Yorker, alleges that the gun lobbying group has willfully obscured where its money goes, permitted multiple conflicts of interest and engaged in dubious payout arrangements, all while crying out to its members for more donations.
Reporter Mike Spies viewed internal documents and state filings for his story. His investigation found that hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned off to top NRA executives and vendors, and that public relations firm Ackerman McQueen, which has worked with the gun group since the 1970s, is essentially running the ship. Tax filings for 2017 reveal that the NRA paid Ackerman McQueen more than $40 million that year.
The NRA and Ackerman McQueen have become so intertwined that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Oliver North, the former Iran-Contra operative, who now serves as the NRA’s president, is paid roughly $1 million a year through Ackerman, according to two NRA sources. According to interviews and to documents obtained — federal tax forms, charity records, contracts, corporate filings, and internal communications — a small group of NRA executives, contractors, and vendors has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, through gratuitous payments, sweetheart deals, and opaque financial arrangements.
Memos created by a senior NRA employee describe a workplace distinguished by secrecy, self-dealing, and greed, whose leaders have encouraged disastrous business ventures and questionable partnerships, and have marginalized those who object. “Management has subordinated its judgment to the vendors,” the documents allege. “Trust in the top has eroded.”
Marc Owens, former head of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees tax-exempt enterprises, told The Trace that the “litany of red flags is just extraordinary.”
“The materials reflect one of the broadest arrays of likely transgressions that I’ve ever seen,” Owens said. “There is a tremendous range of what appears to be the misuse of assets for the benefit of certain vendors and people in control. Those facts, if confirmed, could lead to the revocation of the NRA’s tax-exempt status.” And without its tax-exempt status, the Trace report suggested, the NRA would “likely not survive.”
This latest hit can be added to a long list of problems for the NRA. In 2017, the group reported a loss of $55 million in income as membership plummeted. More recently, a HuffPost investigation found that an NRA official was in contact with a prominent Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist in an attempt to cast doubt on the facts of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that left 17 people dead. The NRA declined to say whether it fired that official.
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So Ron Johnson is openly defending the insurrection. Why doesn't that surprise me? In 2018, Ron Johnson was one of the Republican lawmakers who flew to Moscow to celebrate the 4th of July there. 😲 I know right, that's what I said.
Last year, four lawmakers who make up the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight, the group of congressional and intelligence committee leaders who are privy to top-secret intelligence, demanded a briefing for all members of Congress focused on foreign interference in the 2020 election, based on their assertions that lawmakers are being targeted by those meddling efforts. They also urged Trump to publicly reveal additional information about the nature of the foreign-influence campaign. Intelligence officials told House lawmakers that the Russians were seeking to boost Trump in the 2020 campaign.
The public version of the letter was vague about those threats, but the classified addendum to the letter specifically names Sen Ron Johnson’s investigation as a vehicle for “laundering” Russian propaganda for the foreign influence campaign aimed at denigrating Biden.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement." It's the same tired excuse Sen Rand Paul routinely provides to justify his own shadowy meetings with our enemies.
The group met with a number of Russian agents, and key Russians officials, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigating Russian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit to Moscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the “gloating” Russians.
Ron Johnson has been the most outspoken when defending Trump. So much so that during an interview on Meet the Press in October 2019, he announced that he doesn’t trust the FBI or the CIA—a clear admission that he does however trust the GRU and his Russian comrades. Today, the eight republicans that came back from Russia, show all the signs of a Russian GRU sleeper cell. It would explain why they're all regurgitating Russian GRU propaganda to the American people..
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"Elites are the authoritarian’s most important promoters and collaborators. Afraid of losing their class, gender, or race privileges, influential individuals bring the insurgent into the political system, thinking that he can be controlled as he solves their problems. Once the ruler is in power, elites strike an “authoritarian bargain” that promises them power and security in return for loyalty to the ruler and toleration of his suspension of rights. Some are true believers, and others fear the consequences of subtracting their support, but those who sign on tend to stick with the leader through
GrossMismanagement, impeachment, or international humiliation."
--Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mu55olini to the Present.
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.”
― DaShanne Stokes
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. We will be back to where we were before the Declaration of Independence. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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In June 2019, Trump said that he would not apologize for his harsh comments in 1989 about the Central Park Five, the five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted in NY.
More than a decade after the exoneration of the five teens, Trump indicated in an interview just last year, that he still doesn’t accept their innocence.
The teenagers were exonerated by DNA evidence and a confession from the true perpetrator in 2002, 13 years after they were vilified by prosecutors and in the press after being charged and convicted.
On May 1, 1989, as the case was headed to trial, Trump spent $85,000 placing a full-page ad in four newspapers, calling for the young men accused of the crime to be executed.
“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” the ad proclaimed in enormous capital letters. Below, in smaller text, Trump ranted, “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them."
The Central Park Five have since been found innocent, only after serving 7 to 13 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. But just last year, Trump stated that he still doesn’t accept their innocence. Nor does he think he owes them an apology for publicly calling for their executions.
So now we're supposed to believe Trump, one of the most immoral and corrupt human beings in modern history, actually cares about justice, and law & order? Trump sent well wishes to a 5ex trafficker like Ghislaine Maxwell, but he still has nothing but contempt for the 5 individuals that were wrongly convicted and imprisoned for years. Go figure.
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Thanks to Traitor Trump, the US was forced to extract a top-secret source from Russia after Trump revealed classified information to two Russian officials in 2017. The US was concerned that Trump and his administration routinely mishandled classified intelligence and that their actions could expose the covert source as a spy within the Russian government.
Trump stunned the national-security apparatus and intelligence community when it surfaced that in an Oval Office meeting in May 2017 he shared the information with Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, and Sergey Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador to the US.
Traitor Trump's egregious disregard of strict intelligence-sharing rules to protect highly placed sources "prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk" that the source in Russia would be exposed.
At the Oval Office meeting, which took place one day after Trump fired FBI Director Comey, Trump boasted to the Russians that firing "nut job" Comey had taken "great pressure" off him.
That sounds like the reaction of a traitor breathing a sigh of relief.
Comey had been spearheading the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
Trump then went on to share with Lavrov and Kislyak intelligence connected to the Islamic State in Syria. The information came from Israel, which had not given the US permission to share it with the Russians because it could have compromised an Israeli source in the region.
This is not the first time national-security officials have expressed concerns that Trump's recklessness and incompetence could reveal sensitive information about US intelligence-gathering processes and human sources working abroad.
Late last month, Trump's tweet about US military information he received during a classified intelligence briefing earlier that day immediately set off alarm bells because it included a satellite photo of an Iranian launchpad that was of a much higher resolution and better quality than the commercial satellite images of the site that were publicly available.
It also contained markers indicating that it was taken by USA-224,one of the US's most secretive spy satellites. Intelligence officials said Trump's tweet would be a gold mine for hostile foreign powers.
Trump is clearly traitor, and a national security threat.
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Trump is a human pestilence, and he will initiate the ruination of everyone and everything he comes into contact with. It's like ebola and the coronavirus had baby, and named it Trump.
Just look at his failed marriages, his failed casinos and businesses, his failed relationships with his parents and siblings, his failed kids, and look at what has happened to the lives, reputations and careers of his current and former associates, like Cohen's, Stone, Flynn, Gates, Manafort, Rudy, Bolton, Mulvaney, Scaramucci, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Kirstjen Nielsen, and Barr.
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July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Clinton’s emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
5 hours later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
7/16/2018
Trump in Helsinki: "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia." What???😲😲
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump today: "I don't know anything about Wikileaks, that's not my deal in life."😲
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with these packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedo started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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The multiple times Trump praised China and his idol President Xi, the leader of the Communist party, on his handling of the coronavirus:
Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Feb. 10, Fox Business interview:
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Feb. 10, campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Feb. 13, Fox News interview:
“I think they've handled it professionally and I think they're extremely capable and I think President Xi is extremely capable and I hope that it's going to be resolved."
Feb. 18, remarks before Air Force One departure:
“I think President Xi is working very hard. As you know, I spoke with him recently. He’s working really hard. It’s a tough problem. I think he’s going to do — look, I’ve seen them build hospitals in a short period of time. I really believe he wants to get that done, and he wants to get it done fast. Yes, I think he’s doing it very professionally.”
Feb. 23, remarks before Marine One departure:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Feb. 27, Coronavirus Task Force press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
Feb. 29, Coronavirus Task Force press conference:
“China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down. … I think our relationship with China is very good."
😅😂
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Terrorism is defined as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
It's being reported that Trump wants to start his own political party to challenge anyone who refused to destroy our Constitution and democracy, and insert him as an American dictator. If he does create his own party, it should immediately be labeled as a terrorist organization. Because that's exactly what it will be.
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The DOJ has charged Alexander Smirnov with making false statements and obstruction as it relates to Smirnov's conversations with law enforcement officials about President Biden and his son Hunter. Significantly, Smirnov was responsible for many of the statements House Republicans have relied upon when pushing the impeachment inquiry against President Biden. Specifically, Smirnov lied about the extent of Hunter's relationship with Burisma, a Ukrainian company.
Smirnov falsely claimed that executives associated with Burisma hired Hunter to protect the company, using then-Vice President Biden, and that Hunter had been paid millions of dollars to peddle influence through his father. The indictment alleges that these statements made were complete fabrications. 😂
Specifically, the indictment alleges that Smirnov had contact with Burisma investigators in 2017, after the point President Biden would have had influence to alter public policy. Smirnov made multiple false claims to investigators again in September 2023, promoting false narratives about the President and his son. In total, this indictment, if proven true, debunks many of the allegations pushed by House Republicans against the President and his son. If convicted, Smirnov faces up to 25 years in federal prison. 🤣😅
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The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The unredacted emails were secured through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act launched by the Center for Public Integrity. The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act..
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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Trump has more in common with Fidel Castro and past and current communist dictators, than he does with former US Presidents.
In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said it was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Trump is currently working on giving it a shot as we speak.
● Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
● Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
● Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to his apologist Mark Meadows.
● Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
● Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-nazi5 while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
● Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
● Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
● Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
● Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
● Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate (the free press) as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
● Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
● Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
● Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
● Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
● Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
● Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? "It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is brazen and deviant despotism.
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Sen Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and other republicans on Capitol Hill,
have been unmasked as Russian operatives for disseminating Russian conspiracy theories, and for aiding and abetting Putin's efforts to interfere in the 2020 election..
Last month, four lawmakers who make up the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight, the group of congressional and intelligence committee leaders who are privy to top-secret intelligence, demanded a briefing for all members of Congress focused on foreign interference in the 2020 election, based on their assertions that lawmakers are being targeted by those meddling efforts. They also have urged Trump to publicly reveal additional information about the nature of the foreign-influence campaign. Intelligence officials told House lawmakers last week that the Russians are seeking to boost Trump in the 2020 campaign.
The public version of the letter was vague about those threats, but the classified addendum to the letter specifically names Sen Ron Johnson’s investigation as a vehicle for “laundering” Russian propaganda for the foreign influence campaign aimed at denigrating Biden.
The addendum states that the Ukrainian lawmaker linked to the Kremlin, Andrii Derkach, sent information packets about Biden to Johnson, Grassley and other Trump stooges who have pushed similar Russian conspiracy theories, as part of Putin's disinformation campaign on America.
NCSC Director William Evanina, along with other senior national security officials, briefed lawmakers in multiple classified sessions in late July and August. His statement explicitly accused the Ukrainian politician, Derkach, of undermining Biden through weaponized leaks. Derkach is known to have met late last year with Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
The packets were sent by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who met with Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani in Ukraine last December. Andrii Derkach, who was formerly aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, is also an alumnus of Moscow’s FSB academy, formerly known as the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. Andrii Derkach’s father Leonid was a KGB operative who later became the head of Ukrainian intelligence, and who was fired in 2004 shortly before Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
The packets were sent late last year to Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declined to answer a colleague's question about whether he had received derogatory information about Joe Biden from Andrii Derkach.
During that closed-door meeting in late July — a transcript of which was made publicly available — Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of Russian propaganda were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham. Nunes refused to answer the question.
Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received" by Nunes. 😲
That evidence, according to committee officials, is in the form of a DHL shipping receipt that was sent to the Intelligence Committee’s majority office shortly after the package was sent to Nunes..
"If any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation-state, or anybody acting on behalf of a nation-state, about influencing or interfering with an election then that's something the FBI would want to know about,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on June 12, 2019 — a day before Trump rebuked him and said he would probably accept such help.
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Trump's meeting with Putin in Helsinki will forever be remembered as "The Great Betrayal."
History has proven that Trump won't hesitate to betray anyone or anything. In the past, Trump has betrayed his wives, his kids, his father, his siblings, his business partners, his employees, contractors, banks, his lawyers, his accomplices, his White House advisers and staff, the country, his oath of office, and last but not least, he betrayed everyone who marched on the Capitol because of the lies he told them.
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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Let's be clear, Flynn didn't lie to Pence or Trump about his contacts with the Russians, it was Trump and Pence who lied to the American people, because they knew all along about his contacts with the Russians. He was literally acting on their behalf.
When Trump fired Michael Flynn, in Feb 2017, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official and then lied to Pence and others about the interactions. But emails among top transition officials, show that Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents showed that Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
After learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia.
On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
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Let's be honest, deep down, we all know he said it. They'll never admit it to themselves, but even his supporters know he said it.
Obama visited our Troops overseas 7 times. That's not even counting the multiple times he visited our troops at military bases here in America during the holidays. Obama visited our troops in Iraq just 3 months after taking office. Traitor Trump waited TWO WHOLE YEARS before he visited our troops for the first time in Iraq. And that was only after he was pushed to do so by advisers.
I have no doubt that Trump complained about having to make that trip to visit our troops the same way he complained about attending the memorial ceremony for our fallen in France.
Trump: "Why do I have to fly all the way to Iraq just to visit troops. They're a bunch of losers anyway."
And then when he finally made the trip, he turned that visit into a campaign rally for himself and used our troops as political props. Trump continues to show his contempt for our men and women in uniform with his silence concerning the Russian bounties placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. To this day, he has not uttered one word about it. NOT.....ONE.
I knew back in 2016 before the election that Trump had no respect for our military the moment he said he knew more about fighting wars than our Generals do. He basically claimed to know more about fighting wars than Generals like Grant, Patton, Washington, MacArthur, Eisenhower, as well as our current living Generals like Mattis. This preposterous claim came from a draft dodger who has NEVER served one day in the military.
It goes without saying, that ONLY a vindictive draft dodging traitor, who has nothing but contempt for the men and women in our military, would utter something as outrageous and insulting as that. That was all I needed to hear.
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Yes, Traitor Trump would be open to colluding with the Russians again. This is exactly how a criminal behaves when he feels like he's already gotten away with a crime. Trump feels emboldened now.
July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections..
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Clinton’s emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
5 hours later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
7/16/2018
Trump in Helsinki: "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia." What???😲😲
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
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Saudis definitely knew how to turn our own planes into bombs, and fly them into buildings Kamikaze style. Ignorance is strength, is the motto of Trumpism. Trump has been in office 2 years, and he has yet to visit our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or anywhere for that matter. But he has visited Kim Jung Un in Singapore, where he saluted a NK general. He also visited his muse Putin, in Helsinki, and his 1st trip outside the US, was to Saudi Arabia, where he did the sword dance. Trump and his crime family's pockets are filled with Saudi money, and Russian money as well.
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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
--Charles Darwin
"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about."
--Wayne Dyer
Like most Americans, Public health and national security experts shook their heads in disbelief when Trump said the coronavirus “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.”
Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump administration’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Obama to Trump in 2017.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed.
She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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The Russian who created Putin's troll farm, and has boasted online that he helped get Trump elected, is named Konstantin Rykov. His claims of involvement with the Trump team can't be dismissed for 2 reasons: first, he is very close to Putin, and had a long history of involvement with top levels of the Russian government; and, second, his description of how Trump’s campaign put together an effective internet strategy for information warfare is very close to the evidence revealed in the Mueller Report.
Rewind back to November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election. At 11:29pm, Trump sent out the following defiant tweet: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.
Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Rykov explained what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:.
Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him (Trump) a reply, “I’m ready. What should I do?”
Trump replied with a picture. In the picture, Trump was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully giving the thumbs-up sign. Rykov would later explained how things went from there.
Konstantin Rykov is the founder of a number of lurid websites where he made a fortune posting pictures of scantily-clad women, telling dirty jokes and posting clickbait stories designed to titillate easily impressionable readers. In other words, a trashy online tabloid. Rykov is also a member of United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party, a former member of the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and a close confidante of Putin.
Here’s how Rykov described his involvement in a Facebook post he made on November 12, 2016, just after the election:
"For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the United States, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order.Our idea was insane, but realizable. In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man.Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.” British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others. At the very beginning of the brave and romantic [story] was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it."
Rykov’s comments were made only four days after the election, months before anyone was talking about Russian collusion in the 2016 election, months before the world knew about the company Cambridge Analytica, and months before Rykov would have known it wasn’t wise to discuss his alleged involvement in the campaign. his comments were also made well before details of Russian meddling in the presidential election were reported in the mainstream media. If Rykov wasn’t involved, how would he know as much as he confessed???
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The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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Trump's entire campaign was practically being controlled by the Russians. And Trump, Jared, Flynn, Manafort, Don Jr, and Roger Stone were all in on it..
Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency, said Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
On December 13th, 2016, at Russian Ambassador Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had to Trump's people —“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Russian Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
Hayden was also convinced Don Jr's Trump Tower meeting, and Kushner’s secret meetings with the Russian Ambassador was a classic “soft approach” by Russian intelligence. Hayden argued that the meeting “is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like,” and that it may have been the “green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election.”
Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach.
No. 1 “Would they take the meeting? So, then you get the willingness.. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. Not only did they not report the meeting, they lied about the meeting when asked. Kushner even lied about the meetings on his security clearance application. So, while Kushner and Don. Jr claimed that the meetings were irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
When the full extent of Trump's treachery, crimes, and betrayal of this country are revealed, it will be far worse than most people ever imagined.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free...
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The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
Trump took 400 million in taxpayer dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress, and used it to bribe a foreign country into taking specific actions that would only benefit him personally.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime adviser and partner in crime was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The verdict makes Stone only the latest among a growing list of people once in Trump's inner circle of goons who have been convicted on federal charges. Here is a list of others in Trump’s inner swamp circle convicted of federal crimes.
Michael Cohen
Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Cohen pleaded guilty to bank fraud, tax fraud, and campaign violations involving hush-money payouts (for Trump) to two women – the adult film star Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison.
Paul Manafort
The lobbyist who worked as Trump’s campaign chairman was convicted in August 2018 of bank fraud, tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. The next month, Manafort admitted to conspiracy, such as money laundering and unregistered lobbying, as well as a second conspiracy count involving witness tampering. Manafort, who will spend about seven and a half years in prison for the federal cases, also faces state criminal charges in NY for fraud and conspiracy.
While working as Trump's campaign chairman, Manafort shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies, according to special counsel Mueller.
Michael Flynn
Trump’s former national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over his communication with Russia amid the presidential transition in 2016. Flynn lied about his contact with Russia’s ambassador, such as urging Russia not to react to sanctions placed by Barack Obama.
Rick Gates
Manafort’s business partner pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiring to defraud the US and lying to the FBI. He also admitted to helping Manafort manipulate financial documents, conceal foreign income, cheat tax authorities and mislead banks for credit. Gates, who was also a Trump campaign official, cut a deal with Mueller – serving as a star witness against Manafort and Stone.
George Papadopoulos
In 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the schedules of meetings with purported Russian intermediaries. Papadopoulos in March 2016 met with a Maltese professor in London, who claimed that the Russians had incriminating information on Trump’s then rival, Clinton – “thousands of emails”. Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison.
Alex van der Zwaan
A Dutch lawyer who worked with Manafort, Van der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Gates and a person potentially linked to Russian intelligence. Van der Zwaan worked on a Manafort-commissioned report to defend ex-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych from international scrutiny. He was incarcerated for 12 days.
Richard Pinedo
The online fraudster pleaded guilty after it was revealed that his business setting up US bank accounts, and then illegally peddling them over the internet, had enabled a Russian operation that utilized social media to meddle with the election. His cooperation enabled Mueller’s pursuit of Russian troll farms.
Konstantin Kilimnik
The Russian political operative and Manafort associate is charged with obstructing justice. He was swept up in Manafort’s plan to leverage his relationship with Trump to settle multimillion-dollar debts to an oligarch. Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the 2016 election. In the Mueller report, Kilimnik is described as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU” by Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign.
Sam Patten
Lobbyist Patten had ties to Kilimnik. He admitted to diverting $50,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch to Trump’s presidential inauguration committee. He pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller.
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No matter how many temper tantrums Man-baby throws, Mueller is not amused, and he's not going away. Manafort will never see the light of day, but he won't be alone. Trump is a highly infectious disease , and anyone who has gotten close to him is going down. And Trump being the sociopath that he is, will forget that he ever knew them. Some of the traits of a sociopath are a lack of remorse, shame or guilt. Trump does not see others around him as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims and accomplices, who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, Stone, Gates, Sessions, etc)
A sociopath like Trump is never concerned about wrecking other people's lives, just as long as he gets what he wants . He's oblivious or indifferent to the devastation and chaos he causes. And he will never accept blame. He will instead blame others, even for acts he obviously committed. My advice to anyone close to Trump is simple, RUN!!!!!!!!!
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July 23, 2019, Trump said this: "I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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This impeachment is not about removing Trump from office, the American people have already done that. This is all about holding him accountable for the events of January 6, and his attempt to take down our Constitution, and our democracy.
Domestic terrorism is defined as, violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
On January 6, the world watched in horror and disgust as Trump's horde of insurrectionists stormed our nation's Capitol.
They said that like 1776, they were leading a revolution. But here's the problem with that, in 1776, this nation fought a revolution to remove a King, Trump's horde led an insurrection in order to insert a King.
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Two days after the insurrection on Capitol Hill, Trump sent what turned out to be his last ever tweet before he was hit with a permanent ban for inciting the insurrection. “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20,” he wrote on Jan. 8. But, according to a new book, that wasn’t entirely Trump’s own decision. Jonathan Karl writes in Betrayal, that Trump only announced that he wouldn’t attend the inauguration after he caught wind of Mitch McConnell’s plan to disinvite him from the event.
“McConnell felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” Karl reported. “McConnell wanted to get a letter together from the top four congressional leaders informing Trump that he had been disinvited.” However, before the letter could be written, Kevin McCarthy reportedly blabbed about the plan to Trump, who then sent his final tweet to make it appear as if he had made the call. 🤣
Ali Alexander, formerly, known as Ali Akbar, the Stop the Steal organizer who claimed three sitting Republican congressmen helped plan the rally that came before the insurrection, has been subpoenaed by the January 6th Select Committee along with fellow rally organizer Nathan Martin. The committee is seeking records from Stop the Steal LLC in addition to Alexander and Martin.
Alexander bragged on live streams last December that he and Trump-supporting Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) were working on a plot to exert “maximum pressure on Congress” during the vote to certify Biden’s electoral victory. The day before the attack, Alexander led a group in a “victoryORdeath” chant at a rally, the committee said. During the events at the Capitol, Alexander filmed a video of himself looking over the crowd from afar and saying, “I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this.”
Following the events of January 6th, Alexander went into hiding and frantically tried to erase his affiliation with numerous Stop the Steal web domains he owned.
Alexander and his cohort, Brandan Straka were also both named in a lawsuit brought by the Capitol Police harmed by the January 6 insurrection. According to Damon Hewitt, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, “As this lawsuit makes clear, the January 6 insurrection was not just an attack on individuals, but an attack on democracy itself. It was a blatant attempt to stifle the votes and voices of millions of Americans."
In the suit, Alexander, along with other defendants, are accused of “violating two provisions of the federal KKKAct, which forbids conspiracies to use force, intimidation, and threats to prevent federal officers from doing their jobs or to injure them in the course of their work.”
Alexander has made some changes in his life in order to hide his past. Previously, he went by Ali Akbar. And a search of that named shows he was found guilty on several charges to prior changing his name.
Court documents indicate he found trouble with the law back in 2007 when he pled guilty to a felony property theft charge out of Fort Worth, Texas. He was sentenced to 12 months probation, according to documents. Again, in 2008, Alexander pled guilty to a credit card abuse felony charge out of Texas.
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If voting by mail is good enough for Trump, it should be good enough for everyone.
Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Venezuela, Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, and Turkey.
Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box. The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. The constitution is suspended or scrapped. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance.
Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended, by political parties and organized citizens but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not..
This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy – packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the the private sector (or bullying them into silence) and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy – gradually, subtly, and even legally – to ki// it.
Thanos: "I used the stones, to destroy the stones."
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Trump and his grifter family have been on a 3 year long crime spree since Trump took office.
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
Trump has grossly violated the Emolument Clause. He has clearly not divested from his businesses, and he has been caught red-handed using the Presidency to boost his own personal financial gains.
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, and Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said he thought the Chinese president’s power grab was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
On January 6, Trump tried to do exactly that. He failed.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
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Trump is terrified that Roger Stone won't be able to do a long stretch in prison, and will decide to cut a deal instead, and reveal all of Trump's crimes. Stone could corroborate Rick Gates' testimony that Trump did in fact collude with WikiLeaks..
Steve Bannon’s contacts with Stone during the 2016 campaign was one of the featured parts of Stone’s trial.
"I think we did, yes,” said Bannon, when asked during Stone's trial whether the Trump campaign viewed Stone as its “access point” to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Stone’s denials of having any contact with WikiLeaks was undercut by testimony from people like Bannon and a trail of emails and phone records. One message from Aug. 16, 2016, shows Stone telling Bannon on the day he took over as campaign CEO about the prospect that WikiLeaks would drop more damaging documents for the Clinton campaign.
“I have an idea … to save Trump’s @55,” Stone wrote.
Bannon testified that he heard repeatedly from Stone — before he even took over as Trump campaign chief — about his access to WikiLeaks. And Stone kept on talking about the potential of more detrimental materials through the late summer and early fall, at a time when Clinton had the lead in the polls.
Bannon’s contacts with Stone included an Oct. 4, 2016, exchange after a much-hyped Assange news conference, which fueled the hashtag "October?surprise" but it turned out to be a bust.
“It was a big dud, yes,” Bannon said.
But a few days later, WikiLeaks dumped emails stolen from the Clinton campaign just minutes after The Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape. Bannon described that chain of events as the “Billy Bush weekend” — a reference to Trump bragging about grabbing women by the p.
Ex-Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified under oath in Roger Stone's trial that he was in the presidential limousine with Trump, and he'd heard Stone tell Trump about the WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails before the dump happened — a direct contradiction of what Trump told Mueller in his written testimony.
In his under oath testimony, Gates described how he'd seen Trump get a phone call from Stone in summer 2016, and after Trump hung up, told Gates "more information would be coming" regarding WikiLeaks..
Going back as far as April 2016, Gates said, Stone told him that information would be released by WikiLeaks that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. He reiterated this the following month. All this was before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated publicly on June 12, 2016, that he had pending releases related to Hillary Clinton.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails from the DNC — emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
After that, Gates testified, the top levels of the Trump campaign were very interested in what Stone knew about WikiLeaks. Gates said Manafort asked him to follow up with Stone to try to learn more about WikiLeaks’s plans. And Gates said that Manafort indicated he would update others on the campaign, “including the candidate” — Donald Trump.
Gates also testified that he witnessed a phone call between Trump and Stone in late July, shortly after the DNC email releases began, while Gates was in a car with Trump driving to LaGuardia Airport. Gates said that after the call ended, Trump told him that “more information would be coming.”
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump on April 11, 2019, after Julian Assange is arrested:
"I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing, and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I know nothing really about him. That's not my deal in life." 😲
Has the world ever seen a bigger liar than Trump?
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sino rich
Meanwhile, Trump and his grifter family have been on a 3 year long crime spree since Trump took office.
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
Trump has grossly violated the Emolument Clause. He has clearly not divested from his businesses, and he has been caught red-handed using the Presidency to boost his own personal financial gains.
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, and Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake..
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. And over the last 3 years, he fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire. Not only will they avoid telling him the truth, they will refrain from correcting him whenever he makes false and dangerous declarations about the coronavirus.
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure within White House national security council, and in typical Trump fashion, he got rid of it simply because he didn't understand it, and didn't care enough to even try to understand it.
They will instead focus on telling him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear are lies and false narratives that match the alternative facts in his head. Whenever Trump says "the square peg goes into the round hole" he wants them to agree with him. And if you tell him that he's wrong, and that the square peg doesn't go into the round hole, he will accuse you of being a never Trumper, and of plotting against him
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Trump doesn't like Dr. Fauci because he's a scientists that deals in facts, and Trump is a con-man who deals in lies and disinformation. There is a natural conflict of interest there. Trump will attack anyone that even thinks about telling the American people the truth. In order for Trump to survive, he has to keep the American people lost in a swamp of darkness, lies, and deceit.
Trump, Fox, certain republicans, and the Russians, have all become part of a long concerted propaganda and disinformation campaign on America. The question every American should be asking is what is the real cost of their lies and disinformation? It's not just that we will mistake their lies for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough of these lies and disinformation, some Americans may no longer recognize the truth at all anymore. Then where will we be? This is what nonstop gaslighting does to people, and to a nation.....which is exactly what Trump wants.
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Trump is a classic demagogue in every sense of the word. His demagoguery is associated with dictators, and it appeals to the worst nature of people. Demagoguery isn't based on reason, issues, and doing the right thing; it's based on stirring up fear and hatred to control people.
Scapegoating is one of the most fundamental demagogic techniques. Blaming all of his troubles, bad behavior, or bad optics on other groups, usually the media, or people of different ethnicity, this is done by projection. It relies on condemning others for what you're doing. Projection is absolutely necessary for Trump's scapegoating to be effective.
Since information from the press can undermine a demagogue's spell over his followers, modern demagogues like Trump will often attack and demonized the free press. They will usually claim that the media can't be trusted. They have even called out for violence against newspapers who opposed them, claiming that the press was secretly in the service of moneyed interests, or a deep state conspiracy against them , or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get him. No dictator can survive in a country that has a free press. This is dictatorship 101.
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Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, Lindsey Graham at $800,000, John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
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The crime is called conspiracy, which is a felony. And just because Trump wasn't indicted, doesn't mean he's not guilty. Remember, the DoJ has stated that a sitting President cannot be indicted. That's why Mueller's report doesn't contain any indictments against Trump, but that doesn't mean that Trump isn't guilty. What it means is that, Trump could be guilty of many things, but simply because he's a sitting President, he is protected against indictments.
June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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Trump is far worse than Nixon was ever capable of being. Nixon was corrupt for sure, but even still, there were limits to how far he would go. Trump on the other hand, is a complete sociopath, without limits or boundaries. Trump has proven that he will cross any line, and violate any and all ethical standards..
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Just days before Trump was sworn in, Dean stated that he believed Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
John Dean's words could not have been more prophetic.
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason..
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much theylove and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. That was pretty low even for Trump.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
Semper Fi..
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“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it."
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham, May 3, 2016
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
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There is more than enough evidence to charge Trump with criminal negligent homicide of at least 200 thousand Americans.
In proving negligent homicide, the prosecution only needs to establish that the defendants knew the risks associated with their actions.
1. The defendant was aware of the risks associated with the actions that led to the other person’s death. ✔
2. The defendant acted, or failed to act appropriately in a dangerous situation, and that action or inaction caused the victim’s death. ✔
3. There is a direct link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s death. ✔
Trump has admitted to downplaying the virus from the very beginning. He has been telling lies to the American since January, and with lethal consequences.
Trump told Woodward he's been minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak.
Trump: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down," Trump said.
Trump during February 7 phone call with Bob Woodward:
"It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus. This is 5% vs 1%. You know so, this is deadly stuff."
Three weeks after that call, Trump told this lie to the public during a February 26 White House press conference:
Trump: "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
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Trump has been violating the Constitution since noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “PROFIT, GAIN, or ADVANTAGE. This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials PROFITEERING from federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decision making to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or PROFITING from the federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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Every American should be concerned over Moscow Mitch admitting that he will not honor the oath that every Senator will have to take as impartial participants in the Senate trial. Moscow Mitch openly declared that he will NOT be impartial. He's violating his oath even before he takes it.
It will not be a legitimate trial without witnesses and evidence. Republicans refusal to allow witnesses and evidence is what's known as a COVER-UP.
Trump and republicans in the Senate wouldn't have a problem with Bolton, Rudy, Mulvaney, or John Eisenberg testifying if Trump was actually innocent. The problem is he's not innocent. He's guilty as charged, and they know it.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
--Abraham Lincoln
Make no mistake, this is far from over. The congressional oversight committee will begin hearings, and taking the testimony of those who were in the loop. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.. The truth will all come to the light eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of the mess that I've caused. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president and a real leader. They're acting as if I actually care. But that's not who I am. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House.
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who ignored all the signs of my sociopathy. Blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They were both fully aware of exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. Now Lindsey is practically my golf caddie. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man, grifter and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it..
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
On Nov 3rd, make a decision. Who's side are you on?
Biden/Harris 2020💙
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Lev Parnas sounds just like every former cult member after they finally broke away from cults like Jonestown, the Branch Davidian, and Scientology.
Trumpism is a dystopian cult rooted in lies, absurdities, wild conspiracy theories, self-deception, hypocrisy, pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience to the "Chosen One."
Jim Jones convinced his cultists that they should first give their kids cyanide laced punch, and then they should drink the same poisoned punch themselves, and they did exactly as they were told. I am 100% certain that Trump could convince his cultists to do the exact same thing.
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Today, Trump and Republicans are telling the American people that we can no longer keep it.
America's democracy and Constitutional republic, has never been in more peril than it is right now. Trump and republicans, are attempting to reverse our victory in our War of Independence, that began 1775 and ended in 1783. They are attempting to throw it all away, as if it never happened, and install a new King, a new monarch, a new tyrant, to rule over the American people. We are witnessing history folks. This is America's darkest hour.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man"
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
Make no mistake, this is far from over. Between, Parnas and Bolton, the truth about Trump's crimes will inevitably be revealed. Every week will bring a new revelation of the criminal activities of this illegitimate president, along with the names of all the Republicans who were complicit in aiding and abetting his criminal activity.
Lev Parnas" lawyer sent a letter to Moscow Mitch stating that he is ready to give testimony, as well as provide documents, that will prove that GOP Super PAC America One, Rudy, Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mulvaney, Bill Barr, Nunes, Pence, and Desperate Housewife of Capitol Hill 👉Lindsey Graham, were all part of Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine...
Is it any wonder why Republicans were so vehemently against introducing witnesses and evidence into the Senate trial. They were covering up their own crimes. But the truth will all be revealed eventually. It's only a matter of time.
"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
--Abraham Lincoln
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
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At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. a visibly angry and hostile woman took to the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of Trumpists.
It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, our democracy, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports dictatorships, and despotism.
On January 6, the world watched in horror as Trump's insurrectionists stormed our nation's Capitol. They said that they were starting a new "revolution." But here's the problem with that, in 1776, this nation fought a revolution in order to remove a monarch, and establish a democratic republic.
Trump's horde led an insurrection in order to destroy our democratic republic, and INSTALL a monarch.
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July 23, 2019, Trump said this: "I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality comes to us from North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the despotic little dictator that Trump admires so much, and who he proudly declared his love for.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right..
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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Trump is simply too petty, too cruel, too corrupt, too selfish, too sociopathic, too dumb, too craven, too lazy, too immoral, too vindictive, too evil, too cowardly, too flawed, too depraved, too malevolent, to ever do the right thing.
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Trump’s relentless effort to overturn the result of the election that he lost has become the most serious stress test of American democracy in generations, one led not by outside revolutionaries intent on bringing down the system but by the very leader charged with defending it.
In the 220 years since a defeated John Adams turned over the White House to his rival, firmly establishing the peaceful transfer of authority as a bedrock principle, no sitting president who lost an election has tried to hang onto power by rejecting the Electoral College and subverting the will of the voters — until now. It is a scenario at once utterly unthinkable and yet feared since the beginning of Trump’s tenure.
Trump has gone well beyond simply venting his grievances or creating a face-saving narrative to explain away a loss, as advisers privately suggested he was doing in the days after the Nov. 3 vote. Instead, he has stretched or crossed the boundaries of tradition, propriety and perhaps the law to find any way he can to cling to office beyond his term that expires in two weeks.
Trump’s efforts ring familiar to many who have studied authoritarian regimes in countries around the world, like those run by Putin in Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary.
“Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, and his pressure tactics to that end with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, are an example of how authoritarianism works in the 21st century,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.” “Today’s leaders come in through elections and then manipulate elections to stay in office — until they get enough power to force the hand of legislative bodies to keep them there indefinitely, as Putin and Orban have done.”
Trump has expressed admiration for strongmen like Putin, Orban, Xi Jinping of China, and Erdogan of Turkey, evincing envy of their ability to act decisively without the checks of a democratic government. He asserted at various points that the Constitution “allows me to do whatever I want” with the special counsel investigating him and that his “authority is total” to order states to follow his wishes.
When Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published their best-selling book, “How Democracies Die,” in 2018, warning that even the United States could slide into autocracy, they faced blowback from some who thought they were overstating the case. “We were criticized by some as alarmist,” Ziblatt, a government professor at Harvard University, said on Monday. “It turns out we weren’t alarmist enough.”
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100 years from now, kids in school will still be learning about the events that took place on January 6, 2021, the day our nation's Capitol came under attack from insurrectionists, the same way our kids are still taught today about the events that took place on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor. Both of those dates are dates that will live in infamy.
The attack on Pearl Harbor, was instigated and motivated by The Emperor of Japan, who at the time, was viewed as a living God by his people. The attack on our democracy, and our nation's Capitol, was instigated by a SITTING US President, who was viewed as a living God (The Chosen One) by his followers.
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Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and Republicans are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are basically giving the Constitution, and the American people the middle finger. It is my sincere hope, that we the Amercan, return that middle finger to them on election day 2020. 💙
Will we keep are constitutional republic, or will we lose it, and see it replaced with a monarchy? Will we still have a democracy, or will we be ruled by a tyrant without boundaries? These are the questions that will be on the ballot box in 2020. This election will be the most important election in our nation's history.
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The Trump administration said that it would roll back several major regulations meant to safeguard offshore drilling rigs, ending a bevy of safety measures put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Interior Department announced the newly revised Well Control Rule as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to expand offshore drilling and U.S. “energy dominance.” Under the rules, oil companies will be required to safety test devices meant to stop leaks for only 5 minutes every 21 days, far less frequently than in the past. The plan will also end mandatory reporting of some of those tests to the Interior Department. The changes are expected to save the oil industry more than $824 million over the next 10 years.
“Today’s final rule puts safety first, both public and environmental safety, in a common sense way,” newly confirmed Interior Secretary David Bernhard said in a statement. Bernhard is also a former oil lobbyist. IMAGINE THAT!!😲
The changes prompted an immediate outcry from environmental groups who worry they would open the door to yet another disaster like Deepwater Horizon.
“The well control rule was one of the most important actions we took, as a nation, in response to the BP-style disaster at sea,” Bob Deans, the director of strategic engagement at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “If the Trump administration’s final rule weakens these protections, as its proposed changes did, it will put our workers, waters and wildlife at needless risk. That’s irresponsible, reckless and wrong.”
The BP oil spill was the worst in U.S. history. An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers in April 2010 and the spill took months to cap before it was finally sealed off in late September. More than 210 million gallons of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico during that time, causing billions of dollars in environmental damages. The event also led to a dramatic loss of plant and animal life, and the loss of jobs and the livelihoods of many fisherman. Scientists are still studying the long-term effects on marine mammals and sea turtles.
Under the new regulations, oil companies will no longer be required to hire third-party safety inspectors to test the equipment meant to prevent leaks, known as blowout preventers. That same device failed during the BP spill.
The Gulf of Mexico and its coastline still haven’t recovered from 2010’s Deepwater Horizon blowout, which killed 11 workers, and thousands of marine animals as it gushed more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf for almost three months.
Trump has been moving to open up America’s oil fields for years, to various success. A federal judge blocked a plan to open up almost all of the country’s coastal waters to oil and gas leasing earlier this month, and Bernhardt said the Interior Department would put that plan on hold as it made its way through the court system
That's it, for the sake of greed, let's just totally f**k up the entire planet, and leave nothing but a smoldering dumpster fire for our kids, their kids, and for generations to come. IT'LL BE FUN!!!😆
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Trump has the criminal mind of a dictator. He has tarnished the office of the presidency, and his supporters are flirting with authoritarianism.
"Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one."
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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Almost every president has occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly, until now. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 25,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully execute the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama..
● Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
● Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
● Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to his apologist Mark Meadows.
● Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make EVEN MORE money, at the expense of our health.
● Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-nazi5 while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
● Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
● Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
● Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
● Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
● Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate (the free press) as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
● Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
● Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
● Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
● Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
● Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
● Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? "It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any checks on his abuse of power.” It is brazen and deviant despotism.
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Why did traitor Trump refuse to pay his respects at Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day last year? Because he couldn't turn it into a Ttump rally, so he didn't care, that's why. This isn't the first time that Don the Con has hijacked an event, and used it to promote himself.
In a 1996 Manhattan ribbon-cutting ceremony for a charity called the Association to Benefit Children. The association was celebrating the grand opening of a nursery school that would serve children with AIDS. Trump unexpectedly appeared at the event and took a seat on on stage alongside top donors, even though he had never donated to the charity. The seat he took belonged to Steven Fisher, a developer who had donated a hefty sum to help the charity build the nursery.
“Nobody knew he was coming,” Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais, told the Post. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down.” Trump had never donated to the charity.
Trump played the part of a big donor convincingly. Photos from the event show Trump smiling, right behind Giuliani, as the mayor cut the ribbon.” Trump later performed the macarena with Giuliani, Kathie Lee Gifford, and crowd of children, and then slipped out of the function without donating one red cent to the charity.
The time Trump's now defunct charity foundation gave $264,631 to fix a fountain outside one of his hotels. The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University
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President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed it on to Trump in 2017. And then Trump dismantled it, because he doesn't believe in science or facts, so he didn't understand it..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018..
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump..
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Recently President Obama held a virtual meeting with mayors and local leaders across America. In that meeting, Obama advised them on the BIGGEST MISTAKE any leader could make during a crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest mistake any of us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination. leaders in a crisis have to give the people the truth. Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The more smart people you have around you, and the less embarrassed you are to ask questions, the better your response is going to be."
-- President Barack Obama
But that's not what we got at all during this national health crisis. What we got instead, was Trump, who makes it his mission, to go on TV and lie to the American people every single day. And that's exactly what he's been doing, since day one.
According to Trump, he doesn't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, he just has to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
No amount of lies or deflections will wash away the facts of Trump's historic failure as president, and as a human being..
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This is why Trump needs to be subpoenaed by Congress, or either indicted. If for no other reason than to watch him perjure himself into the Guinness Book of World Records. Years ago, Trump sued Journalist Tim O'Brien for libel. Trump claimed that O'Brien wrote things about him his wealth, and his businesses that were not true. Trump not only lost his lawsuit, he was forced to admit that he had lied during his deposition.
"A decade ago, my lawyers questioned Trump under oath during a deposition in a libel case he filed against me for a biography I wrote, "TrumpNation." (Trump lost the case in 2011.) Trump had to acknowledge 30 times during that deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues: his ownership stake in a large Manhattan real estate development, the cost of a membership to one of his golf clubs, the size of the Trump Organization, his wealth, the rate for his speaking appearances, how many condos he had sold, the debt he owed, and whether he borrowed money from his family to stave off personal bankruptcy."
- Timothy O'Brien
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By pushing stories from a diverse body of outlets and posting material on different platforms, Kremlin propagandists adapted the concept of pre-propaganda in their efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, according to a recent study by researchers at the Center for Social Media and Politics at NYU.
The study investigated the online propaganda strategies of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Kremlin-linked “troll farm.” The U.S. Department of Justice accused the group of spreading disinformation online to interfere in the 2016 election, indicting 13 Russians it said were involved in the scheme.
The research focused on tweets by IRA trolls (accounts controlled by humans who masked their identities) about the 2016 election containing hyperlinks to political news stories, YouTube videos, and other content.
This finding supports the theory—that the IRA exploited social media platforms interconnected ecosystem of links, shares, and likes to spread disinformation.
In sharing liberal and conservative stories alike, Russia tried to sow discord by playing both sides. It’s also possible that Russia was simultaneously trying to build an audience among moderates before luring them to the Republican side.
YouTube appears to have been a crucial part of the IRA’s cross-platform strategy. The trolls linked to the video-sharing platform more often than to most other external websites, sharing overwhelmingly conservative content (75 percent). And while the trolls cast a wide net when sharing news stories, they tightened their focus to a selection of mostly pro-Trump, pro-Republican YouTube videos.
Finally, the researchers tested for ideological consistency in troll behavior over time. That is, did the conservative trolls remain conservative, and the liberal trolls remain liberal, throughout the 2016 campaign? For the most part, the answer is yes. But here’s where it gets interesting: Trolls who mostly shared liberal news stories were more likely to cross ideological lines by also sharing conservative YouTube videos. Trolls who mostly shared conservative YouTube videos, on the other hand, rarely shared liberal ones.
This behavior points to the IRA’s use of pre-propaganda. The IRA may have shared news stories from diverse sources to build credibility and a broad audience, before dosing liberal and moderate users with conservative YouTube content. A propaganda campaign can target liberals, moderates, and conservatives, with an overall goal of helping the Republican campaign. The sheer amount of conservative content in the dataset suggests this was the case.
The researchers coined a term to describe what they found: cross-platform pre-propaganda, or pre-propaganda that exploits the interconnected nature of platforms. By using Twitter to get users onto YouTube, the IRA deployed a tactic that represented a degree of historical continuity in state-driven propaganda, and took advantage of social media as a means to lower costs, increase scale, and maintain the anonymity of covert campaigns.
When it comes to state propaganda, the major platforms don’t exist in a vacuum. Together, they provide a whole ecosystem for malicious actors to exploit.
Cue the reaction from Russian trolls in
T-minus 5 4 3 2 .......
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Terrorism is defined as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
It's being reported that Trump wants to start his own political party to challenge anyone who refused to destroy our Constitution and democracy, and insert him as an American dictator. If he does create his own party, it should immediately be labeled as a terrorist organization. Because that's exactly what it will be.
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The question every American should be asking is why do republicans continue to block election security bills? Senate Republicans blocked 3 election security bills just last week.
Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Oleg Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, allowed American corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money.
The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie, president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.
The Super PAC, Make America Number 1, is funded by Trump's largest donor, Robert Mercer. His Renaissance Technologies hedge fund donated $15.5 million to the PAC.
Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, assumed control of Make America Number 1 in September 2016 and is now tainted by her role in the communications between Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that Jared Kushner, hired for $5.9 million to handle the digital portion of the Trump campaign...
Citizens United must be overturned. It represents the biggest crime ever perpetrated on the American people. It was created by republicans and powerful corporations, for the sole purpose of finally controlling our government for their own financial gains, all while undermining the will of the people..
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Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it is that Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic, and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and his presidency? Not a f**king thing.
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Trump is a professional con-man, It's all he knows.
Trump is doing the same thing to his cult followers that he did to American banks and Deutsche Bank, and the same thing he did to everyone who donated money to his fake charity foundation, and the same thing he did to the people who spent thousands to enroll in Trump University. This is the same man who would pose as his own spokesmen, using the fake names of John Miller, and John Barron. Trump used the name John Barron when he called into Forbes magazine, and lied about how much " his boss" was worth, just so he could get on the Forbes list as one of the richest people in the country.
Trump has been running a con with no limits his entire life. American banks are fully aware of who and what Trump is, it's the reason they won't touch him with a 10 ft pole. Deutsche Bank is now learning the same lesson about Trump that American banks learned in the 80s and 90s. Trump's crimes will catch of up with him one way or another. The multiple SDNY's charges of money laundering, tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud, wire fraud, campaign finance violations, illegal donations to his inauguration, and running a fake charity foundation, will all be front and center during the 2020 presidential debates. I can't wait.😂
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The 9/11hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, they also received funding from Saudi Arabia to plan their attack while they were here in America. But none of that mattered to Trump and Jared. His first trip abroad as President was to Saudi Arabia, so he could do the sword dance, and kiss the rings of his Saudi benefactors.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violated the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expected a return on their investment. Protection being one of the things the Saudis expected in return, and they received that protection from Trump and Jared.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
After Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and Saudi lobbying groups became lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of 2018, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Only a criminally incompetent fraud like Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads."
As America was expanding in the 1780s, the founding fathers realized that open access to secure and private communication among its dispersed citizens was critical to forming political groups and holding free elections without fear of retribution. The U.S. Constitution empowered Congress “to establish post offices and post roads." The founding fathers provided the necessary infrastructure to “bind” the growing nation together through communication and commerce. Thereby, the Post Office Department (now the U. S. Postal Service) was born.
Trump: "They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
This was Trump, the sitting US President, openly admitting to blocking additional funding for the United States Postal Service in order to make it more difficult for American citizens to vote.
Let's face it, Trump doesn't believe you should have the right to vote unless you're voting for him. And that's not an exaggeration, he actually believes that. We have never seen anything like this from a sitting president.
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Ryan Zinke, another one of Trump's " very best people" who is facing an ethics probe over land dealings, insisted a month ago that he still has Trump’s full support.
While Zinke was in CA touring the deadly Camp Fire damage in Paradise with Gov. Brown, He told The Sacramento Bee he has no recollection of meeting in 2017 with wealthy Sacramento land baron Angelo Tsakopoulos, as first reported by the Washington Post.
Zinke is being investigated on multiple fronts. In what is considered the most serious matter, the Interior Department’s acting inspector general has referred to the DoJ, an investigation into whether Zinke acted improperly in connection with a land deal in Whitefish, Mont., with the head of oil-services conglomerate HALLIBURTON. As secretary, Zinke oversees oil and gas drilling operations on federal lands.
In the interview with The Sacramento Bee, Zinke said: "I talk to the president, he understands. These are vicious attacks.” Zinke said the president backs him “100 percent.”
The main probe, centers on Zinke’s involvement with a Montana land deal backed by David Lesar, the chair of Halliburton, an oil field services company. A foundation established by Zinke and run by his wife, Lolita Zinke, owns land in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana. Lesar’s developer is planning to build on some of the land, Politico reported this summer. The proposed hotel and retail stores that the developer wants to build in Whitefish also stand to boost property values in a nearby parcel of land owned by the Zinkes.
As an oil field service firm, Halliburton has direct and indirect business involving the Interior Department, which manages mining and drilling rights on federal lands.
Zinke remained involved with his foundation even after he took office as secretary of the interior, violating an ethics pledge he signed in Jan 2017. Emails showed that he was still coordinating the land deal as late as August 2017. The investigation, now in the hands of the DoJ, could result in criminal charges.
BUT WAIT...THERE'S MORE!!! The IG is also investigating whether Zinke improperly used agency funds to pay for travel for his wife. There are several other probes into Zinke’s conduct by other government oversight groups, including the US Office of Special Counsel and the House Oversight Committee. In total, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tallied 17 federal investigations around Zinke. It puts him on par with Scott Pruitt, who was forced to resign after a tsunami of scandals caught up with him.
Even Zinke’s aboveboard actions are just as alarming. Zinke has presided over the largest rollback of federal land protections in US history, approved new development in wilderness areas, and opened up NEARLY ALL, US coastal waters to offshore drilling.
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TwoGun Tommy
The wheels have fallen off Republican claims (LIES) that Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating increased growth and government revenues over the next decade. Reminds me of Cheney's claim that the Iraq war would pay for itself. Republican voters fell for that one too.
“Not only will this tax plan pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” Treasury Sec Steven Mnuchin famously boasted (LIED) in September 2017.
The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time last year, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American.
The Treasury Department reported the debt hit $22.012 trillion, a jump of more than $30 billion in just this month.
The national debt has been rising at a faster rate following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax-cut package after a little more than a year. The nation has added more than $1 trillion in debt in the last 11 months alone.
Trump has quickened the rate at which the debt is growing by widening the deficit to finance his $1.5 trillion package of sweeping tax cuts for himself, his wealthy friends, big banks, and corporations.
Trump promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves by spurring on economic activity, but revenues have since stalled. Federal spending by the Trump administration is around 6.6 percent higher than it was before. In 2017, the national debt grew by 4 percent, according to CBO data, which excludes intragovernmental holdings. By the following year, Trump's second in charge, this had accelerated to 7 percent.
It's a similar story with the deficit. When Trump was elected in 2016, the size of the deficit measured as a portion of GDP was 3.2 percent. By the end of 2018 this had increased to 3.9 percent. The deficit is expected to hit 4.2 percent in 2019. It is on course to reach a nominal value of $1 trillion by the end of the year.
That increase comes despite the economy doing well, so yes, it can be attributed directly to his tax cuts for the wealthy, which clearly aren't paying for themselves, as most professional economists warned. Trump's tax cuts was nothing more than corporate welfare, OR, a tax cut for the swamp.
Trump thinks about the national debt as he does his own personal debt. A 2016 Fortune magazine analysis revealed Trump's business is $1.11 billion in debt. That includes $846 million owed on five properties. This is not surprising considering that Trump famously bragged about being the "King of Debt" along with the fact that Trump has filed for bankruptcy 6 times, and has relied on Saudi Royals, and Russian Oligarchs to come to his rescue and bail him out numerous times over the years.
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This is the 3rd time that Trump has asked another foreign country to interfere in our elections. And if he gets away with it this time, he will absolutely do it AGAIN!!! Because a sociopath like Trump, with no impulse control, who doesn't know right from wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible, and completely incapable of being corrected.
If and when Traitor Trump is acquitted of his crimes by republicans, he will be on the phone the very next day trying to get another foreign country to interfere in our elections again for a 4th time. Trump is like a child who has never been told no, and has never been told that what he is doing is wrong. He doesn’t know right from wrong because he's never been punished for his wrong doings, instead, he is like a child who is rewarded for his bad behavior. This child will inevitably grow up to be an incorrigible monster, and republicans are continuing to feed this monster..
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Part of me is glad that this is happening, because Trump and his inner circle's connections to Russia needs to be revisited. One big unanswered question is why were Trump and his people having so many interactions with Russian officials and Russian operatives during the campaign? They were having more interactions with Russians than Americans.
On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. We now know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers had or were at least aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself, Don Jr, Manafort, Flynn, Jared, Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone, just to name a few. But what's worse, is the fact that they all lied about these contacts. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up, every single one of them.
The question every American should be asking is why were there so many contacts(272) between Trump’s people and Russian officials and operatives, and why did Trump and his people lie about those contacts?
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U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
JULY 18
In a secure conference call with national security officials, an Office of Management and Budget staff member announces that Trump was freezing $391 million in security aid to Ukraine until further notice, citing a presidential order to the budget office.
JULY 25
During a phone call with Mr. Zelensky, Trump raises the favors he is seeking, including a Biden-related inquiry. Afterward, Mr. Vindman, one of the note-takers, reports the call to Mr. Eisenberg.
July 26
Ambassador Bill Taylor said, one of his aides was in a restaurant with Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union. Sondland called Trump, and the president could be heard asking about “the investigations,” to which Sondland replied that “the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.” After the call, the aide asked Sondland what the president thought of Ukraine, Mr. Taylor testified. Sondland responded that “President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden.”
AUG. 9
The Ukrainians have learned by this date that military aid is frozen and they should speak with Mr. Mulvaney.
“I think POTUS really wants the deliverable,” Mr. Sondland texts Mr. Volker.
Mr. Sondland and Mr. Volker are working on draft language for Mr. Zelensky’s announcement of the investigations. Mr. Yermak says the White House should nail down Mr. Zelensky’s Oval Office invite first.
AUG. 12
A C.I.A. officer detailed to the White House files a whistle-blower complaint about the July 25 call and other concerns. It begins a slow trek to Congress.
AUG. 16
In a memo prepared for Bolton, Colonel Vindman states that the National Security Council, the State Department and the Defense Department all agree that military assistance to Ukraine should be released. But in a meeting, Trump rejects the recommendation. An aide later says the “president doesn’t want to provide any assistance at all.”
SEPT. 1
In Warsaw, Mr. Zelensky asks VP Pence about the military aid, but Pence says only that he will speak to Trump. Sondland tells Mr. Yermak not to expect the money unless Mr. Zelensky publicly announces a Burisma investigation.
Mr. Zelensky later prepares an announcement for a Sept. 13 CNN appearance, which the Ukrainians hope will satisfy Mr. Trump.
SEPT. 7
Mr. Sondland calls Trump, asking specifically what he wants from Ukraine. Trump replies “nothing” and insists that there is “no quid pro quo, ” Mr. Sondland later says.
SEPT. 11
Two days after a House committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, the White House reverses course and releases its hold on the military aid. Plans for Mr. Zelensky’s CNN interview are scuttled..
If Trump and republicans withhold witnesses and evidence that are directly connected to what Trump is being accused of, it will be clear to the world that the Senate trial is an egregious sham. It will go down as the biggest cover-up in American history..
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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There is no republican party anymore. What you have now is a slavish and insidious cult known as Trumpism. It's a cult that worships lawlessness, corruption, indifference, cowardice, buffoonery, self-righteousness, skullduggery, ignorance, dictators, and immorality,
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Newsmax is promoting blatant disinformation and propaganda.
DT sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. DT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult, that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts,
pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience..
Trump cultists:
"I pledge allegiance, to Lord King Donald Trump, of the Dystopian States of America, and to the monarchy for which he stands, one ruler, the chosen god, with oppression and subjugation for all."
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country...
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for with Russian money.
It's why repubicans are fighting so hard to defend him instead of the Constitution. It's also why Republicans have been repeating the exact same lies and propaganda of the Russian government and Russian security services like the GRU.
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On his show on May 19, Howard Stern asked the same question I've been asking myself since the 2016 campaign. Howard Stern, who has personally known Trunp for decades, questioned why people would vote for Trump, when in reality, Trump is disgusted by his biggest supporters. According to Stern, like himself, Trump isn’t cut out for running a government, and the Trump supporters are to blame for the country’s troubles. Stern went on to say that Trump would be “disgusted” by the MAGA crew..
Howard Stern: “The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most,” Stern said. “The people who are voting for Trump for the most part... he wouldn’t even let them in a f---ing hotel. He’d be disgusted by them. Go to Mar-a-Lago, see if there’s any people who look like you. I’m talking to you in the audience - the Trump voter who, you know, idolizes the guy. He despises you."
“I don’t hate Donald,” he continued. “I hate you for voting for him, for not having intelligence. For not being able to see what’s going on with the coronavirus, for not being able to see what the Justice Department is doing. I hate you, I don’t want you here.”
The people Trump despises the most, love him the most. Hmmmm... Now that's a trick that only the devil himself could pull off..
The people Trump despises the most, love him the most. Hmmmm... Now that's a trick that only the devil himself could pull off..
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Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it is that Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic, and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and his presidency? Nothing....other than heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump doesn't solve problems, he creates them.
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At least 60% of Americans don't believe that Trump's words can be trusted. Well its hard to blame them when Trump has told more than 15k documented lies since taking office.
Here is a jaw-dropping example of what a pathological liar like Trump sounds like.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders, the top top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in a 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At a rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
If anyone still had any doubt as to whether or not you can be believe anything that Trump says, I hope this clears everything up.
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Steve Bannon once said proudly: “I am a Leninist.” Bannon said that Lenin wanted to destroy the Russian state (which was true) and that he had the same goals for Amerca. “I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment" Bannon said.
From the look of Trump’s time in White House, Bannon installed a bevy of Leninist political tactics that could have come straight from the Bolshevik leader’s playbook..
Two days after Lenin seized power in Russia a century ago, he began an assault on the free press – and his successors in the USSR did not let up for the next 70 years. Putin is literally following in Lenin's footsteps, and Trump would love to follow in Putin's footsteps.
Three days after Trump’s inauguration Bannon told the NYT: “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen … I want you to quote this. "The media here is the opposition party." This was the beginning of Trump's war on the free press, which is a must for any demagogue.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon in March of last year, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution.
Since information from the press can undermine a dictator's spell over his cultists, they will often attack and demonized the free press. They will usually claim that the media can't be trusted. They have even called out for violence against news outlets that oppose them, claiming that the press is part of a deep state conspiracy against them, or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get him. No dictator can survive in a country that has a free press. This fact was not lost on Lenin, and neither is that fact lost on Trump. The truth has been, and will always be, Trump's nemesis
Bannon helped to creat the hate-filled language of alt-right politics, which is decidedly Leninist in tone. Above all, Lenin needed to invent enemies he had to be seen to defeat. In post- revolutionary Russia it was the “elite” a word Lenin used frequently. And he despised so-called “experts” who claimed a monopoly of knowledge. He often said that a worker with five days’ training could run a government department. He scapegoated opponents and labelled them “enemies of the people”.
Lenin abolished the existing legal system and started afresh. Within a few weeks his regime closed down the first freely elected parliament in Russia’s history – and the Soviets never allowed another one. It would be wrong to assume that the next step for Trump is the abolition of Congress, or the construction of labour camps. But the unprecedented war by tweet between Trump and the judiciary over his executive orders has real echoes of Lenin.
Lenin would very likely have identified 2016 as a revolutionary moment. He matters today not because of his flawed and bloody answers, but because he was asking questions similar to those we are asking today. In his quest for power, Lenin promised people anything and everything. He offered simple solutions to complex issues. He lied unashamedly. He justified himself on the basis that winning meant everything; the ends justified the means. Lenin was the godfather of post-truth politics. Powerful people have learned depressing lessons from him. In order for America to survive, Trump must be defeated.
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Trump Jan. 24, Twitter:.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Trump Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Trump Feb. 10, Fox interview:.
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Trump Feb. 10, rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Trump Feb. 23, before boarding Marine One:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Trump Feb. 27, press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
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"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said.
--Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal":
Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, magic real, and my uncle attended MIT."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am absolutely real, magic is not. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when Easter is, I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense."
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Hotcheetojuice
His actions says it, and it speaks volumes.
Trump's abominable budget includes about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act over a decade.
The new budget includes $844 billion over 10 years in cuts from the “President’s health reform vision,” a stand-in for the repeal and replacement of ObamaCare. There are also more than $150 billion in additional cuts from implementing Medicaid work requirements and other changes to the program, which would result in some people losing coverage if they did not meet the requirements.
Trump’s proposed $4.8-trillion budget for the 2021 fiscal yearmakes his intentions crystal clear: He means to shred the federal safety net for the poor and the sick.
The budget calls for drastic cuts in Social Security and Medicaid benefits, as well as in a program protecting defrauded student loan borrowers. Medicare spending will also be cut.
Trump's budget would also slash food stamp spending by $181 billion. The plan also calls for a steep 8% cut to the Education budget; a 9% cut to the Health and Human Services Budget, including the Centers for Disease Control; and a 26% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency budget. The Interior Department would see a 13% budget cut; the Department of Housing and Urban Development would see a 15% cut; and both the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development would be slashed by 22%.
Trump's budget even calls for an extension to individual tax cuts for the wealthy, set to expire in 2025 through 2035. The individual tax cuts for the wealthy, which were temporary even though the corporate tax cuts were permanent, would cost another $1.4 trillion, according to the plan. Most of the benefits from the tax cuts overwhelmingly flowed to the very rich.
These cuts were presented under the heading, “Restrain spending to protect and respect American taxpayers.” 😂 Who are the taxpayers Trump is talking about? The wealthy, whose take from the 2017 tax cuts won’t be affected one bit.
Trump's budget is all about making the poor, sick, children and elderly pay for the tax cuts for the rich. Trump is going to make the American people pay for the massive freebies he gave to himself, corporations, and his other wealthy welfare queens who colluded with him on passing the tax cut for themselves.
“I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump said in 2015.
"We will not be touching your Social Security and Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget,"
Trump tweeted this lie just hours before the White House released his budget that sought deep cuts to both programs.
Trump's budget amounts to another middle finger to American families, and another smash & grab crime spree for him.
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
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Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult, that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts,
pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience..
Trump cultists:
"I pledge allegiance, to Lord King Donald Trump, of the Dystopian States of America, and to the monarchy for which he stands, one ruler, the chosen god, with oppression and subjugation for all."
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The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
Trump has sent thousands of our troops to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil and HIS own personal business interests.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Putin's associate, Konstantin Rykov, understands the art of trolling on the internet. Rykov’s knack for creating caustic, snarky, attention-grabbing content made him millions as an internet entrepreneur and got him elected to the Russian Parliament. And now, thanks to him, the Russian government understands the art of trolling too.
Rykov made his way into more mainstream Russian media, joining Russia’s state-owned Channel 1 as the head of the internet department. In 2005, he started an online newspaper called “Vzglyad,” which quickly became a propaganda outlet for the Kremlin.
Putin needed to enlist the help of people who understood how to make disinformation go viral. Someone like Konstantin Rykov. In 2008, Rykov was elected to the Russian Parliament as a member of the United Russia party, the same party as Putin. Rykov was only 28-years-old.
Rykov developed tactics to help the Kremlin boost support for its image online. Rykov showed the Kremlin how to spread false narratives on social media to deflect attention away from reporting that was critical of Putin.
The Russian government used these kinds of disinformation campaigns to its advantage when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. They artificially inflated pro-Kremlin support on the internet, enlisting armies of troll accounts to spread pro-Kremlin narratives on social media and blogs. Some of these trolls were automated bot accounts, but others were human, like Rykov.
Rykov was on the front lines of the disinformation war on social media, spreading lies that made Russia look good and Ukraine’s allies look bad. At that point Rykov was active on international social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook.
"We spent a lot of time thinking about him and his colleagues in terms of what were their objectives,” says Michael McFaul, US Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. “He was very active talking about foreign policy in particular."
In 2015, Rykov built a new website. This one was called Trump2016..ru..This marked the beginning of Rykov’s active campaigning for Trump’s 2016 presidential run. While the total impact of Rykov’s campaigning for Trump is unknown, Rykov has boasted that he is responsible for helping Trump take the White House.
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Is this clown serious? Trump has been violating the Constitution since was sworn in at noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “PROFIT, GAIN, or ADVANTAGE. This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials PROFITEERING from federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decision making to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or PROFITING from the federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent at least $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
FUN FACT: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws..
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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Terrorism is defined as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
It's being reported that Trump wants to start his own political party to challenge anyone who refused to destroy our Constitution and democracy, and insert him as an American dictator. If he does create his own party, it should immediately be labeled as a terrorist organization. Because that's exactly what it will be.
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On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit. Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the US. A major Brexit supporter, Steve Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign captured the interest of investigators in the UK and the US.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances. In Britain, revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’s annual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange a lunch for the UKIP leaders with the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize..
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On March 25, 2019
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday he had told Sen. John McCain to give the FBI the dossier on the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, a revelation that comes after Trump repeatedly assailed the late Arizona Republican over the issue.
Last week, Trump accused McCain of handing over the document “for very evil purposes.”
Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters Monday McCain showed him the dossier when he received it in late 2016
And I told him the only thing I knew to do with it, it could be a bunch of garbage, it could be true, who knows? Turn it over to somebody whose job it is to find these things out, and John McCain acted appropriately,” Graham said.
McCain was not made aware of the Steele dossier until Nov. 18, 2016 — after Trump had won the election.
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In May of 2018, When China's President Xi Jinping, the leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump praised him for it. Just let that sink in for a moment.
In remarks at Mar-a-Lago, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un, the dictator who continues to threaten America with nuclear war, for his authoritarian control over his people.
Trump: "He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
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Back when Trump was still pretending that he knew how to run a casino in Atlantic City, he became friends with Joseph Weichselbaum, an embezzler, mob associate, cocaine trafficker, and a thrice-convicted felon.
Trump hired Weichselbaum, who was a pilot, to use his helicopters to bring casino high-rollers in and out of town through a company formed by Weichselbaum, to whom he also entrusted maintenance of the Ivana, Trump’s personal helicopter. Weichselbaum—at that point a twice-convicted felon—personally piloted the Trumps in that copter.
Weichselbaum also had another business: importing drugs from Colombia and shipping them from Bradford Motors, a Miami-area car dealership he partly owned, to Cincinnati. Because Weichselbaum was then a twice-convicted felon, NJ gambling regulators insisted to Trump that he not be involved with providing helicopter services to the Trump casinos. Yet Weichselbaum continued collecting a $100,000 salary from the helicopter company, and Trump kept using the company that paid Weichselbaum.
In his indictment and confession, Weichselbaum’s more lucrative business was having drugs delivered to Bradford Motors, the Miami-area car dealership he had an ownership stake in. In his testimony, Weichselbaum admitted to helping to load up to 1,500 pounds of drugs at the time into cars, that mules then drove to the Cincinnati area for distribution in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Trump learned of the indictment in October 1985, NJ Casino Control Commission records show. At that point, any decent person would have cut off all ties to Weichselbaum, because failing to do so could cost him his casino license. But of course, Trump is anything but a decent person. Instead, Trump became even closer to the drug trafficker.
Two months after the indictment, Trump rented apartment 32C in the Trump Plaza Apartments on E. 61st St. in Manhattan to the Weichselbaum brothers, according to NJ Casino Control Commission records. Trump personally owned the unit. Then Trump wrote a letter to the District Court on Trump Organization stationery pleading for mercy for his drug trafficking friend. He called him “a credit to the community.” Trump also described the drug trafficker as “conscientious, forthright and diligent,” 😲
When NJ gaming regulators first asked Trump about this letter, he denied writing it.😂 When they came back with a copy of the letter, Trump said under oath that his signature was on the page.😂 However Trump’s letter must have worked. Weichselbaum served just 18 months, while the mules who merely drove the drugs got sentences of up to 20 years.
During his parole, Weichselbaum was required to inform authorities that he had a job and a place to live. He told authorities he would be working for Trump again as Trump's helicopter guy once released. Weichselbaum then moved into Trump Tower.
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Why has the Republican Party become so thoroughly corrupt?
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have
either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it wreaks of corruption,
paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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This is the same guy who created a fake charity foundation and a fake university for the purpose of fleecing Americans out of their money. A con-man till the end.
When it comes to Trump, I'll take the word of Trump's own sister, who has known him his entire life? She knows him better, and longer, than anyone alive today. And if she wouldn't support him as president, why on earth should anyone else?
In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“He has no principles, None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His god-d tweets and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s***. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how ”She didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
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For decades, Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia is connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which Trump has been compromised.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took outt full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid..
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mafia..
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin..
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On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit. Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the US. A major Brexit supporter, Steve Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign captured the interest of investigators in the UK and the US.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances. In Britain, revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’s annual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange a lunch for the UKIP leaders with the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize.
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The biggest threat to America is not Iran. The biggest threat to America is the very desperate, panicked, deranged, cornered, and currently impeached man-baby in the Oval Office.
Only someone as criminally incompetent as Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
Under the deal, the Atomic Energy Agency would have cameras installed to provide 24-hour monitoring at the Natanz facility, and inspectors will have daily access to the facility for 15 years. Within a year, there would be 130 to 150 inspectors in Iran.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice.
He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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Trump's budget amounts to another middle finger to American families, and another smash & grab crime spree for him. Trump's abominable budget includes about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act over a decade.
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
The new budget includes $844 billion over 10 years in cuts from the “President’s health reform vision,” a stand-in for the repeal and replacement of ObamaCare. There are also more than $150 billion in additional cuts from implementing Medicaid work requirements and other changes to the program, which would result in some people losing coverage if they did not meet the requirements.
Trump’s proposed $4.8-trillion budget for the 2021 fiscal yearmakes his intentions crystal clear: He means to shred the federal safety net for the poor and the sick.
The budget calls for drastic cuts in Social Security and Medicaid benefits, as well as in a program protecting defrauded student loan borrowers. Medicare spending will also be cut.
Trump's budget would also slash food stamp spending by $181 billion. The plan also calls for a steep 8% cut to the Education budget; a 9% cut to the Health and Human Services Budget, including the Centers for Disease Control; and a 26% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency budget. The Interior Department would see a 13% budget cut; the Department of Housing and Urban Development would see a 15% cut; and both the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development would be slashed by 22%.
Trump's budget even calls for an extension to individual tax cuts for the wealthy, set to expire in 2025 through 2035. The individual tax cuts for the wealthy, which were temporary even though the corporate tax cuts were permanent, would cost another $1.4 trillion, according to the plan. Most of the benefits from the tax cuts overwhelmingly flowed to the very rich.
These cuts were presented under the heading, “Restrain spending to protect and respect American taxpayers.” 😂 Who are the taxpayers Trump is talking about? The wealthy, whose take from the 2017 tax cuts won’t be affected one bit.
Trump's budget is all about making the poor, sick, children and elderly pay for the tax cuts for the rich. Trump is going to make the American people pay for the massive freebies he gave to himself, corporations, and his other wealthy welfare queens who colluded with him on passing the tax cut for themselves.
“I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump said in 2015.
"We will not be touching your Social Security and Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget,"
Trump tweeted this lie just hours before the White House released his budget that sought deep cuts to both programs.
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@Provocateurofendtimes
The irony in this is palpable. Those people stormed the Capitol because they were tricked into believing that they were being oppressed, and their freedoms were being taken away from them, which was all a total lie. Now they're in a jail cell, and their freedom has been taken away from them, but for real this time. 🤣😅
This is what happens to people who end up in cults. It never ends well. A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
So tell me, what rights have been taken away from you?
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@joejoeson9619
First of all, Trump is NOT a billionaire. He can't even prove that he's a billionaire. That's why he won't release his taxes.
And as far as what I would have done, I simply would have done the complete opposite of everything that Trump has done.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Why isn't Trump, the draft dodging champion, here in America on Memorial Day weekend honoring our fallen? Oh that's right, Trump has no respect for our veterans, PoWs, our fallen, or their gold star family members. Trump didn't even bother to visit Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day last year.
Trump didn't even bother to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is a presidential tradition. Just imagine if Obama and skipped Arlington or laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.😲 And just the day before, Trump didn't bother to attend the commemoration ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France while he was there. He said the rain prevented him from paying his respects to the American soldiers who died in WW1, however, the rain didn't prevent other world leaders from attending the ceremony.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Trump's followers use a Christian-right formula that believes that Trump anointing himself as the "Chosen One" justifies his abuses of power.
A cult environment like Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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I'll stop calling Trump a Russian asset when he finally stands-up for America, and condemns Putin for engaging in cyber-espionage against America during the election. In other words, I'll be calling Trump a Russian asset for the rest of my life.
Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory. The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle, by exploiting their hubris, their insatiable greed, naivety, lack of patriotism, and by exploiting Trump's malignant narcissism. Trump and his people presented themselves as easy targets
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Matt Whitaker is clearly the type of person that's willing to tarnish his name and future career, for an undeserving con-man like Trump. Trump has clearly conned Whitaker into helping him obstruct justice. And this is what Trump does. He doesn't see others around him as people, he sees them as instruments to be used and manipulated. These unwitting instruments will be tricked into believing that they are friends with trump. They never realize, until it's too late, that Trump is a complete sociopath, and sociopaths don't have friends. He will simply use them to help advance his his own unethical, criminal, amoral, and self-serving goals. And once you've outlived your usefulness, or you have simply failed to deliver on the things he desperately needs to survive, you will find yourself being ridiculed, and insulted by him, and then being tossed under the bus. If you want to know what happens to people who foolishly cozy up to Trump, look no further than Sessions, Cohen, Manafort, Gates, Reince Priebus, Spicer, Hope Hicks, Flynn, Bannon, Papadopoulos, Mooch,...whew. I'm exhausted. Did I leave anyone out?
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Trump is a professional con-man, It's all he knows.
Trump is doing the same thing to his cult followers that he did to American banks and Deutsche Bank, and the same thing he did to everyone who donated money to his fake charity foundation, and the same thing he did to the people who spent thousands to enroll in Trump University. This is the same man who would pose as his own spokesmen, using the fake names of John Miller, and John Barron. Trump used the name John Barron when he called into Forbes magazine, and lied about how much " his boss" was worth, just so he could get on the Forbes list as one of the richest people in the country.
Trump has been running a con with no limits his entire life. American banks are fully aware of who and what Trump is, it's the reason they won't touch him with a 10 ft pole. Deutsche Bank is now learning the same lesson about Trump that American banks learned in the 80s and 90s. Trump's crimes will catch of up with him one way or another. The multiple SDNY's charges of money laundering, tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud, wire fraud, campaign finance violations, illegal donations to his inauguration, and running a fake charity foundation, will all be front and center during the 2020 presidential debates. I can't wait.😂
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
Nixon was all but certain to be removed from office for far less than what Trump has done. So was Nixon's impeachment a coup as well?
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it...
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power.. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
So shall it be written, so shall it be done..
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After 4 years, we now have a president who’s only priority isn't grifting taxpayer dollars, and lining his pockets with foreign money. Trump's foreign policy amounted to him trying to get foreign countries to spend money at his properties.
So last year we learned that on Don the Con's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to his failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland, for the sole purpose of lining his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that DJT wanted to hold the G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
We then learned that DJT asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland.
Since the day Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it were lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
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Laura Zaboraski
Yes, Trump has a long history of doing things like that. Trump is a complete fraud, and he loves putting on a great production, and the bigger the spectacle, the better. The only thing that matters to him is that people believe that it's real. here are a few other examples.
In a 1996 Manhattan ribbon-cutting ceremony for a charity called the Association to Benefit Children. The association was celebrating the grand opening of a nursery school that would serve children with AIDS. Trump unexpectedly appeared at the event and took a seat on on stage alongside top donors, even though he had never donated to the charity. The seat he took belonged to Steven Fisher, a developer who had donated a hefty sum to help the charity build the nursery.
“Nobody knew he was coming,” Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais, told the Post. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down.” Trump had never donated to the charity.
Trump played the part of a big donor convincingly. Photos from the event show Trump smiling, right behind Giuliani, as the mayor cut the ribbon.” Trump later performed the macarena with Giuliani, Kathie Lee Gifford, and crowd of children, and then slipped out of the function without donating one red cent to the charity.
The time Trump's now defunct charity foundation gave $264,631 to fix a fountain outside one of his hotels. The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
The time Trump grabbed the spotlight at an event honoring an employee. For years, Trump relied on longtime employee Barbara Res to convince contractors to donate to charity galas sponsored by then-wife Ivana. But when she got an award, Trump didn’t buy any tables at the gala or sponsor the event as was customary for the employers of the honorees. He bought a $100 ticket to the event and then managed to convince someone to give him the microphone. He spoke for 15 minutes and made it seem like he had been a big contributor to the event.
For a con-man like Trump, everything is just one big show, and he's the lead cast member. Lights....camera.....action!!!
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DJT tried his best to create an America in his own image. One that is vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, malignant, grotesque, ignorant, selfish, indecent, malicious, debased, indifferent, and malevolent.
He has been a cloven hoofed purveyor of fear & loathing. He has been a provocateur of mayhem & upheaval, and a merchant of lies & deception.
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Timeline of how Trump and his allies incited an insurrection on our nation's Capitol, and against our democracy..
September 23, 2020: In response to a direct question, Trump refuses to say he will ensure a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election.
“Well,we’re going to have to see what happens.” He further raises alarms about a potential transition of power: “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
September 29, 2020: First Presidential Debate.
when asked to condemn white suprema.cist mili.tias like the Proud Boys, Trump tells them to “Stand back and stand by,”
November 13, 2020:
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s allies spearhead a media campaign and a call to action of Trump supporters.
“This is as serious a constitutional crisis as our nation has ever faced. We will only be the beacon of hope for the world if we are willing to stand with courage and integrity & defend our republic,” Mike Flynn tweets.
Sidney Powell echos the statements, saying in an interview that “This is essentially a new American revolution. And anyone who wants this country to remain free needs to step up right now.”
December 2, 2020: Viol.ent rhetoric by Trump’s allies continues as the Georgia Senate runoff race nears.
“We’re going to sla.y Goliath, the comm.unists, the liberals, the phonies. Joe Biden will never set foot in the Oval Office of this country. It will not happen on our watch. Never gonna happen,” Lin Wood claims at the Stop the Steal Rally in Alpharetta, Georgia.
December 8, 2020: The official Twitter account of the Arizona GOP asks supporters whether they are willing to "d.l.e" for Trump.
In response to a Stop the Steal tweet saying “I am willing to give my life for this fight,” the Arizona GOP tweets, “He is. Are you?” The GOP account also tweets a clip of the 2008 movie “Rambo,” as the character proclaims, “This is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or d.l.e for something.”
19 December 2020 – Be there, will be wild:
At 1.42am in the early hours of 19 December Trump tweeted the lie that it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost the presidential election. He gave his first notice of a “big protest in DC” on 6 January. “Be there, will be wild!” he said.
19 December – The cavalry is coming:
Within hours, fervent Trump supporters began to heed Trump’s rallying cry. Kylie Jane Kremer, founder of a Stop the Steal group banned by FB, picked up the notice about the march and ran with it. “The calvary is coming, Mr President!” she said.
Trump retweeted Kremer’s post, saying: “A great honor!”
1 January 2021 – You got to go to the streets and be vio.lent:
Louie Gohmert responded in inflammatory terms to news that his federal lawsuit seeking to force Mike Pence to block certification of Biden’s victory had been dismissed.
"The bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy’,” he told News.max. “Basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you got to go to the streets and be as vio.lent as An.tifa.”
3 January– We will not go quietly into the night:
Ted Cruz addressed a rally in Georgia. “We will not go quietly into the night. We will defend liberty. And we are going to win."
6 January – We’re coming for you:
Don Jr, appeared as the warm-up carney act at the “Save America Rally” on the National Mall. He threatened the Republicans who, as he spoke, were preparing to vote on certifying the election result.
“The people who did nothing to stop the steal. This gathering should send a message to them: This isn’t their Republican party any more. This is Donald Trump’s.”
Then Don jr. said: “If you’re gonna be the zero and not the hero, we’re coming for you and we’re going to have a good time doing it!”
6 January – Trial by combat:
Rudy Giuliani, who has been a leading proponent of the falsehood that the election was fraudulently rigged, addressed the rally.
“If we’re wrong, we will be made fo.ols of,” he said. “But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. So let’s have trial by combat!!!!”
6 January – We will not take it any more:
Trump then addressed the crowd just outside the White House for more than an hour, urging them to march on the Capitol building. “We will not take it any more,” he said.
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … I know everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building."
The crowd followed his instructions and began marching on the Capitol.
A USA Today analysis discovered that After Trump used the word "MARCH" one Parlor user wrote: "Time to fight. The civil war is upon us." And another Parlor user said: "We are going to have a civil war. Get ready!!"
The analysis by USA Today also found that the use of the phrase "civil war" increased nearly four times during Trump’s speech, as it was used on 156 separate occasions while he spoke.
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Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality comes to us from North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the despotic little dictator that Trump admires so much, and who he proudly declared his love for.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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"The privilege of being the only American in our history to serve as the director of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. gives me a unique perspective and a responsibility to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order is, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them.
The rule of law is the bedrock of American democracy, the principle that protects every American from the abuse of monarchs, despots and tyrants. Every American should demand that our leaders put the rule of law above politics.
As F.B.I. director, I served two presidents, one a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, who selected me in part because I was a Republican, and one a Republican, Ronald Reagan, whom I revered. Both of these presidents so respected the bureau’s independence that they went out of their way not to interfere with or sway our activities. I never once felt political pressure.
I know firsthand the professionalism of the men and women of the F.B.I. The aspersions cast upon them by the president and my longtime friend, Attorney General William P. Barr, are troubling in the extreme. Calling F.B.I. professionals “scum,” as the president did, is a slur against people who risk their lives to keep us safe. Mr. Barr’s charges of bias within the F.B.I., made without providing any evidence and in direct dispute of the findings of the nonpartisan inspector general, risk inflicting enduring damage on this critically important institution."
--William Webster, a former federal judge, and director of the F.B.I. from 1978 to 1987, and director of the C.I.A. from 1987 to 1991.
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Harold Bolin
Taking the lead doesn't mean you do it alone. It means that the US President, who is suppose to be the leader of the free world, works to put together a coalition of nations with one common goal, and then leads from the front. It's no different than when we built a coalition for Iraq, Afghanistan, and ISIS. But that takes diplomacy, statesmanship, temperament, leadership, and a clear vision. Trump has none of these things. Trump could never build a coalition of nations to deal with China, because he has insulted and alienated all of our allies, and for no reason at all.
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Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy, helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Devin Nunes in 2018, Parnas’ lawyer Ed MacMahon has stated.
Congressional records show Nunes traveled to Europe from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, 2018. Three of his aides—Harvey, Scott Glabe, and George Pappas—traveled with him, per the records. U.S. government funds paid for the group’s four-day trip, which cost just over $63,000.
Nunes, Trump's top Republican sycophant presiding over the impeachment hearings — in which Parnas has repeatedly been referenced — was central to Trump’s efforts to discredit the Mueller probe. Nunes infamously made a late-night trip to the White House after Congress launched a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and then announced he had magically discovered evidence of wrongdoing by officials inside the Intelligence Community. Because of his shameless skulduggery, Nunes was forced to step down from the Intelligence Committee’s investigation.
While Parnas helped Nunes arrange meetings, he also assisted Rudy in smearing Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch, who was fired by Trump because he believed she was interfering with his criminal scheme. Last month, the SDNY charged Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman with illegally moving money from foreign donors to American political campaigns, all of which were republican campaigns. Hmmmm😞
Parnas and Fruman both pleaded not guilty. Both men retained former Trump attorney John Dowd after their arrest, but Parnas later fired Dowd after the Trump claimed not to know him — even though they have met several times.
Since firing Trump's lawyers Dowd, Parnas told associates that Trump tasked him with a “secret mission” at a 2018 White House Hanukkah party to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens.
Parnas also met Trump at a small fundraising dinner at his Washington, D.C. hotel in April 2018 where he says he convinced Trump to fire Yovanovitch.
After Zelensky won the Ukrainian presidential election, Parnas told the new administration that aid would be withheld and VP Pence would not attend Zelensky's inauguration without a public announcement of the investigations, according to his attorney. Fruman acknowledges the meeting happened. And in fact, Pence did pulled out of the inauguration.
Lev Parnas' lawyer MacMahon said that Parnas is willing to tell Congress everything he knows because he is upset that Trump claimed not to know him.😂
( Don't feel bad Lev, Trump does that to everyone whenever he's in trouble.😄)
“President Trump’s recent and regrettable disavowal of Mr. Parnas has caused him to rethink his involvement and the true reasons for his having been recruited to participate in the President’s activities,” MacMahon said. “Mr. Parnas is prepared to testify completely and accurately about his involvement in the President and Rudy Giuliani’s quid pro quo demands of Ukraine.”
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Who does Laura think she's fooling?
In Trump's book, The Art of the Deal, he brags about being an out of comtrol violent kid.
"Even in elementary school, I was a very assertive, aggressive kid. In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye — I punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled. I'm not proud of that but it's clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way."
During his rally In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the day of the Iowa caucuses, he told his crowd of cultists he would pay their legal fees if they engaged in violence against protesters.
"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise," he said on Feb. 1, 2016.
At a Las Vegas rally later that month, he said security guards were too gentle with a protester. "He's walking out with big high-fives, smiling, laughing," Trump said. "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you."
A similar situation unfolded at a rally that month in Warren, Michigan.
"Get him out," he said of a protester. "Try not to hurt him. If you do, I'll defend you in court. Don't worry about it."
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July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Clinton’s emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
5 hours later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
7/16/2018
Trump in Helsinki: "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia." What???😲😲
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump today: "I don't know anything about Wikileaks, that's not my deal in life."😲
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Trump is right. Thanks to him, America leads the world in death.
Trump: "I am the chaos and disorder president. I am the purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. I am the provocateur of mayhem & upheaval. And I am creating an America in my own image: vile, dark, hopeless, bleak,
backwards, grotesque, selfish, indecent, malevolent, debased, indifferent, inept, sociopathic, and degenerate."
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Trump and his crime family have too many lucrative business deals with China to be serious about confronting it on anything. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China. And Ivanka has conveniently received more than 30 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. This is what happens when you have a president who from day one was compromised by greed and his own self-serving interests.
Chinese government-backed firms are slated to work on parts of two large developments — in Dubai and Indonesia — that will include Trump-branded properties.
The Trumps are the landlord to one of China’s top state-owned banks, which has occupied the 20th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan since 2008. The bank’s lease is worth close to $2 million annually, according to industry estimates and a bank filing.
And despite Trump's rhetoric about American manufacturing, assembly-line workers in China still produce blouses, shoes and handbags for the clothing line created by Ivanka. Trump’s business interest in China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Trump is currently on the hook to China for more than 200 million dollars, and the loan is due soon. In 2012, his real estate partner refinanced one of Trump’s most prized NY buildings for $1 billion. The debt included $211 million from the state-owned Bank of China — its the first loan of this kind in the U.S. — and the debt is due in the middle of what could be Trump’s second term.
Whether Trump’s businesses received more loans from state-owned Chinese banks, or other investors with ties to foreign governments is unknown because Trump refuses to release his complete tax returns and other financial records
Trump business relationships with China are among the main examples plaintiffs in multiple court cases have cited in allegations that Trump is violating the Constitution’s “emoluments clause” by accepting payments from foreign governments.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf.
Days later, Trump announced his support for Chinese-backed telecommunications firm ZTE, a departure from his previously aggressive stance toward Chinese industry that prompted ethical experts to question whether the two actions were related. But of course they were related. This is Don the con we're talking about.
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Trump admitted to being a Russian asset in Helsinki as he stood next to Putin. And now we've learned from the report, that Trump and his people were not only fully aware that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election, but Trump and his people actually encouraged it.
The day after Trump fired Comey, he invited the Russian Ambassador and the Russian foreign minister to the Oval Office, and bragged to them how he had just fired the head of the FBI, and they all got a big laugh out of it, at America's expense.
On July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Trump threw America and it's intelligence agencies under the bus once again when he sided with Putin.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
I'll stop calling Trump a Russian asset when he finally stands-up for America, and condemns Putin for engaging in cyber-espionage against America during the election. In other words, I'll be calling Trump a Russian asset for the rest of my life.
Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory.
The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle, by exploiting their hubris, their insatiable greed, naivety, lack of patriotism, and by exploiting Trump's malignant narcissism. Trump and his people presented themselves as easy targets.
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As White House counsel under Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history.
"The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean, stated in an interview “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
Dean was not only convinced that Trump would be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
Dean’s take on Trump is shaped in large part by his years in the Nixon White House. In Trump, Dean says he has observed many of his former boss’s most dangerous traits—obsessive vengefulness, reflexive dishonesty, all-consuming ambition—but none of Nixon’s redeeming qualities.
"I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
"Trump's is making the long nightmare of Nixon's Watergate seem like a brief idyllic daydream," Dean tweeted just before the midterm elections.
"History will treat Nixon's moral failures as relatively less troubling than Trump's sustained and growing decadence, deviousness and self-delusive behavior. Nixon=corrupt; Trump=evil," he added.
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A pathological liar like Trump, is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way.
Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies. Trump does this constantly at his rallies. He tries to play the victim and the hero at the same time.
Pathological liars are great storytellers. Their lies tend to be very detailed and colorful.
Even though obviously over-the-top, the pathological liar may be very convincing.
Along with being made the hero or victim in their stories, pathological liars tend to tell lies that seem to be geared at gaining admiration, sympathy, or acceptance by others.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
Trump also claimed that he lost 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend that he lost on 9/11.
A pathological liar tells lies and stories that fall somewhere between conscious lying and delusion. They sometimes believe their own lies. It’s difficult to know how to deal with a pathological liar who may not always be conscious of their lying. Some do it so often that experts believe they may not know the difference between fact and fiction after some time.
Like when Trump said that his father was born in Germany.😂 Everyone knows that his father was born in NY. When asked questions, they may speak a lot without ever being specific or answering the question.
Most people lie at one time or another. Previous research has suggested that we tell an average of 1.65 lies every day. Most of these lies are what are considered “white lies.”
Pathological lies, on the other hand, are told consistently and habitually. They tend to appear pointless and often continuous. It's been reported that Trump tells at least 12 lies per day.😲
Identifying a pathological liar isn’t always easy, unless his name is DonaldTrump. The following are some signs to help identify a pathological liar:
They often talk about experiences and accomplishments in which they appear heroic, they're also the victim in many of their stories, often looking for sympathy, their stories tend to be elaborate and very detailed, they respond elaborately and quickly to questions, but the responses are usually vague and don’t provide an answer to the question, they may have different versions of the same story, which stems from forgetting previous details, or previous lies..
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality comes to us from North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the despotic little dictator that Trump admires so much, and who he proudly declared his love for.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right..
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes.
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Trump and his grifter family are running their criminal enterprise out of the white. That's what the entire Trump administration has been about since the very beginning. It's why Jared and Ivanka were brought into the white house. They aren't working for the country, or the American people, they are working for themselves. They are working to enrich themselves even more. Every move they make is a calculated business move for their own financial gains.
It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, Australia, The UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president.
Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab. All anyone has to do is take a step back and open your eyes, and you'll see that what Trump and his family are doing is happening right in front of our faces.
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Sen Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and other republicans on Capitol Hill,
have been unmasked as Russian operatives for disseminating Russian conspiracy theories, and for aiding and abetting Putin's efforts to interfere in the 2020 election..
Last month, four lawmakers who make up the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight, the group of congressional and intelligence committee leaders who are privy to top-secret intelligence, demanded a briefing for all members of Congress focused on foreign interference in the 2020 election, based on their assertions that lawmakers are being targeted by those meddling efforts. They also have urged Trump to publicly reveal additional information about the nature of the foreign-influence campaign. Intelligence officials told House lawmakers last week that the Russians are seeking to boost Trump in the 2020 campaign.
The public version of the letter was vague about those threats, but the classified addendum to the letter specifically names Sen Ron Johnson’s investigation as a vehicle for “laundering” Russian propaganda for the foreign influence campaign aimed at denigrating Biden.
The addendum states that the Ukrainian lawmaker linked to the Kremlin, Andrii Derkach, sent information packets about Biden to Johnson, Grassley and other Trump stooges who have pushed similar Russian conspiracy theories, as part of Putin's disinformation campaign on America.
NCSC Director William Evanina, along with other senior national security officials, briefed lawmakers in multiple classified sessions in late July and August. His statement explicitly accused the Ukrainian politician, Derkach, of undermining Biden through weaponized leaks. Derkach is known to have met late last year with Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
The packets were sent by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who met with Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani in Ukraine last December. Andrii Derkach, who was formerly aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, is also an alumnus of Moscow’s FSB academy, formerly known as the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. Andrii Derkach’s father Leonid was a KGB operative who later became the head of Ukrainian intelligence, and who was fired in 2004 shortly before Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
The packets were sent late last year to Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declined to answer a colleague's question about whether he had received derogatory information about Joe Biden from Andrii Derkach.
During that closed-door meeting in late July — a transcript of which was made publicly available — Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of Russian propaganda were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham. Nunes refused to answer the question.
Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received" by Nunes. 😲
That evidence, according to committee officials, is in the form of a DHL shipping receipt that was sent to the Intelligence Committee’s majority office shortly after the package was sent to Nunes..
"If any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation-state, or anybody acting on behalf of a nation-state, about influencing or interfering with an election then that's something the FBI would want to know about,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on June 12, 2019 — a day before Trump rebuked him and said he would probably accept such help.
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“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are clear. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump, democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
Semper Fi..
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Let's be perfectly clear, Trump does not believe in democracy, justice, or the rule of law, because those American ideals and institutions are his biggest enemies. Trump has spent his fraudulent life believing that he is above the law, and therefore he should be allowed to do whatever he pleases, without any criticism, or repercussions,,which is why he believes he can actually pardon himself. This mindset is one of the reasons he's been sued more than 4000 times. Trump University is a perfect example. If it were not for justice and the rule of law, his fake University would still exist, and he would still be conning Americans out of thousands of dollars. The same goes for his fake charity foundation, which is now being sued by the state of NY. He and his kids were using it for their own personal gain. That's not how charity foundation are suppose to work. Once again, he was thwarted by his enemies, justice, and the rule of law. The best example of Trump's contempt for democracy, justice, and the rule of law, is his unconscionable admiration for dictators like Putin and Kim Jung Un. These two dictators are above the law in their own countries, and Trump clearly sees himself as one of them. How else would one explain Trump's shameless fawning over Kim Jung Un, and Putin, or the way he seems to long for their approval of him, the way a child longs for the approval of his parents.
September 2016 Trump praises Putin's 'strong control' over Russia and said he was 'far more' of a leader than Obama, during a commander in chief forum on NBC.
"I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing' -- the man has very strong control over a country. I think when he calls me brilliant I'll take the compliment, okay?' If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.'
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un's control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
Last but not least, Trump has a pathological fear, and visceral hatred of the truth. Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal" stated that "Lying is second nature to Trump. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true. Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said..
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Let's be clear, Flynn didn't lie to Pence or Trump about his contacts with the Russians, it was Trump and Pence who lied to the American people, because they knew all along about his contacts with the Russians. He was literally acting on their behalf.
When Trump fired Michael Flynn, in Feb 2017, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official and then lied to Pence and others about the interactions. But emails among top transition officials, show that Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents showed that Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
After learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia.
On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
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Lauri Pfeifer
You are clearly confused. The Saudis bought Trump years ago.
Trump:
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
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Trump said that our men and women in uniform, and America’s fallen buried in Arlington Cemetery, are suckers and losers. Well if we allow Trump to steal this election, which he has already admitted to trying to do, and turn America into a dictatorship, then his reprehensible comments about our fallen, our veterans, and our active duty service members, will become true. Because it would mean that they all served, sacrificed, and died for nothing.
Semper Fi..
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are clear. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump, democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
Trump: "The men and women who serve in our military, along with America's fallen in Arlington, are nothing more than 5uckers & lo5ers. And to prove it, I'm going to destroy the America that they served, fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice for. And republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Lindsey Graham, are going to help me do it."
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Nixon's ghost has to be laughing itself silly right now. Because Trump tried to pull a repeat of Nixon's Saturday NightMassacre.
One of the most scandalous episodes of the Watergate scandal, the “Saturday Night Massacre” came on October 20, 1973, when Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus.
On October 20, 1973, in an unprecedented show of lawlessness, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, but both men refused and resigned their posts in protest. The role of attorney general then fell to Solicitor General Robert Bork, who reluctantly complied with Nixon’s request and dismissed Cox. Less than a half hour later, the White House dispatched FBI agents to close off the offices of the Special Prosecutor, Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General.
Nixon’s attack on his own Justice Department came with grave consequences. More than 50,000 concerned citizens sent telegrams to Washington, and 21 members of Congress introduced resolutions calling for Nixon’s impeachment.
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Trumps presidency was a world-wind of lies, obfuscation, unbridled buffoonery, thievery, treason, chaos, nepotism, cronyism narcissism, criminal negligence, skullduggery, moral turpitude, lost lives, and sanctioned lawlessness. Simply put, it was a menagerie of endless horrors..
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The 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, they also received funding from Saudi Arabia to plan their attack while they were here in America. But none of that matters to Trump. His first trip abroad as President was to Saudi Arabia, so he could kiss the rings of his Saudi benefactors.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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I'll stop calling Trump a Russian asset when he finally stands-up for America, and condemns Putin for engaging in cyber-espionage against America during the election. In other words, I'll be calling Trump a Russian asset for the rest of my life.
Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory. The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle, by exploiting their hubris, their insatiable greed, naivety, lack of patriotism, and by exploiting Trump's malignant narcissism. Trump and his people presented themselves as easy targets.
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Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from the president and his sycophants. Trump, Fox, and other republicans, have all become proxies for Putin and his propaganda and disinformation campaign on America. By continuing to peddle Putin's long debunked conspiracies, they are wilfully volunteering themselves to become cogs in Putin's campaign to weaken America.
Mark my words, between Trump, Putin, white supremacists, Barr, and Moscow Mitch, anything is possible. They will become even more desperate as November draws nearer.
This election is all about saving America and our democratic republic from tyranny, and authoritarianism.
Trump vs America, who's side are you on?
MAKE A DECISION...
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Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino..
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican" Trump said.
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke.
"There is no question that Charlottesville wouldn’t have occurred without Trump. It really was because of his campaign and this new potential for a nationalist candidate who was resonating with the public in a very intense way. The alt-right found something in Trump. He changed the paradigm and made this kind of public presence of the alt-right possible.
--Richard Spencer, Alt-right leader and white-supremacist
David Duke, the former Klan leader, who participated in the Charlottesville rally, called it a “turning point” for his own movement, which seeks to “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
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Meanwhile, Trump is holding another cult /klan rally.
Trump said he’d clean the Washington swamp. His cultists bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. His cultists bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. His cultists bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
Trump said he would be working so much that he wouldn't have time to play golf. His cultists bought it. Trump has now played golf more than any other president before him. Trump has played golf 68 times to date, at a cost of at least 79 million dollars to the taxpayers. compared to Obama's 37 times during the same period. Trump actually golfs more now, than he did before he became president.
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The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Donald's criminal organization, and they expected a return on their investment. Protection being one of the things the Saudis expected in return, and they received that protection from Trump and Jared.
Donald's presidency amounted to nothing more than a 4 year long smash&grab for him and his pointless kids...Jared included.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Jared also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia.
Jared's family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
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Trump's own National Security Adviser John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
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Having a moronic sociopath like Trump as your leader/president during a life or death crisis, is probably the worst case scenario imaginable. A person as profoundly ignorant and divorced from reality as Trump, should never be placed into a position of power or leadership. Especially when the safety, health, and lives of others are at stake.
It's no secret that Trump hates it whenever anyone tries to tell him the truth. That's why he has fired all of the most qualified and experienced people within his cabinet and administration. He's now left with an unqualified staff of C and D list sycophants, grifters, nincompoops, scallywags, and the most unprincipled neophytes ever assembled. These yes men will say and do anything in order to avoid the wrath of the orange bully's ire. Not only will they avoid telling him the truth, they will refrain from correcting him whenever he makes false and dangerous declarations about the coronavirus.
They will instead focus on telling him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear are lies and false narratives that match the alternative facts in his head. Whenever Trump says "the square peg goes into the round hole" he wants them to agree with him. And if you tell him that he's wrong, he will accuse you of being a never Trumper, and of plotting against him
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For decades, Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia is connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which Trump has been compromised.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took outt full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mafia..
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin..
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More proof that republicans still have no new ideas, or vision for the future. Every election it's always the same with them: fear mongering, scapegoating poor people, war on Christians, abortion, and oh god they're coming for our guns. And while their base is preoccupied with chewing on that same same old red meat, republicans are busy creating even more welfare for corporations, banks and the most wealthy, like giving them a 2 trillion dollar tax cut, a tax cut that the middle and lower class will have to pay for.
Republicans have demonized anyone who wants to actually work for the people by labeling them as socialists, or radical left extremists. If you try do anything that will directly improve the lives of middle and lower class Americans, then you're labeled as an evil socialist, but if you're interested in providing welfare to billion dollar industries, corporations and the most wealthy, like giving them massive tax cuts, well then you're a god fearing, red blooded American capitalist. It is easily the most sinister and diabolical trick in the Republican playbook, and they've been using it for decades now. Republican voters really need to wake up, and stop voting against themselves.
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Yes he has.
As White House counsel under President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history. Dean gave and interview after Trump was elected in 2016.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
In Trump, Dean says he has observed many of his former boss’s most dangerous traits—obsessive vengefulness, reflexive dishonesty, all-consuming ambition—but none of Nixon’s redeeming qualities.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle.
The Atlantic, January 17, 2017
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On March 25, 2019
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday he had told Sen. John McCain to give the FBI the dossier on the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, a revelation that comes after Trump repeatedly assailed the late Arizona Republican over the issue.
Last week, Trump accused McCain of handing over the document “for very evil purposes.”
Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters Monday McCain showed him the dossier when he received it in late 2016
And I told him the only thing I knew to do with it, it could be a bunch of garbage, it could be true, who knows? Turn it over to somebody whose job it is to find these things out, and John McCain acted appropriately,” Graham said.
McCain was not made aware of the Steele dossier until Nov. 18, 2016 — after Trump had won the election.
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Last year during a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Trump has told outrageous lies about helping first responders on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack..
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Geoff Gyro
Well written and very informative.
A Russian state-sponsored propaganda radio program that launched in Kansas City, Mo., in January may appear to be impartial to left or right politics, but its goal is to divide Americans, according to a New York Times report.
Liberty-based Alpine Broadcasting Corp. has agreed to lease air time on three local radio stations — KCXL 1140 AM, 102.9 FM and 104.7 FM — to push out the Russian government’s “Radio Sputnik” disinformation six hours a day in the KC area. It’s a nonstop deluge of propaganda promoting the interests of the plutocrats whose influence has increasingly steered Russian foreign and domestic policy under Putin.
Putin has been playing the long game with Western media for years. He wants to weaken our nation by eroding the public’s trust in our institutions, the free press being one of his prime targets. U.S. intelligence agencies are unanimous in warning that Putin uses misinformation to divide — in the hopes of conquering.
Radio Sputnik was launched by Alpine Broadcasting Corporation of Liberty, Mo., on Jan. 1, making KC the second city in the American city to air the radio program. The first city was Washington, D.C.
Alpine Broadcasting Corporation owner Pete Schartel took the deal because Radio Sputnik pays $30,000 a month to broadcast in Washington. That amounts to $2 million over three years, beginning in December 2017 for the Washington broadcasts.
According to RM Broadcasting’s Foreign Agents Registration Act filing, the fee is $324,000 for three years, or $49.27 per hour, in Kansas City. Schartel said he gets $27.50 of that hourly rate.
The whole situation has locals in the area who tune into 104.7 FM for the old programming, like jazz, very angry.
“Who needs a ridiculous Red Dawn invasion,” one listener said.
“Your overlord, Mr. Putin, will be addressing you soon, so it’s best to prepare now,” another commenter wrote.
An editorial in the Kansas City Star warned listeners to “beware,” adding that “it’s sad, but not astonishing, that an American entrepreneur would put business above patriotism.”
This latest development shows a lot of similarities to Russia’s efforts to sow discord and divide Americans before the 2016 election..
The deal was brokered by Florida-based firm RM Broadcasting, which searches for airtime to sell to Rossiya Segodnya, Radio Sputnik’s parent company.
Last year a federal judge in Florida ruled against RM Broadcasting’s owner, Arnold Ferolito, after he sued to prevent the Justice Department from forcing him to register as a foreign government agent.
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Daniel fmatosrivera
It's a close as it gets to stolen Valor. He said he was right there helping 1st responders.
During a ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders that the legislation “provides pensions for those who are suffering from cancer and other illnesses stemming from the toxic debris they were exposed. Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. ”He then told an outrageous lie when he said, “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
It sounds like Trump wants to claim victim status too. He can't stand to see anyone other than himself being viewed as a victim. He probably wants to receive money form the 9/11 compensation fund by claiming he was there with the 1st responders, which he clearly wasn't.
Trump has told similar egregious lies about his whereabouts on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😂😲😄
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
During a 2015 rally, Trump claimed he watched the 9/11 attacks from a window in Trump Tower.
“Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that,” he said.
There’s just one problem — Trump Tower is more than four miles away from ground zero.😄
If Trump will lie about being at ground zero with 1st responders, it means he will lie about any and everything, and he does.
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Trump sowed the seeds of the BIG LIE even before election day. Deep down, Trump knew that he was going to lose, so like the sociopath that he is, he poisoned the well, and sowed the seeds of anger, doubt, violence, and extremism..
Trump: "If you only count the votes that were for me, I win easily -- by a landslide."
August 17 2020.
Trump: "The only way "WE'RE" going to lose this election, is if it's rigged, remember that."
The election wasn't rigged, the mind's of Trump's followers were rigged..
Rachel Powell: "Okay Kids, Mommy's going to DC to storm the Capitol and overturn our democracy. Now I want you all to behave yourselves, and don't do anything "crazy" while I'm away storming the Capitol." 😲
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Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory. The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle by exploiting their hubris, insatiable greed, naivety, and Trump's own megalomaniacal ego. They presented themselves as easy targets.
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Make no mistake, Trump supporters are just like him. They don't believe in democracy or our Constitution. They hate everything America is suppose to represent and stand for. Trump supporters are NOT patriots by any stretch of the imagination.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
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Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
"Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.
Aristocracy with the meaning - the best are ruling.
People never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its "people's sovereignty" the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized."
--Joseph Goebbels
"Our starting point is not the individual.
We do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe theNaked … Our objectives are different."
--Joseph Goebbels
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Trump likes to brag about being charitable, which turns out to be another one of his many cons. In a 1996 Manhattan ribbon-cutting ceremony for a charity called the Association to Benefit Children. The association was celebrating the grand opening of a nursery school that would serve children with AIDS. Trump unexpectedly appeared at the event and took a seat on on stage alongside top donors, even though he had never donated to the charity. The seat he took belonged to Steven Fisher, a developer who had donated a hefty sum to help the charity build the nursery.
“Nobody knew he was coming,” Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais, told the Post. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. He just gets up on the podium and sits down.” Trump had never donated to the charity.
Trump played the part of a big donor convincingly. Photos from the event show Trump smiling, right behind Giuliani, as the mayor cut the ribbon.” Trump later performed the macarena with Giuliani, Kathie Lee Gifford, and crowd of children, and then slipped out of the function without donating one red cent to the charity.
The time Trump's now defunct charity foundation gave $264,631 to fix a fountain outside one of his hotels. The biggest donation that Trump’s fake foundation ever gave appears to have been to contribute to fixing a fountain outside of the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. “It shows you what this "foundation" was all about. Which was basically all about advancing Trump’s interests,” said Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Georgetown University.
The time Trump grabbed the spotlight at an event honoring an employee. For years, Trump relied on longtime employee Barbara Res to convince contractors to donate to charity galas sponsored by then-wife Ivana. But when she got an award, Trump didn’t buy any tables at the gala or sponsor the event as was customary for the employers of the honorees. He bought a $100 ticket to the event and then managed to convince someone to give him the microphone. He spoke for 15 minutes and made it seem like he had been a big contributor to the event.
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Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. And they all got a big laugh out of it, at America's expense. Let that sink in for a moment.
On July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Trump threw America and the men and women in our intelligence agencies under the bus once again when he sided with Putin.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
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Trump criticized Dems who did not applaud during his first State of the Union address. “They were like death and un-American,” he said. “Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?”
Trump is very reminiscent of Stalin in this way. You can see it in him during this SOTU address. He literally pauses for the applause, and he even applauds himself.
During Stalin's reign of terror, he demanded a long and enthusiastic applause, and standing ovations whenever he gave a speech. As a result, the applause and ovations he received became largely panic-driven. People feared that the first person to stop clapping would be the first to be called an enemy of the state, and be hauled off to a gulag. The clapping and ovations would last up to 10 minutes. Failure to applaud could certainly be considered treason. So the sheeple went on and on, clapping and shouting “Long live Comrade Stalin,” “Glory to our beloved Comrade Stalin," clapping to the point of exhaustion, and until the palms of their hands bled.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described what the surreal scene looked like in his book, The Gulag Archipelago:
“The applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly…Nine minutes! Ten!…Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers.”
At last, after eleven minutes of non-stop clapping, the director of a paper factory finally decided enough was enough. He stopped clapping and sat down—a miracle!
“To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down,” Solzhenitsyn says.
That same night, the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years. Authorities came up with some official reason for his sentence, but during his interrogation, he was told: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”
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Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality.
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
"Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.
Aristocracy with the meaning - the best are ruling.
People never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its "people's sovereignty" the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized."
--Joseph Goebbels
"Our starting point is not the individual.
We do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked … Our objectives are different."
--Joseph Goebbels
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According to Trump, every life lost will be worth it if he can win reelection.
Trump won't hesitate to sacrifice more American lives in his attempt to win reelection. The thing we must all remember, is that Trump is a narcissist, and a sociopath.
A sociopathic narcissist like Trump is a person on a quest for power and control, who uses the love and admiration of others as a tool to dominate and manipulate, and who goes about all of this thinking that it is his right and that he is justified. There will be no guilt, no apologies, and no remorse coming from the narcissistic sociopath.
Trump pretty much checks every box for the diagnostic criterion of a sociopathic narcissist.
Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They seek out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired.
Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Some of the problems a sociopathic narcissist like Trump will face include: Trouble handling criticism, easily becoming impatient or angry if they don't think they are being treated correctly. They feel easily slighted. They try to belittle others or react with rage to make themselves seem superior. They have trouble adapting to change and dealing with stress. They secretly feel insecure, vulnerable, and humiliated, and have a very fragile self-esteem.
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If Trump's supporters were capable of critical thinking, they would have known that he had a slim chance of winning reelection with his horrible approval ratings. In 4 years, Trump's approval rating never rose above 50%. He had the worst approval ratings of any president in modern history. So what does Trump do? He created the BIG LIE that the election was stolen from him, and his cultists swallowed the BIG LIE hook line and sinker.
POLITICO, Gallup, and Quinnipiac University polls reported that Trump's last job approval rating is a personal low of 34%. He averaged a 41% job approval in office, a record low by four points. A Pew Research Center poll even had his final job approval rating as low as 29%. No president has ever won reelection with job approval ratings that low. And let's be clear, the only reason Trump won in 2016, was because millions of Americans stayed home and did not vote.
Trump sowed the seeds of the BIG LIE even before election day. He told his followers that the only way he could lose the election, was if it was stolen from him. Because deep down, Trump knew that he was going to lose, so like the sociopath that he is, he poisoned the well, and sowed the seeds of anger, vengeance, and extremism.
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We already know that Trump bribed the President of Ukraine with taxpayer money. This fact has been corroborated by the whistleblower, by official documents, texts messages, by the under oath testimony of multiple witnesses, by Trump's own senior white house aides and staff, by Mulvaney, and by State Department officials, and by Trump's own words. Trump's own National Security Adviser Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution clearly states, that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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The Trump criminal organization is pushing back against a proposed provision that would require the Secret Service to disclose how much it's spending on Trump's golf trips to his resorts.
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is battling with Dem senators in negotiations over legislation that would move the Secret Service back to the Treasury Department, where it was first housed before moving to the DHS.
The legislation is set to include a stipulation that the Secret Service disclose on a semiannual basis the amount being spent on presidential travel for the president and his adult children. “Mnuchin came to me last year with a proposal to move the Secret Service to the Treasury Department,” Sen Feinstein said in a statement. “As part of that effort, I proposed that the cost of presidential travel be included for greater transparency, accountability and oversight associated with protection during travel of presidents and their families.”
Mnuchin agreed to the financial disclosure provision, but like a true Trump sycophant, Mnuchin is against the 120-day requirement, and instead wants to hold off on revealing the cost of the president’s trips until after the election. 😲
That's like a used car salesman telling you that he will tell you the past mechanical problems of a car, but only after you've purchased it from him.
The Secret Service is required to report semiannually the cost of protecting Trump's Children of the Corn, or non-White House residence, the Trump criminal organization failed to do so in either 2016 or 2017. The White House also dodged questions from the Government Accountability Office about the issue for two years, after the GAO sought information on the cost of Trump's travel to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump spent one out of every five days on one his golf course last year. The GAO found that Trump's first four trips to Mar-a-Lago in 2017 cost the Secret Service $1.3 million per trip (and $3.4 million in total government spending), and the Secret Service requested $60 million in additional funding in 2017. Federal charge card expenditures revealed the Secret Service also spent at least $250,000 at Trump properties in just the first five months of Trump's term alone, and the agency has paid a king's ransom for golf carts on Trump's golf outings, spending $588,000 on golf carts since 2017. The GAO report found that Trump's sons Uday and Qusay's travel to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and the UAE in 2017 cost the Secret Service $396,000 in total—and they've done plenty of traveling since.
Trump has spent nearly a third of his "presidency" at his properties. The GAO report reports that the Secret Service may have spent as much as $28 million JUST on Trump's trips to Mar-a-Lago by now. But that would be still just a fraction of his total travel costs. President Obama—whom Trump criticized for golfing too much—cost the government $96.9 million over 8 years with his travel, for comparison. So far Trump's golfing has cost American taxpayers more than 102 million dollars in just 3 years. Taxpayers have paid at least 81 million for Trump play on his golf course in FL, 17 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in NJ, 1 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in Los Angeles, and 3 million for Trump to play on his golf course in Scotland. And to add insult to injury, Trump is pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars from accommodations, lodging, and rental fees. The more trips to his properties, the more money he makes.
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In 2018, 8 republican lawmakers decided to celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas.
The group celebrated America's Day of independence in Moscow laughing it up with a number of key Russians, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two same two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press laughing it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Comey was fired.
What's worse is that we have no way of knowing what was said during their meetings with Russian agents and officials, because the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the gloating Russians.
It may be a coincidence that two of the eight republicans who went to Moscow for some vague reason on the Fourth of July are now mouthpieces for the Kremlin. But fortunately for me, I don't believe in coincidences.
These 8 republicans have all the signs of a GOP/GRU Russian sleeper cell. Consider: Eight Republican lawmakers—and, notably, not a single Democrat—journey halfway around the world to spend America's Independence Day with Putin’s coziest cronies. We don’t really know what happens once they get there, but we do know that the Russians are really good at both psy-ops and kompromat.
It would explain why republicans like Johnson, Kennedy and others have been regurgitating Russian propaganda almost word for word.
It’s like the tv series, "The Americans" but with actual Americans.
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Trump's demagoguery is associated with past and present dictators, and it appeals to the worst nature in people. Demagoguery isn't based on reason, issues, and doing the right thing; it's based on stirring up fear and hatred to control people. Scapegoating is one of the most fundamental demagogic techniques. Blaming all of his troubles, crimes, or bad optics on other groups, usually the media, or people of different ethnicity, this is done by projection. Projection is absolutely necessary for Trump's scapegoating to be effective..
Demagogues have found that ridiculing or insulting others is a simple way to shut down reasonable and rational debate, especially with an unsophisticated audience, like what we've seen at Trump's rallies. A common demagogic technique is to pin an insulting epithet on an opponent, by saying it repeatedly, in speech after speech, when saying the opponent's name or in place of it. This is easily one of Trump's favorite demagogic tools.
Demagogues like Trump will choose his words for their effect on their audience's emotions, usually without regard for factual truth or the real severity of the danger. Some demagogues are opportunistic, monitoring the people and saying whatever currently will generate the most "heat". Other demagogues may themselves be so ignorant or prejudiced that they sincerely believe the falsehoods they tell. Trump falls under both categories. And When one lie doesn't work, the demagogue quickly moves on to more lies..
Since information from the press can undermine a Trump's spell over his cultists, modern demagogues like Trump will often attack and demonized the free press. They will usually claim that the media can't be trusted. They have even called out for violence against newspapers who opposed them, claiming that the press was secretly in the service of moneyed interests, or a deep state conspiracy against them, or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get him. No dictator can survive in a country that has a free press.
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Jack O’Donnell is author of the memoir "Trumped!" The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall. Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino..
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican" Trump said.
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
"I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from whyte supremacist leaders.
"There is no question that Charlottesville wouldn’t have occurred without Trump. It really was because of his campaign and this new potential for a nationalist candidate who was resonating with the public in a very intense way. The alt-right found something in Trump. He changed the paradigm and made this kind of public presence of the alt-right possible.
--Richard Spencer, Alt-right leader and whyte-supremacist
David Duke, the former Klan leader, who participated in the Charlottesville rally, called it a “turning point” for his own movement, which seeks to “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
Trump: "Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife."
Jeb Bush’s wife is Mexican-American
During the campaign, Trump impugned the character of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a native-born American, hailing from Indiana, who was hearing a class action case against Trump's now-discredited fake Trump University..
"He's a Mexican," Trump said to CNN of Curiel. "We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can't even believe."
Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of racism.
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@Deadly Delight88
Trump interview, May, 2020:
Reporter: "Mr President, I want to ask you one more question, about the 70k American lives that have been lost. Grandparents, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters... we've lost more people now than we lost in the Vietnam War. What do you want to say to those families tonight?"
"First I want to say that we all warriors now. And as warriors, some of them are going to die. I always felt 70 80 90 100 thousand people. And as horrible as that is....we're talking about filling up Yankee Stadium with death. BUT as horrible as that is, the number is probably going to be a lot higher than that."
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A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
At the time of his deth, Jim Jones held such power over his followers that he was able to direct more than 900 of them to participate in a ma55mur.der-sui.cide.
Jones was the leader of the Peoples Temple, a ministry of his own devising that convinced hundreds of Americans to move to his compound, known as Jonestown, in Guyana.
"I thought he could heal because I saw healings and I thought they were real," said former Peoples Temple member Leslie Wagner-Wilson. "He was a master of manipulation, but you saw him with this dark hair, the sunglasses, and the way that he spoke -- he was a great orator -- and it moved you, it inspired you because he was so passionate. And so I was just enthralled."
As time went on, former members said Jones became more extreme.
"His behavior became totally irrational," said Williams, one of the former members. "You begin to just go with the flow out of fear. Fear of the fact that if you left the church, what you might experience, what danger might be brought to you."
In 1974, Jones leased more than 3,800 acres of isolated land in the jungle from the Guyanese government. By 1978, nearly 1,000 followers had moved to the Guyana compound, former members said, and food started to run out. Having been forced to give up their passports and money upon arrival, some former members said they were cut off from the outside world.
"Everyone was forbidden from reading anything because Jones said they were liars," said former member Deborah Layton. "He called it FAKE NEWS…. Jones coined fake news. Anything that was written about him he said was fake. It was all to ruin his name and his cause, and what he stood for."
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It wasn't so long when we had a president who was actually a decent human being, and who believed in science, and who believed that facts matter.
President Obama was right, Trump and republicans on Capitol Hill aren't interested in progress, liberty, democracy, or making the lives of everyday Americans better, they are only interested in power. Because republicans aren't interested in governing, they want to rule.
Today President Obama looks like America's hot exgirlfriend who has moved on, and who we probably never deserved in the first place.. 😔
Trump is the gross rebound hook-up that happened at last-call at the bar where we were downing our sorrows, and we're ashamed to tell people about her.😭
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Gaslighting, pettiness, and reckless obstruction is the official republican party platform.
For the GOP, It's all about the pursuit of,power, and the egregious abuse of that power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing. Because republicans aren't interested in governing, republicans want to rule.
Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. Conservatives tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. Kellyanne's
use of the term "alternative facts" is a perfect example. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. They exhibit all the traits and characteristics of fascism.
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Wyoming Horseman
One of the key questions that congressional investigators have for Kushner is why he ignored the intelligence community’s warnings about Russia. “Once it became public that they were interfering in our election, which was in June, why did you continue to have contacts with them?”
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by Jared Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
What Kushner tried to do is exactly what American traitors have done in the past when they've decided to start working for the Russian government. It's basically what Aldrich Ames did in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Union Embassy in DC, and turned over highly classified information to the Russians.
In fact, Kushner never raised Russia’s meddling during his two post-election meetings with Russians, according to his own accounts. Kislyak contacted Kushner on November 16th, and they met on December 1st. Once again, the Russians seemed to have a level of access to the Trump campaign that other countries, including Western allies, could only dream of. In his testimony, Kushner confirmed that at this meeting, which took place in Trump Tower, he and Kislyak and Michael Flynn, the incoming national-security adviser, who also attended, discussed using communications equipment at the Russian Embassy.
Former CIA Director Gen.Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach. “Would they take the meeting?” he said. “So, then you get the willingness. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. So, while Kushner claimed that the meeting was irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
The Kushner-Kislyak relationship continued. On December 13th, at Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had—“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
The reason why Trump never went through with the Moscow hotel was because Obama placed economic sanctions on the Russian bank that Trump needed to finance the hotel. Once that happened, the deal was officially dead. The sanctions were placed on the bank after the Russian hacking was discovered. Trump never had enough money to finance the building of such a massive hotel. The sanctions Obama placed on the Russian bank prevented any Americans from doing business with it. True story. Trump conveniently left all of that out. The Russian VTB bank is partially owned by the Kremlin, and remains under US sanctions.
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Wyoming Horseman
So why should we believe anything that Trump says, when he can't even tell the truth as to whether or not he ever met Putin before the election.?
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
Trump tells lies that only a 5 year old would tell.
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Wyoming Horseman
For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump...
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News..
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Wyoming Horseman
In a 2016 BBC interview, Trump lied when he had no business dealings with Felix Sater, a felon with ties to the Russian mob, and the Trump Soho real estate debacle. When the interviewer pressed Trump about his connections to Sater, Trump became frustrated and walked out of the interview by making a lame excuse about having a bunch of people waiting for him downstairs.😂 He looked like a caged rat.
The video is on YouTube. It's titled: Donald Trump's Business Links to the Mob-BBC News Night.
According to Felix Sater, who built the Trump Soho condominium tower in Lower Manhattan and partnered with Trump on several other projects, Trump didn’t lose sleep over where the money to build his branded properties came from.
“I would show him a deal and he’d say ‘let’s go,’” recalled Sater, who once occupied an office down the hall from the future president in Trump Tower. “The due diligence part was kind of light.”
At a panel hosted by The New Yorker magazine where he shared the stage with journalists Adam Davidson, Ruth Marcus and David Barstow, Sater shared some insights into the president’s relationship with Russia.
Sater acknowledged that Trump has an affinity for Russian investors, but according to him the reason is mundane. “Donald Trump loved Russian buyers for one very simple reason: their checks cleared, and quickly,” Sater said.
Asked if money was laundered through Trump properties, Sater replied “yes and no,” pointing to his Trump Soho co-developer Tamir Sapir as an example. “He made his money, when the Soviet Union collapsed, in the oil business. Rightly, wrongly, stole it, deserved it, didn’t deserve it… he took all that money and invested it in New York real estate,” Sater said of the late Sapir.
Sater’s Bayrock Group built Trump Soho in partnership with the Sapir Organization and leased the Trump name for the property. Trump hired him as a “senior adviser” in 2010 and gave him a Trump Organization business card. That year, the three companies were sued for allegedly lying about sales at trump SoHo. Sater tried to broker a Trump-branded real estate development in Moscow in 2015, while he was running for president.
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Wyoming Horseman
A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. Trump was 4 billion dollars in debt, and American banks had stopped loaning him money after multiple bankruptcies. Trump was financially ruined until the Russians bailed him out. "They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
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Wyoming Horseman
Trump's interest in doing business in Russia was first piqued in 1986, when he met the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin and they began discussing building a "large luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin in partnership with the Soviet government," as Trump recounted in his 1987 book, "The Art of the Deal."
Trump traveled to Russia in 1987 to survey potential locations for his hotel as landmark policies like perestroika and glasnost made the Soviet Union more open to foreign investments. Trump went back to Russia in 1996 and announced a plan to invest $250 million in Russian real estate and slap his name on two luxury residential buildings.Trump boasted about his plan when he met the Russian politician Aleksandr Lebed in New York in 1997, telling Lebed, "We are actually looking at something in Moscow right now ... Only quality stuff. And we're working with the local government, the mayor of Moscow, and the mayor's people. So far, they've been very responsive
Trump began seeing significant returns from Russian investments in US properties bearing the Trump name in the 2000s. A Reuters investigation last in 2017 found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, for instance.Reuters noted that its tally of Russian investors may be conservative. At least 703 — or about one-third — of the owners of the 2,044 units in the seven Trump buildings are limited liability companies, or LLCs, which have the ability to hide the identity of a property's true owner.
In the mid-2000s, the Trump Organization partnered with a company called the Bayrock Group, contracting it to pursue a development deal in Moscow. This effort was led by the Russian-born businessman Felix Sater, a man Trump lied about even knowing, and who's become a key figure in Mueller's investigation and Cohen's plea deal. At a 2008 conference, Trump Jr. also said, "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." In the 18 months prior to the conference, Trump Jr. made six trips to Russia.
In 2013, Trump traveled to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. During the visit, he said, "I have plans for the establishment of business in Russia. Now, I am in talks with several Russian companies to establish this skyscraper."In 2015 and 2016, Cohen and Sater teamed up in an attempt to put up a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen said discussions on the plan lasted until June 2016, which was after Trump had clinched the GOP nomination for president.Cohen was in touch with the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin's press secretary over the matter, which reportedly included a plan to offer Putin a $50 million penthouse in the tower.
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Wyoming Horseman
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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For some strange reason, Kavanaugh, and Lindsey Graham, seem to be under the impression that he is somehow entitled to hold a seat on the Supreme Court. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kavanaugh is not entitled to a goddamn thing. However, the more than 320 million people in this country, are in fact entitled. We are entitled to have the very best people on the Supreme Court. That means that anyone, who's character, integrity, judgment, morals, and temperament is in question, has no business being a member of only 9 people who will hold sway and judgment over 320 million people.
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Trump admitted to being a Russian asset in Helsinki as he stood next to Putin. And now we've learned from the report, that Trump and his people were not only fully aware that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election, but Trump and his people actually encouraged it.
Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory.
The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle, by exploiting their hubris, their insatiable greed, naivety, lack of patriotism, and by exploiting Trump's malignant narcissism. Trump and his people presented themselves as easy targets.
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Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
● JULY 10: At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt..
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● Sept 9: Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB..
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● Sept 9: The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
● Sept.11: Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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The unredacted emails between Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget officials revealed that between June and September — when the Ukrainian aid was ultimately released following the whistleblower's complaint — the Defense Department repeatedly asked the OMB why the military aid was being held up.
The unredacted emails were secured through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act launched by the Center for Public Integrity. The DoD warned several times that continuing to withhold the aid violated the Impoundment Control Act, which stipulates that if the federal funds are not spent on their designated purpose within a certain period, they will be taken, or impounded, by the Treasury Department.
The timeline of Trump's impeachable acts, and the DoJ sloppy attempt at a cover-up:
● June 19, OMB aide, Robert Blair, learned that Trump was questioning the delivery of the aid package, at which point Blair told Russell Vought, the acting head of the office, that "we need to hold it up."
● That day, another OMB official, Michael Duffey, emailed the acting Defense Department comptroller, Elaine McCusker, and copied Mark Sandy, an OMB official on national-security programs, to ask if she had "insight on this funding."
● After McCusker explained on June 25 which companies were producing the military equipment and said that only $7 million of the Pentagon's $250 million part of the package had been spent, Blair told Mick Mulvaney on June 27 that they should "expect Congress to become unhinged" by withholding the aid.
● July 25, Sandy officially froze the Ukraine aid. This was also the day Trump spoke with President Zelensky on the phone and asked him to launch a bogus investigation on Joe Biden and his son. Shortly after Trump's call, Duffey emailed several Pentagon officials and asked them to "please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds." He requested that the recipients keep the directive "closely held to those who need to know" because of "the sensitive nature of the request."
● McCusker replied that same day and asked whether the OMB had cleared the hold with the Defense Department's lawyers. This was the first sign of the Pentagon's concerns about the legality of withholding the aid.
● July 26, John Rood, the head of policy at the Pentagon, emailed Defense Secretary Mark Esper a readout of a meeting in which top national-security officials voiced their "unanimous support" for sending the security assistance. On August 9, McCusker warned Sandy, Duffey, and other senior OMB officials that if the aid was not released soon, it might affect the "timely execution" of the program. "We hope it won't and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement," she wrote. The DOJ redacted this warning from McCusker, which, notably, contradicted the OMB's talking points.
● August 12, when it became clear that Trump would continue the aid freeze, McCusker emailed Duffey and asked him to include language in a footnote in a budgeting document to reflect the growing risk of withholding funding. The language was not included, and the request was redacted in the initial document release.The DOJ also redacted several emails from McCusker near the end of August raising additional legal questions about withholding the aid and the possibility that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.
● August 28, after Politico publicly revealed the aid freeze, the OMB's general counsel, Mark Paoletta, sent around talking points including that "no action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year."
● McCusker pushed back, writing: "I don't agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks." Her response was initially redacted.
● As September came around, McCusker raised concerns about whether the Defense Department would be "adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause." She added, "I realize we need to continue to give the WH as much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the fiscal year."
● September 9, Duffey sent McCusker a misleading email suggesting that if the president greenlighted the aid but the Pentagon was not able to obligate the funding, it would be on the Pentagon and not the OMB.
● McCusker responded: "You can't be serious. I am speechless."
● September 11, after Congress became aware of a whistleblower's complaint accusing Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election, Duffey emailed McCusker and said the president had lifted the hold on Ukraine's military aid.
● "Glad to have this behind us," he wrote.
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Trump admitted to being a Russian asset in Helsinki as he stood next to Putin. And now we've learned from the report, that Trump and his people were not only fully aware that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election, but Trump and his people actually encouraged it..
The day after Trump fired Comey, he invited the Russian Ambassador and the Russian foreign minister to the Oval Office, and bragged to them how he had just fired the head of the FBI, and they all got a big laugh out of it, at America's expense..
On July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Trump threw America and it's intelligence agencies under the bus once again when he sided with Putin.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle, by exploiting their hubris, their insatiable greed, naivety, lack of patriotism, and by exploiting Trump's malignant narcissism, and criminal nature. Trump and his people presented themselves as easy targets.
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Trump is the most prolific pathological liar in American history., and his pathological habit of lying has rubbed off on everyone around him.
A pathological liar like Trump, is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way.
Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies. Trump does this constantly at his rallies. He tries to play the victim and the hero at the same time.
Pathological liars are great storytellers. Their lies tend to be very detailed and colorful.
Even though obviously over-the-top, the pathological liar may be very convincing.
Along with being made the hero or victim in their stories, pathological liars tend to tell lies that seem to be geared at gaining admiration, sympathy, or acceptance by others.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
Trump also claimed that he lost 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend that he lost on 9/11.
A pathological liar tells lies and stories that fall somewhere between conscious lying and delusion. They sometimes believe their own lies. It’s difficult to know how to deal with a pathological liar who may not always be conscious of their lying. Some do it so often that experts believe they may not know the difference between fact and fiction after some time.
Like when Trump said that his father was born in Germany.😂 Everyone knows that his father was born in NY. When asked questions, they may speak a lot without ever being specific or answering the question.
Most people lie at one time or another. Previous research has suggested that we tell an average of 1.65 lies every day. Most of these lies are what are considered “white lies.”
Pathological lies, on the other hand, are told consistently and habitually. They tend to appear pointless and often continuous. It's been reported that Trump tells at least 12 lies per day.😲
Identifying a pathological liar isn’t always easy, unless his name is DonaldTrump. The following are some signs to help identify a pathological liar:
They often talk about experiences and accomplishments in which they appear heroic, they're also the victim in many of their stories, often looking for sympathy, their stories tend to be elaborate and very detailed, they respond elaborately and quickly to questions, but the responses are usually vague and don’t provide an answer to the question, they may have different versions of the same story, which stems from forgetting previous details, or previous lies..
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Trump and his grifter family have been on a 3 year long crime spree since Trump took office.
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
Trump has grotesquely violated the Emolument Clause. He has clearly not divested from his businesses, and he has been caught red-handed using the Presidency to boost his own personal financial gains.
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Fun fact: The emoluments clauses, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, and Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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Trump had been riding the wave of the growing economy that President Obama left him with. Trump is a pathological liar, and he will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
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So whatever happened to the Republicans as the “party of law and order”? True, Richard Nixon, who first branded the party that way, was lying when he famously said, “I am not a crook.” Both Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal rank among the most notorious examples of executive branch lawlessness in our nation’s history. Well, that was until Trump’s January 6 insurrection.
Dems have now positioned themselves as the only ones willing to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.
At the time of Watergate, authoritarians were more evenly divided between the parties, but they’ve become much more concentrated in the GOP since then. Republicans have become more inclined to lawlessness — although it's not tolerated on the part of others, of course!
The lawlessness we see today from the GOP isn’t new — just vastly more blatant than it was during Watergate. But the infrastructure supporting, defending and excusing it, is dramatically more powerful and robust, and the authoritarian mass base is much more consolidated within their voter base.
Trump’s blatant endorsement of lawlessness, has only encouraged rabid lawlessness from his supporters.
“Bullies, narcissists and sociopaths exist in every walk of life and in every town and city in every country,” Hughes said. “If encouraged by a pathological leader, this minority will enthusiastically step forward to act beyond the law, to target opponents, and violently assert their pathological values. If this process has the support of a critical mass of the general population, as Trump has, history suggests that societies can find themselves powerless to stop further descent into darkness."
--Ian Hughes
How small-town bullies andSadists had been empowered in Stalin’s Russia, as described by Ian Hughes in his book “Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy.”
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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Trump's own senior white house aides and staff, by Mulvaney, and by State Department officials, and by Trump's own words. Trump's own National Security Adviser Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
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On Dec 23, at turning point USA, Trump gave what could be considered his most asi-nine and
stupefying soliloquy to date.
“I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. (Don Quixote disagrees) I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?"
--Trump
Just let all of that sink in for a moment. Trump really enjoys giving the world peeks inside of his diseased riddled mind. I dare any Trump cultist to try and explain to me exactly what it was Trump was trying to say, or what salient point he was trying make.
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We already know that Trump bribed the President of Ukraine with taxpayer money. This fact has been corroborated by the whistleblower, by official documents, texts messages, by the under oath testimony of multiple witnesses, by Trump's own senior white house aides and staff, by Mulvaney, and by State Department officials, and by Trump's own words. Trump's own National Security Adviser Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution clearly states, that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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So last year we learned that on Don the Con's orders, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had been sending US troops to his failing Turnberry golf resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland, for the sole purpose of lining his greedy pockets with taxpayer dollars.
Then we learned that DJT wanted to hold this year's G-7 Summit at his Doral resort in Florida, so that he could again line his greedy pockets with millions in foreign money and taxpayer dollars.
Now we've recently learned that DJT asked the American ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to see if the British government could help steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland.
This is a level of corruption that we have never seen before, or even imagined. Its naked, gratuitous, egregious and overt corruption on steroids. Nixon's ghost can finally rest in peace, for Nixon is no longer the most corrupt president in American history. T.rump's face belongs on the Mt Rushmore of corruption....all by itself. At this point, they should just wrap the entire White House with yellow police tape, and declare the whole thing a crime scene..
And win or lose in November, one thing won’t change for Trump: Over the next few years, he must settle a series of TREMENDOUSLY large debts. Before the end of a theoretical second term, his company will have to refinance—or, in a far less likely scenario, pay off—nearly a half-billion dollars in loans. These debts are maturing at the worst time for Trump, whose roach hotels and resorts have been plagued by declining revenues. And that was before the pandemic pummeled the hospitality industry.
On financial disclosure forms, Trump has reported holding 14 loans on 12 properties. At least six of those loans, representing about $479 million in debt, are due over the next four years. Some are guaranteed by Trump himself, meaning a creditor could come after his personal—not corporate—assets if he defaults. If he holds onto the White House, the refinancing of these debts could take his conflicts of interest to absurd new heights. How will the public know if these deals are on the up and up or whether Trump is receiving sweetheart terms from a bank that wants an in with the president? And what might a lender desire in return for helping Trump out of a financial jam?
Trump’s biggest creditor is Deutsche Bank, the bank preferred by Russian mobsters and Oligarchs. In the late 1990s, Deutsche Bank took a gamble on Trump, whose history of bankruptcies made him untouchable by most other lenders. Deutsche’s commercial lending division learned the hard way one reason why other banks wouldn't touch Trump with a ten-foot pole: If pushed by his creditors on payments, Trump shoved back. In 2008, after he defaulted on a loan for his Chicago hotel and condo development, he filed a multibillion-dollar suit accusing Deutsche and others of contributing to the recent financial meltdown, which he blamed for his inability to repay the loan.
Nevertheless, Deutsche’s private banking division, which caters to wealthy clientele, continued to lend to Trump, giving him $125 million, spread over two loans, to finance the purchase and renovation of his Doral golf resort in 2012. Both are floating rate loans, meaning the interest rate fluctuates based on market conditions, which lending experts say usually indicates they are interest-only loans. If so, Trump probably hasn’t paid down much if any of the principal and will owe something close to the whole $125 million when the loans come due in 2023.
In 2014, Trump took out a separate floating loan from Deutsche’s private bank to bankroll the development of his luxury hotel in Washington, DC. The balance of this $170 million debt is payable in 2024. That year, Trump will also owe Deutsche between $25 million and $50 million in connection with his Chicago hotel and complex..
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Chet H.
On Dec 23, at turning point USA, Trump gave what could be considered his most stupefying soliloquy to date.
“I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. (Don Quixote disagrees) I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?"
--Trump
Just let all of that sink in for a moment. Trump really enjoys giving the world peeks inside of his diseased riddled mind. I dare any Trump cultist to try and explain to me exactly what it was Trump was trying to say, or what salient point he was trying make.
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The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
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Trump is more than happy to make 800 thousand Americans suffer until he gets what he wants, even if what he wants has been rejected by the majority of Americans.
Trump: " My immature and petulant needs, far outweighs the needs of 800 thousand Americans who will go without a pay check."
If we have so many terrorists coming across the border, why haven't we seen massive terrorist attacks across the country from these terrorists? The answer is simple...terrorists are not crossing into America at our southern border. The only terrorist attacks in America, are coming from Americans. American right-wing extremists who are plowing cars into crowds of people, and shooting up concerts, schools, clubs, bars, grocery stores, pizza parlors, movie theaters, churches, and Synagogues. Right now, you or your child, are far more likely to be gunned down by an American in a mass shooting, than being the victim of a terrorist attack at the hands of some foreigners who snuck across the southern border. REALITY MATTERS.
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Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and they went unheeded..
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable..
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable...
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A cult of personality, or a cult leader like Trump, arises when an individual uses propaganda, the big lie, spectacle, counterfeit patriotism, demonstrations and rallies, to create an idealized heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery, and praise...
“Another way to control thoughts is through the use of loaded language, which, as Lifton pointed out, is purposely designed to invoke an emotional response. When I look at the list of thought-controlling techniques—reducing complex thoughts into clichés and platitudinous buzz words; forbidding critical questions about the leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate or evil—it is astounding how many Trump exploits.”
“Cult members learn a new vocabulary that is designed to constrict their thinking into absolute, black-and-white, thought-stopping clichés that conform to group ideology. (“Lock her up” and “Build the Wall” are Trumpian examples. Even his put-downs and nicknames—Crooked Hillary, Pocahontas for Elizabeth Warren—function to block other thoughts. Terms like “deep state” and “globalist” also act as triggers. They rouse emotion and direct attention.)”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How
“A lie once told remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."
--Joseph Goebbels infamously proclaimed.
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@Maurice Harting
EVERYTHING YOU JUST STATED IS A LIE.
Trump's own people informed him of an outbreak in Wuhan China as far back as November of last year, but he refused to listen to his own intelligence agencies. The same way he refused to listen to them when they warned him about Russian cryber espionage and interference in our elections. He completely ignored them.
Trump has repeatedly lied when he claims that nobody could have predicted something like the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. But as usual, Trump's lies are basic, and easily debunked. Government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and they went unheeded..
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Days after the Jan. 3 briefing in the White House, U.S. intelligence warnings about the threat posed by the virus began appearing in Trump's daily brief. Whether Trump read those briefings is anyone's guess. But the safe bet would be that he did not bother to read them at all. Which makes his failure even more unconscionable..
It's clear that Trump's indifference and inaction, constitutes a criminal dereliction of duty, and a violation of his oath, to protect and defend this country. Amercan lives have been needlessly lost as a direct consequence of his moral ineptitude and sociopathic behavior, and for that, he must be held accountable...
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Trump's 2021 budget calls for drastic cuts to funding for the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization that would significantly reduce preparedness for a pandemic at home.
Trump’s argument for cutting spending for a federal agency at the forefront of the efforts to combat the coronavirus, is that he's a stable genius who knows more about fighting viruses and diseases than all the doctors and scientists combined. He says that windmills are the source of the coronavirus, the same way that windmills are the number cause of cancer.
The budget Trump purposed would cut Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and also wring savings from Medicare despite Trump’s repeated promises to safeguard Medicare and Social Security. It takes aim at domestic spending, which include slashing the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 26.5 percent over the next year. 😲 Because clean air and clean water are way overrated. A little lead in the water never hurt anyone.
Trump's budget also plans to cut the budget of the Health and Human Services department by 9 percent. HHS includes the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will see a budget cut even as the coronavirus spreads.
It would target the Education Department for a nearly 8 percent cut, the Interior Department would be cut 13.4 percent, and the Housing and Urban Development department would be cut 15.2 percent. The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development would be cut by 22 percent.
Even with all the proposed spending cuts, the budget would fail to eliminate the federal deficit over the next 10 years, missing a longtime GOP fiscal target. Instead, White House officials plan to say their budget proposal would close the deficit by 2035. But it would only achieve this if the economy grows at an unprecedented, sustained 3 percent clip through 2025, levels the administration has failed to achieve for even one year so far. The U.S. economy grew 2.3 percent in 2019, the weakest level since Trump took office.
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The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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All 44 presidents before DT would have been impeached, removed from office, and imprisoned for half of what he has done. A narcissistic sociopath like DT, with no impulse control, who doesn't believe in right or wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible. He is completely incapable of being corrected.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974..
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to DT, McConnell, McCarthy, Cruz, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Hawley, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
DT is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fasc.ism, wild conspiracy theories, rac.ism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. DT is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Marsha Blackburn, also known as "Moscow Marsha" has a more than decade-long history of meeting with Russian nationals/spies in Tennessee. In 2012, she met with Maria Butina’s spy master Alexander Torshin when he visited Williamson County, her home county. Torshin was there as a so called "election observer."
Torshin, now sanctioned by the U.S. and accused by Spanish authorities of mafia ties and massive money laundering, first came into contact with the NRA via a Nashville-based lawyer, Kline Preston. Torshin additionally served as an "election observer" in the state in 2012, and swung by again in 2015 for the NRA’s annual convention. Maria Butina was convicted of being a Russian spy, and sent to prison.
Since Butina’s conviction as a Russian spy , the details of her operations, as well as the expanding roster of NRA and Republican Party officials she accessed, have begun to paint a clearer picture of the broader Russian effort to infiltrate conservative groups..
Butina's plea deal contained a nugget illuminating Butina’s strategy: Following the Moscow trip she arranged for the NRA delegation in 2015, Butina wrote to her handler Alexander Torshin: “We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later.”
Blackburn is also one of 8 republican lawmakers who flew to Moscow to celebrate the 4th of July there in 2018. The group met with a number of Russian agents, and key Russians officials.
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Trump sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence taking place on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to lambast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his cult storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of Trump's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be, than he did on that day.
Trump sat in the White House, and watched the vio.lence taking place on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything, and without saying a word, other than to lambast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life from the Capitol.
Watching his cult storm the Capitol while wearing his hats and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of Trump's presidency. He has never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be, than he did on that day.
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Trump is a national disgrace.
Trump said that our men and women in uniform, and America’s fallen in Arlington, are suckers and losers. Well if we allow Trump to steal this election, which he has already admitted to trying to do, and turn America into the dictatorship he dreams of, then his reprehensible comments about our fallen, our veterans, and our active duty service members, will become true. Because it would mean that they all served, sacrificed, and died for nothing...
Trump: "The men and women who serve in our military are nothing more than suckers & losers. And to prove it, I'm going to destroy the America that they fought and died for. And republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Lindsey Graham, are going to help me do it."
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Trump and the political action committees for Moscow McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
During the 2015-2016 election season, billionaire Leonard Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Moscow Mitch was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, Lindsey Graham at $800,000, John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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So while Cruz was in Cancun, and fox, the governor of Texas, McCarthy, and other republicans were busy trying to blame AOC for the crisis in Texas, she was actually busy being productive, being a leader, and being a public servant of the people.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) helped raise more than $2 million in less than 24 hours to help bring relief to the state of Texas.
On Thursday evening, Ocasio-Cortez announced she was partnering with several Texas charities and encouraged her millions of Twitter followers to donate money to help residents in Texas.
"Team AOC is launching relief efforts for Texas starting today,” the New York Democrat tweeted Thursday evening. “Our first effort is a partnership w/5 Texas orgs getting on-the-ground relief to Texans ASAP. If you’re able, please donate here - it’ll split your contribution to all 5.”
By Thursday night, more than $1 million had been raised, and by Friday morning, the charities raked in more than $2 million. The funds are being split between The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, Ending Community Homeless Coalition, Family Eldercare, Houston Food Bank, Feeding Texas and several other charities.
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For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News..
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Thousands of Americans have needlessly died because of Trump's selfishness, criminal negligence, and his commitment to willful ignorance. And no amount of lies, deflections, spin, or gaslighting will ever change that.
After the Ebola virus outbreak, President Obama created the NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense, and he passed the directorate on to Trump in 2017 when he left office. So what happened to it?
President Obama left Trump with a global health infrastructure that was set up and informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak. President Obama left Trump an office set up in the White House that was responsible for managing pandemics, and managing global health threats. The directorate was staffed with dedicated people who were responsible for ensuring that information was acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you would have had people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve.
The directorate that President Obama left Trump with was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of a fire — all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire. So....what happened to NSC directorate that President Obama left Trump with?
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Hillary's campaign did NOT give the Steele Dossier to the FBI.
On March 25, 2019
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday he had told Sen. John McCain to give the FBI the dossier on the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, a revelation that comes after Trump repeatedly assailed the late Arizona Republican over the issue.
Last week, Trump accused McCain of handing over the document “for very evil purposes.”
Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters Monday McCain showed him the dossier when he received it in late 2016
And I told him the only thing I knew to do with it, it could be a bunch of garbage, it could be true, who knows? Turn it over to somebody whose job it is to find these things out, and John McCain acted appropriately,” Graham said.
McCain was not made aware of the Steele dossier until Nov. 18, 2016 — after Trump had won the election.
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July 16, 2018. That was the day Traitor Trump betrayed America. That was the day that every deceased American president, from Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Bush, sat straight up in their graves.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Putin was extremely strong and powerful by the way he resisted the urge to burst out laughing when Trump uttered those words.
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham,
Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have
either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself, and it reeks of corruption,
paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Trump's followers were led down a dark rabbit hole, chasing the BIG LIE that was fed to them morning noon and night, lies from the mouth of a well established con-man. What happened to them is similar to what happened to members of the Donner party.
In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly 90 emigrants left Springfield, Illinois, and headed west, led by brothers Jacob and George Donner. The Donner party decided to leave the well established trail and take a new and supposedly shorter route to California. They were instructed to get off of the main trail, and take a so called shorter route by an unscrupulous huckster named Lansford Hastings.
They soon encountered rough terrain and numerous delays, and they eventually became trapped by heavy snowfall high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They were soon reduced to mu.rder and cannibalism to survive through the winter, only half of the original group reached California the following year.
The moral of this story is simple, stay on the main roads that are well marked, and well lit. And never listen to con-men, who lead you down dark roads and rabbit holes.
As Virginia Reed, a survivor of the Donner party, said in a letter of advice to a relative traveling to California a year later:
"…Remember, never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can."
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A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.
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@mrtannermann
For decades, Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him..
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia is connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which Trump has been compromised.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took outt full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid...
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mafia...
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin..
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@allisonharper1819
Trump’s history of creepy comments about the looks of his daughter Ivanka are well known. But his younger daughter, Tiffany, has largely stayed out of the spotlight—much like her father’s equally creepy comments about her anatomy..
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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The Russian who created Putin's troll farm, and has boasted online that he helped get Trump elected, is named Konstantin Rykov. His claims of involvement with the Trump team can't be dismissed for 2 reasons: first, he is very close to Putin, and had a long history of involvement with top levels of the Russian government; and, second, his description of how Trump’s campaign put together an effective internet strategy for information warfare is very close to the evidence revealed in the Mueller Report..
Rewind back to November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election. At 11:29pm, Trump sent out the following defiant tweet: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.
Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Rykov explained what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:.
Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him (Trump) a reply, “I’m ready. What should I do?”
Trump replied with a picture. In the picture, Trump was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully giving the thumbs-up sign. Rykov would later explained how things went from there.
Konstantin Rykov is the founder of a number of lurid websites where he made a fortune posting pictures of scantily-clad women, telling dirty jokes and posting clickbait stories designed to titillate easily impressionable readers. In other words, a trashy online tabloid. Rykov is also a member of United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party, a former member of the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and a close confidante of Putin.
Here’s how Rykov described his involvement in a Facebook post he made on November 12, 2016, just after the election:
"For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the United States, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order. Our idea was insane, but realizable. In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man. Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.” British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others. At the very beginning of the brave and romantic [story] was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it."
Rykov’s comments were made only four days after the election, months before anyone was talking about Russian collusion in the 2016 election, months before the world knew about the company Cambridge Analytica, and months before Rykov would have known it wasn’t wise to discuss his alleged involvement in the campaign. his comments were also made well before details of Russian meddling in the presidential election were reported in the mainstream media. If Rykov wasn’t involved, how would he know as much as he confessed??
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Jim Jones convinced his cultists that they should give their kids cyanide laced punch, and then they should drink the same poisoned punch themselves, and they did. I am 100% certain that Trump could convince his cultists to do the exact same thing.
Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts,
pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, gaslighting, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon this past March 17th, an angry hostile woman took to the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official who will govern by the Constitution, on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
This is what happens when for the first time in American history, we have a president who openly admires dictators, and brags about how he has fallen in love with Kim Jung Un, the most despotic dictator in modern history.
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@jimingpeng5203
Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Fauci also is the longtime chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He has made many contributions to basic and clinical research on the pathogenesis and treatment of immune-mediated and infectious diseases. He helped pioneer the field of human immunoregulation by making important basic scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response.
Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of ALL TIME. According to the Web of Science, he ranked 8th out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019. Today, countless people around the world owe their very lives to Dr. Fauci, and the work he has done.
So who is this Scott Atlas guy? And why is he even talking?
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What happened on January 6 was the definition of domestic terrorism.
Domestic terrorism is defined as: violent , criminal acts committed by individuals and/ or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, or racial nature..
The Oaf Tweakers, Tool Boys, and the "Q"uacks who stormed the Capitol that day thought they were going to start a revolution, the same way their hero TMcVeigh thought he was going to start a revolution. Well look at them now. History has proven that following a BIG LIE down the rabbit hole never ends well.
Ron Johnson was one of the Republican lawmakers who flew to Moscow to celebrate the 4th of July there. 😲 I know right, that's what I said.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement." It's the same tired excuse Sen Rand Paul routinely provides to justify his own shadowy meetings with our enemies.
The group met with a number of Russian agents, and key Russians officials, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press laughing it up and high-fiving with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigating Russian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit to Moscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the “gloating” Russians.
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When Trump fired his NSA, Michael Flynn, in Feb 2017, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official and then lied to Pence,,and others about the interactions. But emails among top transition officials, show that Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents showed that Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
After learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia.
On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
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From the Daily Beast: Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist
If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifathrough her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.”
In another report, Rouz cast Clinton’s criticism of Brexit as an extension of her “grievous insults and fake narratives against Russia”—an assertion that makes sense only in the context of Rouz’s multiple reports claiming Russia was framed for hacking Democrats.
In all of Rouz’s OAN segments reviewed by The Daily Beast, he is introduced as a “One America correspondent,” with no disclosure of his work for Russia’s state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.
“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”
Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putin’s election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.
One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.
Founded and helmed by 77-year-old circuit-board millionaire Robert Herring Sr., OAN launched in 2013 as an answer to the chatty, opinionated content of mainstream cable-news channels—and a place for viewers too conservative for Fox News.
Over time, the network became increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda. When Rouz joined, the network had recently shed a number of anchors and other staffers who’d bristled at the change.
Though it’s available in only a handful of cable markets, OAN’s viewership includes some influential figures, including Traitor Trump himself. Trump has already fallen for at least two fake stories after seeing them on OAN.
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Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US.
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as ““Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine.
Trump has never solved a problem in his life. Trump IS the problem. He has always been an agent of chaos and destruction.
In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to abstract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care.
The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.
Economic inequality, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, is best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them...
People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated.
The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.
But isn't conservatism about freedom? Of course everyone wants freedom, and so conservatism has no choice but to promise freedom to its subjects. In reality conservatism has meant complicated things by "freedom", and the reality of conservatism in practice, has scarcely corresponded even to the contorted definitions in conservative texts.
To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.
Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is..
The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.
Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of state terror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...
For thousands of years, conservatism was universally understood as being in opposition to democracy. Having lost much of its ability to attack democracy openly, conservatism has tried in recent years to redefine the word "democracy" while engaging in deception to make the substance of democracy unthinkable.
Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.
Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.
Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.
The main idea of public relations is the distinction between "messages" and "facts". Messages are the things you want people to believe. A message should be vague enough that it is difficult to refute by rational means.
One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact trying to take it from you. January 6 ring a bell? Trump tried to steal an election, by falsely claiming it was being stolen from him.
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have one thing in common. They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason..
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much theylove and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. That was pretty low even for Trump..
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
Semper Fi..
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Trump actually got caught trying to do basically the same thing.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times. The lies Trump told were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
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The sheer magnitude of Trump's criminal incompetence and indifference during this global health emergency is simply unforgivable, and will NEVER be forgotten.
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Obama to Trump in 2017.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
During any emergency or crisis, you will find that some people will rise to the occasion, people like Governor Cuomo, and the nurses and doctors who have been on the front lines of this crisis since day one. And unfortunately, you will have some people like Trump, who will categorically fail during a crisis. They will not rise to the occasion. Instead they will fail at the moment of truth. In the end, the true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with adversity. And the eternal question will always be, what did they do when it truly mattered?
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Trump: "So here's the good news: The virus is a hoax, this will all disappear like magic, this virus is no different than the flu, I'm doing a great job, my uncle went to MIT, and we're not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. My authority is total."
COVID-19: "So here's the bad news. I am immune to Trump's lies and gaslighting, I can't read a calendar, so I don't know when May 1 is, I can't be defeated with magic, because I am real, and magic is not. I can only be defeated with science, facts, and common sense, and your so called president is a criminally incompetent sociopath who doesn't believe in science, facts, or common sense. I am not religious, but that won't stop me from going to places of worship.
I'm nothing like the flu, but the flu is a fan of mine, and it wants to be like me when it grows up. There is no cure for me, and that's the problem. I don't recognize anyone's authority."
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On July 23, 2019, Trump said this: "I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."😲
This is clearly a man who sees himself as a dictator. Since his campaign, Trump has been trying to tell us that he doesn't believe in democracy or our Constitution. He said it when he bragged about shooting someone on 5th Ave. He said it when he bragged about falling in love with the most despotic dictator in modern history.
June 15 2018
Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018
Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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The Republican party has been replaced by a cult known as Trumpism. It's a cult rooted in lies, absurdities, wild conspiracy theories, self-deception, hypocrisy, pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience to the "Chosen One."
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are 10 warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
• There are records, books, news articles, or broadcast reports that document the abuses of the group/leader.
• Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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The Saudi Royals have invested a lot of money into Donald's criminal organization, and they expected a return on their investment. Protection being one of the things the Saudis expected in return, and they received that protection from Trump and Jared.
In 2017, Joshua Harris, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House. Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, met on multiple occasions with Jared to discuss a possible White House job for Harris.
The job never materialized, but later that year, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received that year.
An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent Kushner’s firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.
Apollo executives, including Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in Trump's massive tax cut for corporations and the most wealthy that was making its way through Washington that year. Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, was trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.
Jared also had multiple interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Ave. That year, Jared's father, Charles Kushner, pressed a Qatari official for the $500 million loan from a government-controlled investment fund. Weeks after Charles Kusher’s request was denied, Jared backed a punishing blockade of Qatar, which was enacted by Saudi Arabia.
Jared's family, which had struggled to get the financing to save their underwater skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave, were suddenly bailed out by Apollo, which had business ties to the government of Qatar, one of it's largest investors. Two weeks later, Sec of State Pompeo told Saudi Arabia that enough was enough, and the blockade was lifted.
Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that Trump championed. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
The 9/11hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, they also received funding from Saudi Arabia to plan their attack while they were here in America. But none of that mattered to Trump and Jared. His first trip abroad as President was to Saudi Arabia, so he could do the sword dance, and kiss the rings of his Saudi benefactors.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violated the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
After Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and Saudi lobbying groups became lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of 2018, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
Trump has sent thousands of our troops to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil and HIS own personal business interests.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress is rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that the Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
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Healthcare Matters
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress is rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that the Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants. The articles of impeachment were tailor made for a wannabe dictator like Trump.
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.”
― DaShanne Stokes
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. We will be back to where we were before the Declaration of Independence. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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@ivareskesner2019
Did you say degenerate?
How's this for degenerate.
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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For some strange reason, Kavanaugh, and Lindsey Graham, seem to be under the impression that he is somehow entitled to hold a seat on the Supreme Court. Brett behaved like he was a prince who was being denied his rightful seat on the throne. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kavanaugh is not entitled to a goddamn thing. However, the more than 320 million people in this country, are in fact entitled. We are entitled to have the very best people on the Supreme Court. That means that anyone, who's character, integrity, judgment, morals, and temperament is in question, has no business being a member of only 9 people who will hold sway and judgment over 320 million people.
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Helsinki July 16, 2018
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
On May 17, 2017, during a White House meeting days after Trump’s election, President Obama warned Trump about Flynn, but Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie also directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017..
The reason why Trump ignored the warnings about Flynn and his Russian ties are because Trump is a Russian asset too. And he admitted to it in Helsinki.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI prompted the DoJ to warn Trump ONCE AGAIN about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, acting AG Sally Yates, personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, Trump decided to reward Sally Yates for doing her job, and for her due diligence in warning him about Flynn, by firing her 3 days later. Let that sink in for a moment..
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Barbara Roberts
Yep, that's it.
Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, Israeli intelligence officials gathered at CIA headquarters, where they were told something astonishing: Russia, the agency believed, had “leverages of pressure” over the incoming president. Therefore, the agency advised the Israelis to consider the possibility that Trump might pass their secrets on to Russia. The Israelis dismissed the warning as outlandish. Who could believe that the world’s most powerful country was about to hand its presidency to a Russian dupe? That the United States government had, essentially, fallen?
A few months later, Trump invited Russian diplomats into the Oval Office. He boasted to them that he had fired “nut job” James Comey. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” At the same meeting, Trump passed on to the Russians a highly sensitive intelligence secret Israel had captured from a valuable source inside ISIS. It was the precise danger Israel had been cautioned about.
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Trump's followers were led down a dark rabbit hole, chasing the BIG LIE that was fed to them morning noon and night, lies from the mouth of a well established con-man. What happened to them is similar to what happened to members of the Donner party.
In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly 90 emigrants left Springfield, Illinois, and headed west, led by brothers Jacob and George Donner. The Donner party decided to leave the well established trail and take a new and supposedly shorter route to California. They were instructed to get off of the main trail, and take a so called shorter route by an unscrupulous huckster named Lansford Hastings.
They soon encountered rough terrain and numerous delays, and they eventually became trapped by heavy snowfall high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They were soon reduced to mu.rder and cannibalism to survive through the winter, only half of the original group reached California the following year.
The moral of this story is, stay on the main roads that are well marked, and well lit. And never listen to con-men who try to lead you down dark roads and rabbit holes.
As Virginia Reed, a survivor of the Donner party, said in a letter of advice to a relative traveling to California a year later:
"…Remember, never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can."
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At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it..
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
On Nov 3rd, make a decision. Who's side are you on?
Biden/Harris 2020💙
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Oh well, so much for the so called party of "law and order."
It was always a charade.
Trump and his supporters believe in law and order, right up until the moment when law and order comes for them.
In other words, it's law and order first YOU, but not for THEM.
Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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The Founding Fathers understanding of bribery was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.
The Founders placed articles of impeachment in the Constitution for the purpose of protecting our democracy. A democracy that Trump clearly has no respect for, and is trying to tear apart.
Article II, Section 4, says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic. Because if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
-- Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham Jan 23, 1999
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey "Two Faced" Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
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By refusing to protect our democratic elections, Traitor Trump, McConnell, and republicans in Congress, represent a clear and present threat to our country's national security.
We know that the Russians interfered in our elections. We know that the Russians reached out to Trump's campaign. We know that Trump's people had at least 150 meetings and contacts with Russian officials, Oligarchs and agents. We know that Trump and his people all lied about those meetings. We also know that Trump and his people encouraged Russian interference, lied about Russian interference, and ultimately they benefited from Russian interference. We know that Trump obstructed justice by telling McGahn to fire Mueller. We know that Trump obstructed justice again when he asked McGahn to write a false official white house memo stating that Trump never asked McGahn to fire Mueller.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that Trump is an illegitimate president, and a Russian asset, who is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.
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Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with Russian crime bosses for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. Russian Oligarchs as well as the Russian mafya are both connected to Russian intelligence. It's virtually impossible to tell who is who. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafya and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mob in 1984. In ‘92, the Russian mob had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mob.
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin.
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The true character of an individual will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be: at the moment of truth, when it truly mattered, what did they do? How did they respond?
In the midst of a national health crisis, when America needed a leader the most, Trump has categorically failed. He failed at the moment of truth. It has been a catastrophic failure, with lethal consequences. His lies, indifference, and downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic, will be remembered as the greatest dereliction of duty in presidential history. It is why this virus will be remembered by historians as The TrumpVirus, and rightfully so, because it didn't have to be this way. The needless loss of more than 200 thousand American lives is now Trump's legacy.
We owe it to the more than 220 thousand American souls that are no longer with us, to remove Trump from office.
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Trump's own National Security Adviser John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
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We all know what Trump was doing in February. He was golfing more than Tiger Woods, he was trolling tweeter, he was helping to spread the virus by holding a marathon of cult rallies, he was lying about the seriousness of the virus on a daily basis, and he was busy praising China for it's response to the coronavirus.. This is what happens whenever you have a fully compromised traitor as your president.
Trump praised China in a Feb 7 tweet:
"Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!"
Before that, Trump praised China and President Xi in a Jan 24 tweet....
"China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!"
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kotur28
It's not an exact quote no. But Trump has lied about helping first responders at ground zero.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders that the legislation “provides pensions for those who are suffering from cancer and other illnesses stemming from the toxic debris they were exposed. Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. ”He then told an outrageous lie when he said, “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Trump wants to claim victim status too it appears. He can't stand to see anyone other than himself being viewed as a victim. Once again, Super Narcissist had to make it all about him.
Trump has told similar egregious lies about his whereabouts on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲 Super Narcissist strikes again.
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
During a 2015 rally, Trump claimed he watched the 9/11 attacks from a window in Trump Tower.
“Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that,” he said.
There’s just one problem — Trump Tower is more than four miles away from ground zero.
But who knows, maybe Trump was trying to receive money from the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund for his poor injured eyes, and the horror that they witnessed.
NEVER FORGET
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said he thought the Chinese president’s power grab was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
On January 6, Trump tried to do exactly that. He failed.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
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As it stands now, practically anyone, and anything connected to Trump is now under investigation. His inauguration, his transition team, his Trump crime organization, his fake charity foundation, his fraudulent taxes, his tainted campaign, and his illegitimate presidency, are all under investigation. Most Americans already knew that Trump was totally unfit, and unqualified to be president, but I don't think anything prepared us for an unmitigated disaster of this magnitude. Trump's presidency has been such an unprecedented, and unimaginable debacle, that it can only be defined as a miracle. Because it cannot be explained with logic, reasoning or science.
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Trump said that our men and women in uniform, and America’s fallen in Arlington Cemetery, are suckers and losers. Well if we allow Trump to steal this election, which he has already admitted to trying to do, and turn America into the dictatorship he dreams of, then his reprehensible comments about our fallen, our veterans, and our active duty service members, will become true. Because it would mean that they all served, sacrificed, and died for nothing.
Trump: "The men and women who serve in our military, along with America's fallen in Arlington, are nothing more than suckers & lo5ers. And to prove it, I'm going to destroy the America that they served, fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice for. And republicans on Capitol Hill like McConnell and Lindsey Graham, are going to help me do it."
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All 44 presidents before DT would have been impeached, removed from office, and imprisoned for half of what he has done. A narcissistic sociopath like DT, with no impulse control, who doesn't believe in right or wrong, and believes he's impervious to consequences, is 100% incorrigible. He is completely incapable of being corrected.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974..
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to DT, McConnell, McCarthy, Cruz, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Hawley, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
DT is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fasc.ism, wild conspiracy theories, rac.ism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. DT is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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Trump's is a curse on this nation. His presidency has resulted in only chaos, destruction and death..
As a malevolent being, Trump is naturally attracted to evil, and evil is naturally attracted to him. Trump and evil are drawn to each other like moths to a flame.
Even Trump's own sister, a retired federal judge, and someone who has personally known Trump since the day he was born, said that Trump is a fraud, and a cruel human being. If Trump's own niece and sister won't vote for him, why on earth should anyone else?
They say that "the fish rots from the head" and this is true, and so does a nation. And the insidious rot that has gripped this nation, can be traced directly to the occupant in the Oval Office.?
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said it was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Trump is currently working on giving it a shot as we speak.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it..
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
On Nov 3rd, make a decision. Who's side are you on?
Biden/Harris 2020💙
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The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time last year, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American. The Treasury Department reported the debt hit $22.012 trillion, a jump of more than $30 billion in just this month.
Trump promised 4,5 and 6% GDP growth when he became president. So far, we've only seen 2.5% GDP growth during Trump's administration. President Obama on the other hand, hit 4% GDP growth four times during his administration.
President Obama’s last three years of job growth all beat Trump’s best year
Obama Monthly average of Jobs added 2014-2016 = 224,000
Trump Monthly average of Jobs added 2017-2019 = 189,000
President Obama created 1.6 million more jobs than Trump over a three-year period
Trump’s boasts about how many jobs he has added don’t include that he has generated 6.5 million jobs under his Presidency vs. the 8.1 million, OR, 1.6 million fewer than President Obama did under the same timeframe. On average, President Obama created 43,000 more jobs per month than Trump.
The national debt has been rising at a faster rate following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax-cut package after a little more than a year. The nation has added more than $1 trillion in debt in the last 11 months alone.
While GDP growth crossed over 3% in a few quarters the past three years, on a full year basis, GDP growth hit a high point of only 2.9% in 2018, With it falling back to 2.3% in 2019. This is another example of Trump's gaslighting claim that the economy could grow 4%, 5% or maybe even 6% when he was President.
The best three quarters of growth for Trump have been:
● 3Q 2017 at 3.2%
● 4Q 2017 at 3.5%
● 2Q 2018 at 3.5%
Obama’s best three quarters of growth were:
● 4Q 2011 at 4.7%
● 2Q 2014 at 5.5%
● 3Q 2014 at 5.0%
Just imagine if Trump, the king of debt and bankruptcy, had inherited a great recession like President Obama inherited. Yikes!!😲
Trump is an expert at digging financial holes, but he has never climbed his way out of one. Just ask anyone who has ever done business with him in Atlantic City and NY, or just ask the multiple banks he borrowed money from and never repaid them.
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90 minutes after Trump’s phone call, the call he used to bribe the President of Ukraine into opening up a fabricated investigation on the Bidens, Michael Duffey, a Trump-appointed senior official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker and other Trump administration officials.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration's plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional [Department of Defense] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process."
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction."
Sept 9,
The whistleblower's complaint is delivered to the House intel committee. Trump now realizes that he's been busted, and the JIG IS UP!!!😲
SEPT. 11
Two days after the House intel committee is notified of the whistle-blower complaint and opens an investigation, Trump reverses course and releases the hold on the military aid after withholding it for 55 days.
Michael Duffey's email to OMB Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Sept 11, informing her that Ukrainian funds will finally be released.
Duffey: "I will be issuing an apportionment this evening to immediately release all USAI funds for obligation. I will alert you as soon as I have signed the apportionment. Thank you."
McCusker: "Copy...what happened? Thanks
Duffey: "Still waiting on my staff to send me apportionment. Hoping to sign tonight yet. Glad to have this behind us."
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The privilege of being the only American in our history to serve as the director of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. gives me a unique perspective and a responsibility to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order is, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them.
The rule of law is the bedrock of American democracy, the principle that protects every American from the abuse of monarchs, despots and tyrants. Every American should demand that our leaders put the rule of law above politics.
As F.B.I. director, I served two presidents, one a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, who selected me in part because I was a Republican, and one a Republican, Ronald Reagan, whom I revered. Both of these presidents so respected the bureau’s independence that they went out of their way not to interfere with or sway our activities. I never once felt political pressure.
I know firsthand the professionalism of the men and women of the F.B.I. The aspersions cast upon them by the president and my longtime friend, Attorney General William P. Barr, are troubling in the extreme. Calling F.B.I. professionals “scum,” as the president did, is a slur against people who risk their lives to keep us safe. Mr. Barr’s charges of bias within the F.B.I., made without providing any evidence and in direct dispute of the findings of the nonpartisan inspector general, risk inflicting enduring damage on this critically important institution.
--William Webster, a former federal judge, and director of the F.B.I. from 1978 to 1987, and director of the C.I.A. from 1987 to 1991.
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Trump is the most prolific pathological liar in American history.
A day will come when this pathological liar will deny ever being the president.
Trump: " No one ever told me that I was the president. I don't see any reason why I would be."
A pathological liar like Trump, is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way.
Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies. Trump does this constantly at his rallies. He tries to play the victim and the hero at the same time.
Pathological liars are great storytellers. Their lies tend to be very detailed and colorful.
Even though obviously over-the-top, the pathological liar may be very convincing.
Along with being made the hero or victim in their stories, pathological liars tend to tell lies that seem to be geared at gaining admiration, sympathy, or acceptance by others.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders an outrageous lie when he said "Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent any time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
Trump also claimed that he lost 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend that he lost on 9/11.
A pathological liar tells lies and stories that fall somewhere between conscious lying and delusion. They sometimes believe their own lies. It’s difficult to know how to deal with a pathological liar who may not always be conscious of their lying. Some do it so often that experts believe they may not know the difference between fact and fiction after some time.
Like when Trump said that his father was born in Germany.😂 Everyone knows that his father was born in NY. When asked questions, a pathological liar may speak a lot, without ever being specific or answering the question...
Most people lie at one time or another. Previous research has suggested that we tell an average of 1.65 lies every day. Most of these lies are what are considered “white lies.”
Pathological lies, on the other hand, are told consistently and habitually. They tend to appear pointless and often continuous. It's been reported that Trump tells at least 14 lies per day.😲
Identifying a pathological liar isn’t always easy, unless his name is DonaldTrump. The following are some signs to help identify a pathological liar:
They often talk about experiences and accomplishments in which they appear heroic, they're also the victim in many of their stories, often looking for sympathy, their stories tend to be elaborate and very detailed, they respond elaborately and quickly to questions, but the responses are usually vague and don’t provide an answer to the question, they may have different versions of the same story, which stems from forgetting previous details, or previous lies..
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If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
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One of the most revered leaders of my beloved Marine Corps denounced Trump for his divisive and authoritarian actions against American citizens, and against our Constitution.
Semper Fi...
"I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that ‘The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine General James Mattis
June 3, 2020
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Republicans were more than ready to impeach Clinton over lying about a bj, something that did not involve 400 million in taxpayer money, something that was not a threat to our national security, and it did not involve illegally using campaign money for hush money payments to two different women, and did not involve another foreign country. But they see nothing wrong with Trump taking money that did not belong to him, taxpayer money, that was appropriated by Congress, our legislative branch of government, and using it to bribe another country into interfering in our elections for his own personal benefit.
So far, Trump and his sycophantic supporters have no legitimate defense. His absurd defense so far has been to tell his followers that they shouldn't believe what they hear or see with their own eyes and ears, and they should only believe what he tells them. His other defense has been trying to convince the American people that the Constitution is a hoax, and that there is no such thing as the rule of law. So if there's no Constitution or rule of law, that means he could not have done anything wrong.....because nothing is wrong anymore.
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Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country...
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
It's safe to say that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for with Russian money.
It's why repubicans are fighting so hard to defend him instead of the Constitution. It's also why Republicans have been repeating the exact same lies and propaganda of the Russian government and Russian security services like the GRU.
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In 2018, 8 republican lawmakers decided to celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas.
The group celebrated America's Day of independence in Moscow laughing it up with a number of key Russians, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two same two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press laughing it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Comey was fired.
What's worse is that we have no way of knowing what was said during their meetings with Russian agents and officials, because the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the gloating Russians.
It may be a coincidence that two of the eight republicans who went to Moscow for some vague reason on the Fourth of July are now mouthpieces for the Kremlin. But fortunately for me, I don't believe in coincidences.
These 8 republicans have all the signs of a GOP/GRU Russian sleeper cell. Consider: Eight Republican lawmakers—and, notably, not a single Democrat—journey halfway around the world to spend America's Independence Day with Putin’s coziest cronies. We don’t really know what happens once they get there, but we do know that the Russians are really good at both psy-ops and kompromat.
It would explain why republicans like Johnson, Kennedy and others have been regurgitating Russian propaganda almost word for word.
It’s like the tv series, "The Americans" but with actual Americans.
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That letter was a plea for mercy. Unfortunately for Trump, it's much too late for that now. He has betrayed America, the Constitution, and his oath of office, and for that, he will be held accountable.
If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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July 16, 2018. That was the day Traitor Trump betrayed America. That was the day that every deceased American president, from Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Bush, sat straight up in their graves.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Putin was extremely strong and powerful by the way he resisted the urge to burst out laughing when Trump uttered those words.
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"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
―Thomas Jefferson
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Today, Trump and Republicans are telling the American people that we can no longer keep it.
America's democracy and Constitutional republic, has never been in more peril than it is right now. Trump and republicans, are attempting to reverse our victory in our War of Independence, that began 1775 and ended in 1783. They are attempting to throw it all away, like it never happened, and install a new King, a new monarch, a new tyrant, to rule over the American people. We are witnessing history folks. This is America's darkest hour.
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“There’s no English equivalent for silovik. It doesn’t translate succinctly because to create something as Machiavellian as a silovik requires both the KGB and the GRU, and then a shift from communism to capitalism, followed by a gear-grinding reverse into despotism.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb..”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Since Trump refuses to take responsibility, the American people will replace him with someone that will.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —CNBC interview..
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment— 5 — and those people are all recuperating successfully.
—Trump speech in Michigan.
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases, 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” —Trump at the White House.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump press conference.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting.
March 4: “We have a very small number of people in this country infected. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people from a cruise ship. We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump White House meeting..
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said it was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Trump is currently working on giving it a shot as we speak.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it..
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
On Nov 3rd, make a decision. Who's side are you on?
Biden/Harris 2020💙
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On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham,
Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have
either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy.
Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want.
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Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult, that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts,
pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, gaslighting, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience..
Jim Jones convinced his cultists that they should give their kids cyanide laced punch, and then they should drink the same poisoned punch themselves, and they did. I am 100% certain that Trump could convince his cultists to do the exact same thing.
Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts,
pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, gaslighting, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon this past March 17th, an angry hostile woman took to the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official who will govern by the Constitution, on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
This is what happens when for the first time in American history, we have a president who openly admires dictators, and brags about how he has fallen in love with Kim Jung Un, the most despotic dictator in modern history.
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Not so fun fact:
In 2016, a republican led Senate blocked a bill to bar guns sales to terrorism suspects just eight days after a gunman, who had been on the FBI terrorism watch list took 49 lives in a mass shooting in an Orlando FL. nightclub.
Thanks NRA and Republicans.
The problem with republicans is that they couldn't care less about what happens to Americans, well, that is until it affects them, or one of their loved ones.
Republican Mike Turner announced his support for a ban on the sales of military style weapons following the deadly mass shooting in downtown Dayton Ohio on August 4, 2019 after he discovered his daughter was almost one of the casualties.
“I believe these are necessary steps forward in protecting our country and a testament to American values, which include protecting human life," Turner said in a statement
Turner, a Dayton native, said he would also support legislation placing restrictions on high-capacity magazines as well as so-called red-flag laws, which allow police and family members to “quickly identify people who are dangerous and remove their ability to harm others.
Turner made this statement after he found out that his teenage daughter was across the street from the shooting that night and she had just missed being out on the street when the shooting started by just seconds.
So now all of a sudden he cared. He should have cared back in 2012 when 20 babies were the victims in the Sandy Hook shooting. We all should have cared.
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Everything Trump touches dies. America would not survive even another year of Trump's cult of corruption and his cult of pathological ignorance.
Why anyone would choose to listen to Trump instead of medical experts is beyond me. Call me Krazy, but if I want to know how to effectively deal with a pandemic outbreak, I'm calling Dr. Fauci and other medical experts. If I want to know how to bankrupt multiple casinos, or set up a fake university and charity foundation, or lie like it's my job, or launder money with the Russians, then I'm calling Trump, and nobody but Trump...
Trump supporters who would rather listen to Trump instead of medical experts, should not be allowed to receive any medical treatment from doctors or nurses of any kind. If they need a surgical operation, they have to call the White House and request an appointment with Trump to perform it. If they're about to give birth, they have to call the White House and request an appointment with Trump to deliver the baby. And If they're baby gets sick, Trump will be the baby's new pediatrician. If they need a root canal, Trump will perform it in the Oval Office. If they need a new pair of prescription glasses, Trump will perform their eye examination. If they've been in an accident, and are seriously injured, they can no longer be rushed to the E.R. they have to be rushed to the Oval Office where Trump will attend to their injuries.
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It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much they love and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. That was pretty low even for Trump..
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said he thought the Chinese president’s power grab was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
On January 6, Trump tried to do exactly that. He failed.
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In May of 2018, when China's President, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said it was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Donald tried to do exactly that on January 6. He failed.
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Jim Jones convinced his cultists that they should give their kids cyanide laced punch, and then they should drink the same poisoned punch themselves, and they did. I am 100% certain that Trump could convince his cultists to do the exact same thing.
Trumpism is a dystopian slavish cult that worships at the alters of hypocrisy, alternative facts,
pathological ignorance, self-righteous bigotry, authoritarianism, doublespeak, and blind dogmatic obedience.
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon this past March 17th, an angry hostile woman took to the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official who will govern by the Constitution, on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
This is what happens when for the first time in American history, we have a president who openly admires dictators, and brags about how he has fallen in love with Kim Jung Un, the most despotic dictator in modern history.
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Conservatives today rely on political institutions that brazenly undercut majority rule. The Senate, the courts, the Electoral College — all provide conservatives with structural advantages at the expense of the many. But the Right isn’t content to sit back and cash in on the tilted playing field. It actively labors to restrict voting rights, skew the census, gerrymander districts, and generally increase the sway of the country’s most anti-majoritarian institutions. When confronted with criticism, they resort to the nonsensical argument that “we’re a republic, not a democracy.”
Free speech rights, civil rights, and other protections are essential to a flourishing democracy. But conservatives’ contempt for majority rule does not spring from a concern for a beleaguered minority (unless you think big business qualifies as an oppressed group). The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies, nor do they particularly care..
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1988 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports despotism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they wants, which is to be an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
A cult of personality, or a cult leader like Trump, arises when an individual uses propaganda, the big lie, spectacle, counterfeit patriotism, demonstrations and rallies, to create an idealized heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery, and praise.
The term came to prominence in 1956, in Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, given on the final day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the speech, Khrushchev criticized the lionization and idealization of Stalin, and by implication, his Communist sidekick Mao Zedong. Mao's cult of personality, like Stalin’s, portrayed him as larger-than-life and endowed with unrivaled wisdom. Cults of personality fell out of favor in the 1950s after Khrushchev's speech, but Trump's handler Putin, has revived the practice, guiding a wave of nostalgia for Stalin as he advocates for Russian nationalism and anti-West sentiment.
A main feature of Stalinism was its cult of personality. Whereas Lenin had claimed that the workers suffered from false consciousness and therefore needed a vanguard party to guide them, Stalin maintained that the Communist Party itself suffered from false consciousness
and therefore needed an all-wise leader—Stalin himself—to guide it. The resulting cult of personality portrayed Stalin as a universal genius in every subject, from linguistics to genetics.
Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality came to us from North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the despotic dictator that Trump admires so much.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background. And when architects design new apartments and shops, he is given credit for doing so.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
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Nearly all presidents have occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 20,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully executive the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama..
• Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
• Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
• Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to his apologist Mark Meadows.
• Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
• Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-Nazis while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
• Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
• Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
• Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
• Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
• Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
• Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
• Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
• Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
• Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
• Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
• Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is deviant fascism..
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Only an illiterate imbecilic like Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice. He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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Putin's associate, Konstantin Rykov, understands the art of trolling on the internet. Rykov’s knack for creating caustic, snarky, attention-grabbing content made him millions as an internet entrepreneur and got him elected to the Russian Parliament. And now, thanks to him, the Russian government understands the art of trolling too.
Rykov made his way into more mainstream Russian media, joining Russia’s state-owned Channel 1 as the head of the internet department. In 2005, he started an online newspaper called “Vzglyad,” which quickly became a propaganda outlet for the Kremlin.
Putin needed to enlist the help of people who understood how to make disinformation go viral. Someone like Konstantin Rykov. In 2008, Rykov was elected to the Russian Parliament as a member of the United Russia party, the same party as Putin. Rykov was only 28-years-old.
Rykov developed tactics to help the Kremlin boost support for its image online. Rykov showed the Kremlin how to spread false narratives on social media to deflect attention away from reporting that was critical of Putin.
The Russian government used these kinds of disinformation campaigns to its advantage when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. They artificially inflated pro-Kremlin support on the internet, enlisting armies of troll accounts to spread pro-Kremlin narratives on social media and blogs. Some of these trolls were automated bot accounts, but others were human, like Rykov.
Rykov was on the front lines of the disinformation war on social media, spreading lies that made Russia look good and Ukraine’s allies look bad. At that point Rykov was active on international social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook.
"We spent a lot of time thinking about him and his colleagues in terms of what were their objectives,” says Michael McFaul, US Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. “He was very active talking about foreign policy in particular."
In 2015, Rykov built a new website. This one was called Trump2016..ru..This marked the beginning of Rykov’s active campaigning for Trump’s 2016 presidential run. While the total impact of Rykov’s campaigning for Trump is unknown, Rykov has boasted that he is responsible for helping Trump take the White House.
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On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29.
Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices..
“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”
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Trump and republicans know that there's no witness that can exonerate Trump. Not even Trump's closest aides, staff, and cabinet members would be able to save Trump. As Sondland stated during the Congressional hearings "everyone was in the loop."
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump and republicans refuse to allow Bolton or Eisenberg to testify is an admission of Trump's guilt. Because if their testimony could clear Trump of any wrong doing, they wouldn't hesitate to let them testify.
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“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump and the Republican party are telling us that we can no longer keep it. They are telling us that the "idea" that is America, is over.
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, because Trump and his henchmen have made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
So you see, the choices are clear. On Nov 3rd, make a decision. America vs Trump, democracy vs tyranny. Who's side are you on?
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
“The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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Trump is a national security threat, as well as a national disgrace.
Trump’s business interest in communist China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf resort.
The communist Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to Ivanka by April of 2019. These are trademarks she applied for after her father became president, and the got approved for about 40% faster than those she requested before Trump’s victory in the 2016 election according to Forbes.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka became an official government employee, joining Jared as an adviser to her father in the White House. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the communist Chinese government.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the communist Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to Trump and his daughter. In October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
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In May of 2018, when China's President Xi Jinping, leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY of China, changed the country’s constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely, Trump, who admires dictators, said it was a good idea, and he had dreams of doing the same thing.
During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, delivered inside the ballroom during a lunch and fundraiser, Trump praised the Chinese president’s power grab, and said he wouldn’t mind trying it himself.
Trump: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Trump is currently working on giving it a shot as we speak.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked a question as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic....if you can keep it.”
Trump is now telling us that we can no longer keep it..
This election will determine whether or not we keep our 244 year old democratic republic, or see it replaced with a tyrant and his despotic monarchy. Make no mistake, America is in a fight for it's very survival, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that this country isn't big enough for him and our democratic republic, so therefore one of them MUST GO!!!
On Nov 3rd, make a decision. Who's side are you on?
Biden/Harris 2020💙
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Almost every president has occasionally engaged in hyperbole, lying, corner-cutting, or press-bashing, though none have done so daily, if not hourly. One lie does not undermine democracy, but 20,000+ lies can. One governmental reversal in court is not tyranny, but scores of such defeats reveal an administration at odds with the constitutional injunction to “faithfully execute the laws.”
If we added up the anti-democracy maneuvers of the prior 10 presidents over the past 60 years, they wouldn’t equal Trump alone in under four years—indeed, if you compare the eight close associates of Trump convicted or indicted in his almost-one term of office, that would again exceed those of all presidents combined (excepting Watergate felons) from Kennedy to Obama..
• Replacing the rule of law with the law of rule—courtesy of Bill Barr—as accused allies receive pardons and praise while enemies are threatened with arbitrary prosecution.
• Engaging in multiple obstructions of justice, such as firing FBI director James Comey and urging White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller.
• Basing an entire convention on himself—no platform, Trumps proliferating like Borgias—and on the daily violation of the anti-monarchical Hatch Act because “no one cares,” according to his apologist Mark Meadows.
• Worsening economic inequality by shifting trillions through tax breaks to “American Oligarchs,” in Andrea Bernstein’s useful phrase, who then gratefully support his assaults on environmental and consumer laws to make even more money.
• Inciting violence by hyperbolic attacks on opponents, embracing neo-nazi5 while ignoring warnings from the FBI about the number-one domestic threat, right-wing violence.
• Enthusiastically embracing many of the world’s leading dictators—Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan.
• Repeating Covid-19 falsehoods in order to pressure Republican governors to prematurely reopen the economy and schools, causing the avoidable deaths of over 100,000 Americans so far.
• Attempting to stymie postal delivery to, in effect, steal millions of mail-in ballots… and the election.
• Erupting with a lava of lies—now up to an average of 22 a day, to bury rivals and reality (Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
• Attempting to delegitimize the Fourth Estate as “enemies of the people,” using Stalin’s odious phrase.
• Bullying neutral sources of information—the CDC, DNI, FDA, regulatory agencies—to bend their expected integrity to his political needs.
• Milking public office for private gain by treating “his” federal government like he treated the Trump Organization.
• Attempting to criminally extort the president of Ukraine in order to smear Joe Biden.
• Fiiring career professionals and “independent” inspectors general for doing their job, increasingly having a government of cronies, cranks, multimillionaires, relatives, and unconfirmable third-raters.
• Ignoring all congressional subpoenas (when Nixon ignored eight of them, it became the third article in his impeachment, “Contempt of Congress”).
• Saying things such as “I alone can fix it” and “with Article II, I can do whatever I want,” as well as praising Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist party, when it changed the country’s constitution, making Xi Jinping ruler for life.
If you add it all up, What do you see? It all has one purpose,” said Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, “to remove any check on his abuse of power.” It is deviant despotism.
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants. The articles of impeachment were tailor made for a wannabe dictator like Trump..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. We will be back to where we were before the Declaration of Independence was signed. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King..
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The hope of many conservative critics of DJT was that soon after his defeat, and especially in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party would snap back into its former shape. The Trump presidency would end up being no more than an ugly parenthesis. The GOP would distance itself from Trump and Trumpism, and become a normal party once again.
But that dream soon died. The Trump presidency might have been only the first act in a longer and even darker political drama, in which the Republican Party is becoming more radicalized.
Having alienated college-educated suburban voters, many Republicans decided their best bet is to keep their contracting coalition in a state of constant agitation and fear, combatants in a never-ending culture war, “embattled warriors making a last stand." And that, in turn, requires them to feed the base even bigger lies and falsehoods.
Today, the Republican Party is a grave threat to American democracy, and unless and until Republicans summon the wit and the will to salvage the party, ruin will follow.
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As we've seen time and time again, Trump, Rudy, Graham, Nunes, Gaetz and others, are wilfully aiding and abetting Putin and his Russian security services in propagating their false narratives and propaganda here in America. What's worse is that they are attacking America's democratic institutions and our intelligence agencies, the very same institutions and agencies that exists to protect America from foreign adversaries like Russia. This constitutes an immediate threat to America's national security. This is something that should concern every American, regardless of party affiliation..
Trump and his republican sycophants had a choice between serving America and it's Constitution, or serving Putin. They have clearly chosen Putin. So in 2020, it will be time for the American people to make a choice. Will we bow our heads in silent defeat, and surrender to the unconstitutional phuckery that Trump and his republican sycophants have been trying to normalize and force upon us? Or will we stand-up and vote for ourselves, for America's future, for our kid's future, and for the democratic ideals that this country and our Constitution were built on. The stakes could not be higher.
Semper Fi...
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The crisis is here in America, and Mexico is not the source. A wall will not stop gun violence, because the problem is here in America. Guns don't come from Mexico, they are manufactured and sold here, and those same guns are flowing into Mexico. And those guns aren't being walked across the border, they are being shipped across at border crossings. The problem is here in America.
Mass shootings in schools, churches, synagogues, clubs, grocery stores, and concerts, aren't being committed by illegal immigrants, they are being committed by Americans, again, the problem is here in America. So no wall will fix that.
Drugs aren't being walked across the border, it's being shipped into America by air, sea, border crossing, and tunnels. So again, no wall will fix that. We could lock up 5 El Chapos today, and tomorrow, there will be at least 10 new Chapos fighting each other to take the old Chapo's place...WHY? Because the problem with drugs isn't in Mexico, it's here in America. The demand is what drives the drug trade. So PLEASE, republicans, stop blaming immigrants, Mexico, the lack of a wall, drug cartels, El Chapos, Don Quixote, or whomever, for America's problems, because the problem is right here in America, and ignoring that fundamental truth, is part of the problem.
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Timeline of how Trump and his allies incited an insurrection on our nation's Capitol, and against our democracy..
September 23, 2020: In response to a direct question, Trump refuses to say he will ensure a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election.
“Well,we’re going to have to see what happens.” He further raises alarms about a potential transition of power: “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
September 29, 2020: First Presidential Debate.
when asked to condemn white suprema.cist mili.tias like the Proud Boys, Trump tells them to “Stand back and stand by,”
November 13, 2020:
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s allies spearhead a media campaign and a call to action of Trump supporters.
“This is as serious a constitutional crisis as our nation has ever faced. We will only be the beacon of hope for the world if we are willing to stand with courage and integrity & defend our republic,” Mike Flynn tweets.
Sidney Powell echos the statements, saying in an interview that “This is essentially a new American revolution. And anyone who wants this country to remain free needs to step up right now.”
December 2, 2020: Viol.ent rhetoric by Trump’s allies continues as the Georgia Senate runoff race nears.
“We’re going to sla.y Goliath, the comm.unists, the liberals, the phonies. Joe Biden will never set foot in the Oval Office of this country. It will not happen on our watch. Never gonna happen,” Lin Wood claims at the Stop the Steal Rally in Alpharetta, Georgia.
December 8, 2020: The official Twitter account of the Arizona GOP asks supporters whether they are willing to "d.l.e" for Trump.
In response to a Stop the Steal tweet saying “I am willing to give my life for this fight,” the Arizona GOP tweets, “He is. Are you?” The GOP account also tweets a clip of the 2008 movie “Rambo,” as the character proclaims, “This is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or d.l.e for something.”
19 December 2020 – Be there, will be wild:
At 1.42am in the early hours of 19 December Trump tweeted the lie that it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost the presidential election. He gave his first notice of a “big protest in DC” on 6 January. “Be there, will be wild!” he said.
19 December – The cavalry is coming:
Within hours, fervent Trump supporters began to heed Trump’s rallying cry. Kylie Jane Kremer, founder of a Stop the Steal group banned by FB, picked up the notice about the march and ran with it. “The calvary is coming, Mr President!” she said.
Trump retweeted Kremer’s post, saying: “A great honor!”
1 January 2021 – You got to go to the streets and be vio.lent:
Louie Gohmert responded in inflammatory terms to news that his federal lawsuit seeking to force Mike Pence to block certification of Biden’s victory had been dismissed.
"The bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy’,” he told News.max. “Basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you got to go to the streets and be as vio.lent as An.tifa.”
3 January– We will not go quietly into the night:
Ted Cruz addressed a rally in Georgia. “We will not go quietly into the night. We will defend liberty. And we are going to win."
6 January – We’re coming for you:
Don Jr, appeared as the warm-up carney act at the “Save America Rally” on the National Mall. He threatened the Republicans who, as he spoke, were preparing to vote on certifying the election result.
“The people who did nothing to stop the steal. This gathering should send a message to them: This isn’t their Republican party any more. This is Donald Trump’s.”
Then Don jr. said: “If you’re gonna be the zero and not the hero, we’re coming for you and we’re going to have a good time doing it!”
6 January – Trial by combat:
Rudy Giuliani, who has been a leading proponent of the falsehood that the election was fraudulently rigged, addressed the rally.
“If we’re wrong, we will be made fo.ols of,” he said. “But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. So let’s have trial by combat!!!!”
6 January – We will not take it any more:
Trump then addressed the crowd just outside the White House for more than an hour, urging them to march on the Capitol building. “We will not take it any more,” he said.
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … I know everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building."
The crowd followed his instructions and began marching on the Capitol.
A USA Today analysis discovered that After Trump used the word "MARCH" one Parlor user wrote: "Time to fight. The civil war is upon us." And another Parlor user said: "We are going to have a civil war. Get ready!!"
The analysis by USA Today also found that the use of the phrase "civil war" increased nearly four times during Trump’s speech, as it was used on 156 separate occasions while he spoke.
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As we've seen time and time again, Trump, Rudy, Graham, Nunes, Gaetz and others, are wilfully aiding and abetting Putin and his Russian security services in propagating their false narratives and propaganda here in America. What's worse is that they are attacking America's democratic institutions and our intelligence agencies, the very same institutions and agencies that exists to protect America from foreign adversaries like Russia. This constitutes an immediate threat to America's national security. This is something that should concern every American, regardless of party affiliation..
Trump and his republican sycophants had a choice between serving America and it's Constitution, or serving Putin. They have clearly chosen Putin. So in 2020, it will be time for the American people to make a choice. Will we bow our heads in silent defeat, and surrender to the unconstitutional phuckery that Trump and his republican sycophants have been trying to normalize and force upon us? Or will we stand-up and vote for ourselves, for America's future, for our kid's future, and for the democratic ideals that this country and our Constitution were built on. The stakes could not be higher.
Semper Fi...
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If anyone is curious as to why Trump despises John Brennan, here's why.
In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia..
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
Trump knows, that Brennan knows, he's a compromised Russian asset.
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The true character of a person will always be revealed when they are faced with a crisis or adversity. And the eternal question will always be, when it truly mattered, did they do the right thing? So far, Trump has failed. And Trump has never failed to fail, because failing has always been the easiest thing for him to do..
“I think, importantly, what Obama did leave Trump is a global health infrastructure that we had set up informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes said before pointing to a National Security Council (NSC) pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump administration in 2018.
And what we did is set up, in the White House, ... an office that was responsible for managing pandemics, managing global health threats that was shut down two years ago by President Trump.
And when you don’t have an office like that, you don’t have dedicated people inside the White House who are ensuring that information is acted upon. When you see an outbreak in a place like Wuhan, China, you want people in the White House who are thinking about what needs to be done right away so that you don’t get behind the curve, which is what happened in this White House.
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama.
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Obama to Trump in 2017.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed.
She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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Trump is a wartime president. And he's at war with the facts, the truth, morality, human decency, democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution."
Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm just a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House.
So again, don't blame me for this, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham, who knows exactly what I am, but yet continues to defend me. I'm the same person that I've always been, an unscrupulous con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
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Trump will be remembered as the chaos and disorder president. He is the cloven hoofed purveyor of fear & loathing, of pandemics & death. He is a provocateur of mayhem & upheaval. He is a merchant of lies & deception. And he is tried his best to create an America in his own image: vile, dark, hopeless, bleak, backwards, malignant, grotesque, ignorant, selfish, indecent, malicious, debased, indifferent, and malevolent.
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Trump admitted to being a Russian asset in Helsinki as he stood next to Putin. And now we've learned from the report, that Trump and his people were not only fully aware that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election, but Trump and his people actually encouraged it.
Trump, Kushner, Don Jr, and his other cohorts are Russian assets, willingly or unwillingly. They are all compromised. And they became compromised the moment they starting having secret meetings with Russian officials/agents, and not reporting it. They then lied about those meetings when asked, which only confirmed to the Russians that Trump and his cohorts were willing to protect them by lying to FBI and to the American people. To any Russian spy, that's a victory.
The Russians were able to infiltrate and compromise Trump and his inner circle, by exploiting their hubris, their insatiable greed, naivety, lack of patriotism, and by exploiting Trump's malignant narcissism. Trump and his people presented themselves as easy targets.
LINDSEY GRAHAM HAS ADMITTED THAT HE WAS THE ONE WHO TOLD MCCAIN THE HE SHOULD PASS ON THE STEELE DOSSIER TO THE FBI.
Trump in Helsinki: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Putin was extremely strong and powerful by the way he resisted the urge to burst out laughing when Trump uttered those words..
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Trump sowed the seeds of the BIG LIE even before election day. Deep down, Trump knew that he was going to lose, so like the sociopath that he is, he poisoned the well, and sowed the seeds of anger, doubt, violence, and extremism..
Trump: "If you only count the votes that were for me, I win easily -- by a landslide."
August 17 2020.
Trump: "The only way "WE'RE" going to lose this election, is if it's rigged, remember that."
The election wasn't rigged, the mind's of Trump's followers were rigged..
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The truth of the matter is, if Trump had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The problem with Trump's lawyer's argument, is that there was literally nothing left to fight for, because the election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
And vio.lence was the only option they had left. Trump had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6, the vio.lence card was the only card Trump had left, and he played it.
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LOL!!! And exactly what type of ethics or morals does Trump have?
Trump once said, “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do!” yet when he was pressed to name his favorite verse, he made one up that does not even exist. In an interview, Trump said that he's never asked God for forgiveness, because he's never done anything wrong. Trump has absolutely nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus Christ. He breaks every commandment daily, has proven he knows nothing of the Bible, and still gets over 87% of the Evangelical Christian vote. To say that evangelicals hold him to a lesser standard would be incorrect, since that would imply that they hold him to any standard at all..
Trump is simply an irredeemable human being, who seems to possess every human flaw known to mankind, as well as everyone of the $even deadly sins.
1. L.UST: a strong inordinate and inappropriate passion or longing, especially for Ivanka and for assaulting random women.
2. G.LUTT0NY: an excessive and ongoing eating of food or drink. An inordinate desire to consume way more than one requires.
3. G.REED: an excessive and insatiable pursuit of money and material goods by any means necessary.
Charity cures greed by putting the desire to help others above storing up treasure for one’s self. Trump created a fake charity foundation, and used it for his own financial gain..
Trump Iowa rally, Jan 9 2016.
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been gr.eedy, gr.eedy, gr.eedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so gr.eedy. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money. I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a gr.eedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?"
4. S.L0TH: an excessive laziness or the failure to act and utilize one’s talents.
5. W.RATH/ANGER: a strong anger and hatred towards others.
6. ENVY: the intense desire to have an item that someone else possesses. The desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
7. PRIDE: an excessive view of one's own self, and one's own abilities, without regard for others. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity..
On a normal day, Trump will commit all of the 7 deadly sins before noon.
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Fox is responsible for much of the hysteria, xenophobia, hatred, and the violence from alt-right/white supremacist groups that we see in America today. For years now, mongerers of fear and hatred like Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, have poisoned the minds of their viewers with their nonstop, gaslightin lies, wild conspiracies, and propaganda.
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Trump's defense team looks like a rogues gallery of hypocrites, rambunctious ambulance chasers, scallywags, and moral deviants.
The most important question that should be put to Republicans in the Senate is a simple one, Do they believe that the American people want, and deserve to know the truth? And if the answer to that question is YES, then the next question should be, how do we get there? Well the only way we get to the truth, is through witnesses and evidence..
A president should NOT be able to use executive privilege in an impeachment trial to cover-up his crimes. It doesn't get more unconstitutional than that. If this is allowed, it means that instead of a president, we have a King and or dictator. It would mean that Trump could literally get away with anything he wants to do by simply claiming executive privilege, and blocking all evidence and witnesses to his crimes.
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“As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
― Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Letters
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“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
So here's the thing, everything that Lindsey Graham said about Trump back then is absolutely true, but now today, Graham has become Trump's most loyal brown-nosing sentient suppository. He has become Trump's golf buddy, and his staunchest defender in Congress.This is just one example of why I could NEVER vote republican. It's a party that embodies the very worst traits of mankind. It rewards moral turpitude, and celebrates indifference and indecency. Trump and the Republican party appeal to the very worst nature of people, and the very worst traits of American society, or the society of any country for that matter.
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In her new book, Trump's niece says Trump was scarred by his father and developed habits of lying and self-deception that shadowed him into the White House.
Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism," Mary Trump writes. "Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be," she writes.
"In Donald's mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero – being good – is impossible for him," she writes.
When it comes to Trump, I'll take the word of Trump's own sister, who has known him his entire life? She knows him better, and longer than anyone alive today. And if she wouldn't support him as president, why on earth should anyone else?
In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None."
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100 years from now, kids in our schools will still be learning about the events that took place on January 6, 2021, the day our nation's Capitol came under attack from insurrectionists, the same way our kids are still taught today about the events that took place on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, and the events that took place on 9-11. These are dates that will forever live in infamy.
The attack on Pearl Harbor, was instigated and motivated by The Emperor of Japan, who at the time, was viewed as a living God by his people. The attack on our democracy, and our nation's Capitol, was instigated by a SITTING US President, who was viewed as a living God (The Chosen One) by his followers.
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So Ron Johnson is openly defending the insurrection. Why doesn't that surprise me? In 2018, Ron Johnson was one of the Republican lawmakers who flew to Moscow to celebrate the 4th of July there. 😲 I know right, that's what I said.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of the 12th District of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement." It's the same tired excuse Sen Rand Paul routinely provides to justify his own shadowy meetings with our enemies.
The group met with a number of Russian agents, and key Russians officials, including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and former Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak—the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the Russian press yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigating Russian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit to Moscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the “gloating” Russians.
Ron Johnson has been the most outspoken when defending Trump. So much so that during an interview on Meet the Press in October 2019, he announced that he doesn’t trust the FBI or the CIA—a clear admission that he does however trust the GRU and his Russian comrades. Today, the eight republicans that came back from Russia, show all the signs of a Russian GRU sleeper cell. It would explain why they're all regurgitating Russian GRU propaganda to the American people..
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So after Republicans broke their own rules and went back on their word about picking a Supreme Court Justice during an election year, when millions of Americans have already voted, Dems have every right to pack the court, and Republicans have absolutely no room to talk. Republicans made a promise to the American people, and they broke that promise without even blinking an eye or giving it a 2nd thought. So If Dems decide to pack the court, republicans have no one to blame but themselves. Because it didn't have to be this way. All republicans had to do, was honor the promise they made.
Because let's face it, if the situation were reversed, and Dems broke their promise, and went back on their word, what would republicans do? We all know the answer to that question.
So, by breaking their own rules and going back on their word, Republicans are giving Dems a green light to pack the Supreme Court. I love it!!!!😆 👏👏👏
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Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Being held accountable is something that Trump has avoided his entire fraudulent life. But when this is finally over, there will be an independent commission tasked with investigating and producing a full and complete accounting of the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. Trump will be held accountable for his indifference, criminal ineptitude, and his failure as president to properly protect and defend this country from a pandemic that has already cost more than 50 thousand American lives..
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A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part...
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. Trump was 4 billion dollars in debt, and American banks had stopped loaning him money after multiple bankruptcies. Trump was financially ruined until the Russians bailed him out. "They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News..
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But he promised Mexico would pay for the wall.
The January 27, 2017 transcript of Trump's phone call with Mexican President, Peña Nieto, came seven days after Trump entered office. Peña Nieto had insisted publicly his country would not pay for the wall's construction, but Trump begged him to stop making that claim.😄
Trump: "You cannot say that to the press," Trump said on the phone call. "The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances."
Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall's payment, which he said "means it will come out in the wash and that is OK."
But Trump continued to plead with Peña Nieto to stop saying to the media that Mexico would never pay for any wall.
Trump" "You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall," he said. "I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about."
😂😂
Trump told many lies during the campaign, but the wall was one of his biggest lies. Now he is desperately looking for someone to come and bail him out, and lead him out of the corn maze of lies he created. He first tried to get the President of Mexico to bail him out. Now he's trying to get the American taxpayers to bail him out. Well that's a negative Ghost Rider.....the pattern is full..
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On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Boris Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said..
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President Obama visited our Troops overseas 7 times. That's not even counting the multiple times he visited our troops at military bases here in America during the holidays. Obama visited our troops in Iraq just 3 months after taking office. Traitor Trump waited TWO WHOLE YEARS before he visited our troops for the first time in Iraq. And that was only after he was pushed to do so by advisers.
I have no doubt that Trump complained about having to make that trip to visit our troops the same way he complained about attending the memorial ceremony of our fallen in France.
Trump: "Why do I have to fly all the way to Iraq just to visit troops. They're a bunch of losers anyway."
And then when he finally made the trip, he turned that visit into a campaign rally for himself, and used our troops as political props. Trump continues to show his contempt for our men and women in uniform with his silence concerning the Russian bounties placed on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan. To this day, he has not uttered one word about it. NOT.....ONE.
I knew back in 2016 before the election that Trump had no respect for our military the moment he said he knew more about fighting wars than our Generals do. He basically claimed to know more about fighting wars than Generals like Grant, Patton, Washington, MacArthur, Eisenhower, as well as our current living Generals like Mattis. This preposterous claim came from a draft dodger who has NEVER served one day in the military.
It goes without saying, that ONLY a vindictive draft dodging traitor, who has nothing but contempt for the men and women in our military, would utter something as outrageous and insulting as that. That was all I needed to hear.
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The biggest threat to America is not Iran. The biggest threat to America is the very desperate, panicked, deranged, cornered, and currently impeached man-baby in the Oval Office.
Only someone as criminally incompetent as Trump would believe that going back to having NO inspectors, cameras, check marks, and inspections, is better than the Iran deal. Pulling out of the Iran deal put us back to where we were before, which is exactly where we are today, which is totally blind to what's going on in Iran and NK.
President Obama was able to bring 5 countries together, and secure a deal with Iran. It was something we had never had before, and the deal was working.
In July 2015, Iran had almost 20,000 centrifuges. Under the Iran deal--JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until 2026. Iran's uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile's level of enrichment at 3.67%.
Under the deal, the Atomic Energy Agency would have cameras installed to provide 24-hour monitoring at the Natanz facility, and inspectors will have daily access to the facility for 15 years. Within a year, there would be 130 to 150 inspectors in Iran.
By January 2016, Iran had drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitored Iran's declared nuclear sites and also verified that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allowed inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious.
But the best part about it was that President Obama didn't have to praise the Ayatollahs or the Iranian leadership. He didn’t demean himself, or the office of the presidency, by meeting with them, which would have only given them the perception of being on the same footing as a US President. Trump on the other hand, disgraced himself, and the office of the presidency, by meeting with the most despotic and maniacal dictator on the planet....not once, but twice.
He then proceeded to compliment him, and wax poetically about how he and Kim Jung Un fell in love after exchanging letters. And what does Trump have to show for disgracing himself and the office of the presidency? NOTHING....other than love letters, a photo-op, and heightened tensions with Iran and NK. Trump is simply an agent of chaos, mind blowing ineptitude, and corruption. Trump doesn't solve problems, he only creates them..
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There are 27 Jewish members of Congress, 25 of them are Democrats, and only 2 are Republicans. There are only 9 Jewish members serving in the Senate, and yep, you guest it, they are all Democrats.
Dems have carried the Jewish vote in 24 consecutive presidential elections, dating back to 1924. In six of the last seven presidential elections, the Jewish vote was more than 70 percent Democratic (the one exception was in 2012, when Barack Obama won 69 percent of the Jewish vote). Hillary trounced Trump among Jews by a 71/24 margin. 2018 exit polls showed 79 percent of Jews voting Democratic in the midterms.
American Jews are naturally suspicious of the white Christian nationalism Trump keeps flirting with, which is historically associated with anti-Semitism. After all, a lot of the fervent support for Bibi and a Greater Israel in evangelical circles, is grounded in hopes that the Middle East will be consumed in an apocalyptic war that will inaugurate the end times that evangelicals dream of, and give Jews two options: conversion to Christianity or be condemned to eternal he//.
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We already know that Trump bribed the President of Ukraine with taxpayer money. This fact has been corroborated by the whistleblower, by official documents, texts messages, by the under oath testimony of multiple witnesses, by Trump's own senior white house aides and staff, by Mulvaney, and by State Department officials, and by Trump's own words. Trump's own National Security Adviser Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution clearly states, that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.?
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The firehose of falsehood, or firehosing, is a Soviet era propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels without regard for truth or consistency This tactic was successfully used by Russia during its annexation of Crimea.
The characteristics that distinguish this technique from Soviet Cold-War era propaganda techniques are a large number of messages and channels, and a "shameless" approach to disseminating falsehoods and contradictory messages. The immediate aim is to confuse, and overwhelm the audience. The "firehose" takes advantage of modern technology, such as the Internet and social media, and recent changes in the way people produce and consume news.
Russia disseminates propaganda using dozens of proxy websites whose connection to RT is "disguised or downplayed. People are also more likely to believe a story when they think many others believe it, especially if those others belong to a group with which they identify. Thus, an army of trolls can influence a person's opinion by creating the false impression that a majority of that person's neighbors support a given view.
Using the firehose model, the Russian government, along with Fox, have had some success in getting people to believe and spread falsehoods and disbelieve truthful reporting.
Although the firehosing technique takes advantage of modern technology, it is informed by the thinking of Lenin.
Lenin once explained that his heated language was "calculated not to convince, but to break up the ranks of the opponent, not to correct the mistake of the opponent, but to destroy him, to wipe his organization off the face of the earth." In his biography of Lenin, historian Victor Sebestyen described him as the "godfather" of "post-truth politics."
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As a Marine veteran, who's brother is also a Marine veteran, who's father is a Vietnam Army veteran, and who's great grandfather was a WW1 veteran, I can honestly say that I have nothing but contempt for politicians like Senator Inhofe. He is motivated by greed. Semper Fi
Marine General Smedley Butler:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Maj. General Smedley D. Butler, "War is a Racket."
As a Marine veteran, and the brother to a Marine veteran, and the son of a Vietnam Army veteran, and the great grandson of a WW1 Veteran.
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."
― Maj. General Smedley D. Butler, "War is a Racket."(1935)
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In the released audio of Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, she describes Trump as being among other things, unprepared, a brat, and cruel.
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel,” Barry told her niece.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Trump's sister was aghast at how he operated as president. “His god-d tweets and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy s*t. What they’re doing with kids at the border."
Trump's sister also explained how she tried to help Trump academically, noting that “he was a brat,” and that, “I did his homework for him” and “drove him around NYC to try to get him into college.” She said she didn’t know of anything Donald had ever accomplished on his own, but noted that “he has five bankruptcies” which he achieved all by himself." 😂 “You CAN'T trust him,” she added.
She also made it clear that she was still upset by how Trump chose to celebrate himself at their father’s funeral in 1999.
"During that ceremony, Donald spoke more about his own accomplishments than his father’s life," Maryanne said..
“Donald was the only one who didn’t speak about Dad,” she said. She told Mary that “I don’t want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral. And that’s all about Donald and what he did at Dad’s funeral. I don’t know. It was all about him.”
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Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line, our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.
Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.
Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY. in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.
Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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General Mattis is a man of core beliefs, integrity, loyalty to the country, and commitment to our Troops. Trump on the other hand, is a Traitor, a coward and a man who believes in nothing. Trump is despised by our military, and rightfully so. He has insulted our PoWs, and Gold Star family members, he refused to honor are fallen in France, and he refused to visit Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day. Trump has been in office for 2 years, and has yet to visit our troops serving overseas.
As a Marine veteran, I despise everything he represents.
Semper Fidelis, Always Faithful
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Trump is afraid that Flynn and Stone won't be able to do a long stretch in prison, and will decide to cut a deal instead and reveal all of Trump's crimes. Stone could corroborate Rick Gates' testimony that Trump did in fact collude with WikiLeaks..
Flynn's crimes and betrayal have been well reported and documented. In a now infamous video, Flynn is seen applauding and toasting Putin, Trump's benefactor, and America's adversary. The video shows that the Dec. 10, 2015 Moscow dinner Flynn attended was swarming with ex-russian spies, Putin's cronies and oligarchs.
In the video of a December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Putin's propaganda network RT at a Moscow hotel, Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted the state-controlled news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece. And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was Michael Flynn, who would later become Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's campaign when he was being paid $45,000 by Putin to speak at the gala.
"It is not a coincidence that Flynn was placed next to Putin," said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador in Moscow "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in information warfare against U.S. policies. She is described as closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin.
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats. Like Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner. When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
Like Trump, Flynn proudly betrayed his country, and they both did it for nothing more than greed.
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Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
What Kushner tried to do is exactly what American traitors have done in the past when they've decided to start working for the Russian government. It's basically what Aldrich Ames did in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Union Embassy in DC, and turned over highly classified information to the Russians.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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Trump's white house has been operating the same as Barter Town in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.. It's nonstop chaos, pandemonium, betrayal, back-stabbing, thievery, mayhem, treason, upheaval, nepotism, bedlam, and sanctioned lawlessness.
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James Post
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, Americans (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania..
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Trump told Stormy that she reminded him of his daughter. That's right. Trump told the woman he had an affair with, that she reminds him of his daughter. Evangelicals love this stuff!!! 😂🤣
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
All true stories.
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@chrisquinn394
President Obama inherited the worst economy since the great depression. He turned the country and economy around in 8 years. He then passed that strong economy over to Trump. That's a fact that no amount of lies will ever change.
Trump promised 4,5 and 6% GDP growth when he became president. We only saw 2.5% GDP growth during Trump's administration. President Obama on the other hand, hit 4% GDP growth four times during his administration.
President Obama’s last three years of job growth all beat Trump’s best year
Obama Monthly average of Jobs added 2014-2016 = 224,000
Trump Monthly average of Jobs added 2017-2019 = 189,000
President Obama created 1.6 million more jobs than Trump over a three-year period
Trump’s boasts about how many jobs he has added don’t include that he has generated 6.5 million jobs under his Presidency vs. the 8.1 million, OR, 1.6 million fewer than President Obama did under the same timeframe. On average, President Obama created 43,000 more jobs per month than Trump.
While GDP growth crossed over 3% in a few quarters the past three years, on a full year basis, GDP growth hit a high point of only 2.9% in 2018, With it falling back to 2.3% in 2019. This is another example of Trump's gaslighting claim that the economy could grow 4%, 5% or maybe even 6% when he was President.
The best three quarters of growth for Trump have been:
● 3Q 2017 at 3.2%
● 4Q 2017 at 3.5%
● 2Q 2018 at 3.5%
Obama’s best three quarters of growth were:
● 4Q 2011 at 4.7%
● 2Q 2014 at 5.5%
● 3Q 2014 at 5.0%
Just imagine if Trump, the king of debt and bankruptcy, had inherited a great recession like President Obama inherited. Yikes!!😲
Trump is an expert at digging financial holes, but he has never climbed his way out of one. Just ask anyone who has ever done business with him in Atlantic City and NY, or just ask the multiple banks he borrowed money from and never repaid them.
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8a41jt
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
What Kushner tried to do is exactly what American traitors have done in the past when they've decided to start working for the Russian government. It's basically what Aldrich Ames did in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Union Embassy in DC, and turned over highly classified information to the Russians.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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Trump is far worse than Nixon was ever capable of being. Nixon was corrupt for sure, but even still, there were limits to how far he would go. Trump on the other hand, is a complete sociopath, without limits or boundaries. Trump has proven that he will cross any line, and violate any and all ethical standards..
John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Just days before Trump was sworn in, Dean stated that he believed Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
John Dean's words could not have been more prophetic.
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KUZIN V KNEE ! !
In August 1989, just two months after Trump launched his Trump Shuttle Airline, one of his Boeing 727s made a crash landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The shuttle was to fly white-collar passengers between New York, Washington and Boston. The passenger jet had malfunctioning nose gear that failed to deploy. The nose and underbelly of the plane scraped and dragged along the runaway upon landing, with sparks flying. The pilots had to perform an emergency dumping of fuel to avoid a greater catastrophe. It's all on video.
Trump purchased the airline for 365 million, and in 3 years, it never turned a profit.😄
And when Trump was asked by reporters about the crash landing in Boston, he said, and I quote: “It was the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen." 😲😨
Back in 1986 and likely for many years before, Trump colluded in tax evasion with Bulgari Jewelry Store in NY, a high-end posh location with tony clientele right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here's how the scam worked:
Trump would go into the store with his wife, his girlfriend, his...whatever (to use his vernacular). He would then buy her an expensive necklace or wristwatch. Normally, such a transaction would face the NY and state sales tax, which would be pretty high on luxury jewelry.
In an illegal attempt to evade the tax, Trump "asked" the store to instead ship the jewelry to an out of state location, where no NY sales tax could be collected. In fact, the store would merely send an empty jewelry box to the location, while Trump and his lady friends walked out the door with the jewelry that very day.
The state and city tax collectors eventually caught onto this scheme, and Trump promptly testified against his erstwhile tax evasion colluding partners at the jewelry store in order to save his own skin.😲 Anyone who gets close to a disease like Trump will end up getting pushed off a curb by him, and into an oncoming bus.
The empty box scam is just one example of Trump's history of illegal tax evasion. Another story can be told about his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida by local reporter Frank Cerabino.
Trump bought the property from the estate of breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. He got it for a relative bargain at $7.5 million, something he bragged about in The Art of the Deal. Yet he refused for years to pay local property taxes on the actual value of the property, $11.5 million at the time he bought it. He tried to have it both ways--buy the property for a steep discount and also pay property taxes at that same under-valued level.
Try that with your town's property tax assessor sometime and see what he says.😲
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KUZIN V KNEE ! !
Back when Trump was still pretending that he knew how to run a casino in Atlantic City, he became friends with Joseph Weichselbaum, an embezzler, mob associate, cocaine trafficker, and a thrice-convicted felon.
Trump hired Weichselbaum, who was a pilot, to use his helicopters to bring casino high-rollers in and out of town through a company formed by Weichselbaum, to whom he also entrusted maintenance of the Ivana, Trump’s personal helicopter. Weichselbaum—at that point a twice-convicted felon—personally piloted the Trumps in that copter.
Weichselbaum also had another business: importing drugs from Colombia and shipping them from Bradford Motors, a Miami-area car dealership he partly owned, to Cincinnati. Because Weichselbaum was then a twice-convicted felon, NJ gambling regulators insisted to Trump that he not be involved with providing helicopter services to the Trump casinos. Yet Weichselbaum continued collecting a $100,000 salary from the helicopter company, and Trump kept using the company that paid Weichselbaum.
In his indictment and confession, Weichselbaum’s more lucrative business was having drugs delivered to Bradford Motors, the Miami-area car dealership he had an ownership stake in. In his testimony, Weichselbaum admitted to helping to load up to 1,500 pounds of drugs at the time into cars, that mules then drove to the Cincinnati area for distribution in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Trump learned of the indictment in October 1985, NJ Casino Control Commission records show. At that point, any decent person would have cut off all ties to Weichselbaum, because failing to do so could cost him his casino license. But of course, Trump is anything but a decent person. Instead, Trump became even closer to the drug trafficker.
Two months after the indictment, Trump rented apartment 32C in the Trump Plaza Apartments on E. 61st St. in Manhattan to the Weichselbaum brothers, according to NJ Casino Control Commission records. Trump personally owned the unit. Then Trump wrote a letter to the District Court on Trump Organization stationery pleading for mercy for his drug trafficking friend. He called him “a credit to the community.” Trump also described the drug trafficker as “conscientious, forthright and diligent,” 😲
When NJ gaming regulators first asked Trump about this letter, he denied writing it.😂 When they came back with a copy of the letter, Trump said under oath that his signature was on the page.😂 However Trump’s letter must have worked. Weichselbaum served just 18 months, while the mules who merely drove the drugs got sentences of up to 20 years.
During his parole, Weichselbaum was required to inform authorities that he had a job and a place to live. He told authorities he would be working for Trump again as Trump's helicopter guy once released. Weichselbaum then moved into Trump Tower.
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@PrinnyCast
And ask yourself why were they so angry. It was because of the lies he told them. He convinced them that the election was stolen from THEM. It was all a lie.
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Keep in mind, the Saudis have put a ton of money into Trump and Jared's pockets. Trump is a man of no beliefs, ideals, or convictions, and he has the moral compass of a weather vane, and Saudis bought Trump a long time ago. Can't really blame the Saudis though, especially when Trump put himself on sale, with a 2 for 1 special ( Trump &Jared) Who could pass up a deal like that?
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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Trumpism/Conservatism by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. Conservatives tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession.
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Trump’s campaign chairman Manafort, shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies. Manafort was also accused of covering up other meetings and contacts with the Russian, an elusive man named Konstantin Kilimnik who worked for Manafort on election campaigns for pro-Kremlin politicians in eastern Europe.
Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the the election. US Intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian operation was ordered by Putin to help Trump’s campaign.
Mueller has also said that Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign, described Kilimnik as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU”
Manafort’s attorneys did not deny that Manafort gave Kilimnik the data, instead stating that he had not lied about it but was merely “unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed”. The attorneys also confirmed that Manafort had met Kilimnik in Madrid, claiming he “had not initially remembered” the meeting but recalled it when confronted with records showing the two were in the Spanish capital at the same time. LOL!!!😂 So Manafort tried to pretend that he didn't remember taking a flight across the Atlantic Ocean to meet up with a Russian agent in Spain in order to pass polling data on to him.😂😂
It was previously known that Kilimnik and Manafort had met twice during 2016 in the US. The date of the Madrid meeting was not stated, but a source familiar with Manafort’s team said it was in early 2017 after Trump had entered office.
Trump said he knew “nothing” about his then-campaign chief Paul Manafort sharing polling data with a Russian spy during the 2016 presidential campaign. 😂 Sure Donnie....we believe you.😄
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Your Solar Girl
The Trump criminal organization is pushing back against a proposed provision that would require the Secret Service to disclose how much it's spending on Trump's golf trips to his resorts.
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is battling with Dem senators in negotiations over legislation that would move the Secret Service back to the Treasury Department, where it was first housed before moving to the DHS.
The legislation is set to include a stipulation that the Secret Service disclose on a semiannual basis the amount being spent on presidential travel for the president and his adult children. “Mnuchin came to me last year with a proposal to move the Secret Service to the Treasury Department,” Sen Feinstein said in a statement. “As part of that effort, I proposed that the cost of presidential travel be included for greater transparency, accountability and oversight associated with protection during travel of presidents and their families.”
Mnuchin agreed to the financial disclosure provision, but like a true Trump sycophant, Mnuchin is against the 120-day requirement, and instead wants to hold off on revealing the cost of the president’s trips until after the election. 😲
That's like a used car salesman telling you that he will tell you the past mechanical problems of a car, but only after you've purchased it from him.
The Secret Service is required to report semiannually the cost of protecting Trump's Children of the Corn, or non-White House residence, the Trump criminal organization failed to do so in either 2016 or 2017. The White House also dodged questions from the Government Accountability Office about the issue for two years, after the GAO sought information on the cost of Trump's travel to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump spent one out of every five days on one his golf course last year. The GAO found that Trump's first four trips to Mar-a-Lago in 2017 cost the Secret Service $1.3 million per trip (and $3.4 million in total government spending), and the Secret Service requested $60 million in additional funding in 2017. Federal charge card expenditures revealed the Secret Service also spent at least $250,000 at Trump properties in just the first five months of Trump's term alone, and the agency has paid a king's ransom for golf carts on Trump's golf outings, spending $588,000 on golf carts since 2017. The GAO report found that Trump's sons Uday and Qusay's travel to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and the UAE in 2017 cost the Secret Service $396,000 in total—and they've done plenty of traveling since.
Trump has spent nearly a third of his "presidency" at his properties. The GAO report reports that the Secret Service may have spent as much as $28 million JUST on Trump's trips to Mar-a-Lago by now. But that would be still just a fraction of his total travel costs. President Obama—whom Trump criticized for golfing too much—cost the government $96.9 million over 8 years with his travel, for comparison. So far Trump's golfing has cost American taxpayers more than 102 million dollars in just 3 years. Taxpayers have paid at least 81 million for Trump play on his golf course in FL, 17 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in NJ, 1 million for Trump to play on his golf courses in Los Angeles, and 3 million for Trump to play on his golf course in Scotland. And to add insult to injury, Trump is pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars from accommodations, lodging, and rental fees. The more trips to his properties, the more money he makes.
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June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
If you agree with Trump, that America should be like NK, and we should treat him the same way the NK people treat Kim Jung Un, then by all means, vote red.
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Meanwhile...
Trump is a professional con-man, It's all he knows.
Trump is doing the same thing to his cult followers that he did to American banks and Deutsche Bank, and the same thing he did to everyone who donated money to his fake charity foundation, and the same thing he did to the people who spent thousands to enroll in Trump University. This is the same man who would pose as his own spokesmen, using the fake names of John Miller, and John Barron. Trump used the name John Barron when he called into Forbes magazine, and lied about how much " his boss" was worth, just so he could get on the Forbes list as one of the richest people in the country.
Trump has been running a con with no limits his entire life. American banks are fully aware of who and what Trump is, it's the reason they won't touch him with a 10 ft pole. Deutsche Bank is now learning the same lesson about Trump that American banks learned in the 80s and 90s. Trump's crimes will catch of up with him one way or another. The multiple SDNY's charges of money laundering, tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud, wire fraud, campaign finance violations, illegal donations to his inauguration, and running a fake charity foundation, will all be front and center during the 2020 presidential debates. I can't wait.😂
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Before Trump, the best modern-day example of a cult of personality was Kim Jong-un, the despotic dictator that Trump admires so much, and who he proudly declared his love for.
Kim Jong-un's cult of personality paints him as a man who can do anything. According to this propaganda, he can climb tall mountains, even though like Trump, he is horrendously obese, and in terrible physical shape. Like Trump, Kim Jong Un brags about being able to make strong and intelligent military decisions, despite neither one of them having a military background.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults, destructive cults like Trumpism..
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.
2. A process of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform commonly called "brainwashing".
The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of its leader.
3. The exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling members.
Here are some warning signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.
• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget or expenses, such as an independently audited financial statement.
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
• Former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
• The group/leader is always right.
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is acceptable or credible.
"This man is a genius at every level! Why can't we all be like him? He must be something special, and we are clearly not. Ergo, let's listen to him since he knows best."
-- Trump supporters
As we've all seen, when it comes to the warning signs and characteristics of a cult, Trump and his followers check most of the boxes..
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Konstantin Rykov is a propagandist for the Putin government machine. “Rykov is considered to be one of the leading pro-Kremlin bloggers in Russia,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia .
Konstantin Rykov is also the Russian who created Putin's troll farm, and has boasted online that he helped get Trump elected. His claims of involvement with the Trump team can't be dismissed for 2 reasons: first, he is very close to Putin, and had a long history of involvement with top levels of the Russian government; and, second, his description of how Trump’s campaign put together an effective internet strategy for information warfare is very close to the evidence revealed in the Mueller Report.
At about 11:14pm on November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election. At 11:29pm, Trump blasted out the following defiant tweet:
Trump: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
11:29 PM - Nov 6, 2012
Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.
Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Konstantin Rykov tells what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. In the first post, Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:
"Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him a reply, “I’m ready. What should I do?”
Trump replied with a picture. In the picture he was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully giving the thumbs-up sign.
Rykov explaines how things went from there:
"For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the US, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order.
Our idea was insane, but realizable..
In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man.
Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.”
British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.
Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others.
At the very beginning there was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.
The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it.
Keep in mind, Konstantin Rykov revealed all of this on Facebook just four days after Trump was elected. It was before people started asking questions about Cambridge Analytica or targeted social media ads. Rykov might have been boasting as he spiked the football in the end zone. What he didn’t think at that point, however, is that he had any reason to hide what he’d done.
His comments were also made well before details of Russian meddling in the presidential election were reported in the mainstream media. If Rykov wasn’t involved, then how on earth would he know as much as he confessed?
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with these packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedophile started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Maddison Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities." -- Voltaire
Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with these packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedophile started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Maddison Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with these packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedophile started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Maddison Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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Trump's followers were led down a dark rabbit hole, chasing the BIG LIE that was fed to them morning noon and night, lies from the mouth of a well established con-man. What happened to them is similar to what happened to members of the Donner party.
In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly 90 emigrants left Springfield, Illinois, and headed west, led by brothers Jacob and George Donner. The Donner party decided to leave the well established trail and take a new and supposedly shorter route to California. They were instructed to get off of the main trail, and take a so called shorter route by an unscrupulous huckster named Lansford Hastings.
They soon encountered rough terrain and numerous delays, and they eventually became trapped by heavy snowfall high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They were soon reduced to mu.rder and cannibalism to survive through the winter, only half of the original group reached California the following year.
The moral of this story is simple, stay on the main roads that are well marked, and well lit. And never listen to con-men, who lead you down dark roads and rabbit holes.
As Virginia Reed, a survivor of the Donner party, said in a letter of advice to a relative traveling to California a year later:
"…Remember, never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can.
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America is willing to fight for Estonia, Macedonia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and NATO countries, the same way NATO countries fought for us in Afghanistan. The only problem we have in America, is that now, we have a coward and a traitor for a president. Trump failed to defend America in Helsinki. He had a clear choice between defending America or Putin, and the world watched as he chose Putin. But NATO and our allies can rest assure, that America will get rid of the "stranger" in our white house in 2020, if not sooner.
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Trump's lies and his conspiring with Russia is a national security emergency.
So while Trump is responsible for the 800 thousand Americans that won't be getting paid, he is also busy providing economic relief to billionaire Russian Oligarchs by lifting sanctions on them. If that doesn't make your blood boil, then nothing will.
Trump has announced he is removing sanctions on Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum company, United Co. Rusal. Oleg Deripaska, who has deep connections to Paul Manafort. Deripaska invested $18.9 million into a Ukrainian telecom venture ran by Manafort, but was never paid back. Mueller has investigated the links between the two men.
Deripaska, who is close to Vladimir Putin, was “accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering” when the Treasury hit him with sanctions in April. In 2005, Manafort started working for Oleg Deripaska. Manafort had hired himself out to Deripaska, promising he would “influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet Republics to benefit Putin’s government.
Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
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There's a reason why some Americans are perplexed and aghast over Trump's behavior.
The mistake that many people are making, is in looking at Trump as if he's a "President". Trump is not a President in any sense of the word. Trump is only a president on paper. Trump IS, what he's always been. He is a sociopath, and a narcissist, who is the head of a family criminal organization, that specializes in fraud, ponzi schemes, tax evasion, money laundering, and real estate scams, and It's about time that everyone realizes that. Once you accept the realization of who and what Trump really is, his actions and behavior starts to make perfect sense.
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I think America needs to have a long conversation about Trump and his crime family's close business relationships with Jyna.
Trump and his crime family have many lucrative business deals with China. Trump's products are manufactured in China. And Ivanka has conveniently received more than 30 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. This is what happens when you have a president who from day one was compromised by greed and his own self-serving interests.
The Trumps are the landlord to one of China’s top state-owned banks, which has occupied the 20th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan since 2008. The bank’s lease is worth close to $2 million annually, according to industry estimates and a bank filing.
And despite Trump's rhetoric about American manufacturing, assembly-line workers in China still produce blouses, shoes and handbags for the clothing line created by Ivanka. Trump’s business interest in China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Trump business relationships with China are among the main examples plaintiffs in multiple court cases have cited in allegations that Trump is violating the Constitution’s “emoluments clause” by accepting payments from foreign governments.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf.
Days later, Trump announced his support for Chinese-backed telecommunications firm ZTE, a departure from his previously aggressive stance toward Chinese industry that prompted ethical experts to question whether the two actions were related. But of course they were related. This is Don the con we're talking about.
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The Russian who created Putin's troll farm, and has boasted online that he helped get Trump elected, is named Konstantin Rykov. His claims of involvement with the Trump team can't be dismissed for 2 reasons: first, he is very close to Putin, and had a long history of involvement with top levels of the Russian government; and, second, his description of how Trump’s campaign put together an effective internet strategy for information warfare is very close to the evidence revealed in the Mueller Report..
Rewind back to November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election. At 11:29pm, Trump sent out the following defiant tweet: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.
Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Rykov explained what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:.
Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him (Trump) a reply, “I’m ready. What should I do?”
Trump replied with a picture. In the picture, Trump was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully giving the thumbs-up sign. Rykov would later explained how things went from there.
Konstantin Rykov is the founder of a number of lurid websites where he made a fortune posting pictures of scantily-clad women, telling dirty jokes and posting clickbait stories designed to titillate easily impressionable readers. In other words, a trashy online tabloid. Rykov is also a member of United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party, a former member of the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and a close confidante of Putin.
Here’s how Rykov described his involvement in a Facebook post he made on November 12, 2016, just after the election:
"For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the United States, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order. Our idea was insane, but realizable. In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man.
Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.” British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others. At the very beginning of the brave and romantic [story] was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it."
Rykov’s comments were made only four days after the election, months before anyone was talking about Russian collusion in the 2016 election, months before the world knew about the company Cambridge Analytica, and months before Rykov would have known it wasn’t wise to discuss his alleged involvement in the campaign. his comments were also made well before details of Russian meddling in the presidential election were reported in the mainstream media. If Rykov wasn’t involved, how would he know as much as he confessed?
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Trump actually got caught trying to do basically the same thing that Avanatti did.
In 2007, Trump sued reporter, Tim O'Brien and Warner Books for 5 billion dollars. In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. Trump accused O'Brien of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition. During the deposition on Dec.19 and 20, 2007, Trump was caught lying at least 30 times. The lies Trump told were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, and easy to disprove. When he was caught lying, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, at least in his mind. Trump's lying deposition is now a part of the public record.
This is a perfect example of why Trump's lawyers never permitted Trump to be interviewed by Mueller. They know that Trump is morally and pathologically incapable of telling the truth, about anything.
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I know there are some Dems who don't believe Biden should run. I'm not one of those Dems. I really like all of the Dem candidates so far. They each bring a little something different to the table, while at the same time, united together in bringing a sense of normalcy and decency back to the white house, and the country. If this was going to be a normal election, like elections of the past, I would probably support one of the other candidates, but there is nothing normal about the situation the country is in today.
We currently have a demagogue, traitor, and a wannabe dictator in the Oval Office. The way I see it, the best person suited to take down a national disgrace like Trump is Biden. I'll never forget how Joe systematically dismantled Paul Ryan in their VP debate. Ryan came to the debate armed with nothing but lies, and Joe shot everyone down, and he did with a smile on his face. I thought Paul Ryan was going to cry. I have no doubt that he would do the same thing to Trump. I also believe that out of all of the candidates, Joe is the only one with the experience, and knowledge, to be able to walk into the white house on day one, and immediately start repairing the damage that Trump has done to this country, and the damage that Trump has done to the relationships with our foreign allies.
There were some who didn't think that Pelosi should be the next Speaker, and I was one of them. I believed it was time for some new and fresh blood to take the lead. And if these were normal times, that would have been true. But these aren't normal times. What we are witnessing now is unprecedented. And Pelosi turned out to be the perfect person to confront Trump. I don't believe any other Speaker could have checked Trump like Nancy has done. If Joe does get the nomination, I'm pretty sure he will pick a female VP as his running mate. And I like all of the female candidates so far, however my 3 favorites are Warren, Harris, and Klobuchar. Regardless of who he gets the nomination, I look forward to them taking down the traitor in the Oval Office, and the SDNY will be waiting for him with open arms when they do.
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Colin Faust
If Xi does decide to launch a crackdown in Hong Kong, the U.S. is unlikely to stand in his way. President Donald Trump has repeatedly broadcast ignorance of and uninterest in the situation in Hong Kong, echoing Beijing’s language in talking about the demonstrations. Last month, Trump said Xi had acted “very responsibly” in handling the standoff, and last week he referred to the protests as “riots” and indicated that it was none of his business what China does to its own people: “Somebody said that at some point they’re going to want to stop that. But that’s between Hong Kong and that’s between China, because Hong Kong is a part of China.”
Trump’s interest in China appears to extend no further than the rapidly escalating trade war in which his administration and Xi’s are engaged. His comments suggest that he has a limited grasp of what’s going on in Hong Kong and no interest in intervening to help protect civil and political rights there. Chinese officials, who have decried bipartisan statements from U.S. lawmakers supporting the Hong Kong protesters and their demands, were apparently pleased with Trump’s take on the matter: “I think President Trump has got two things right this time,” foreign-ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Wednesday. “First, what happened in Hong Kong are riots. Second, Hong Kong is part of China.”
Intelligencer, August, 2019
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Colin Faust
President Trump said Thursday of Hong Kong, "they’ve had riots for a long period of time," where locals are protesting efforts by communist China to crack down and violate Hongkongers' human rights. "Somebody said that at some point they’re going to want to stop that," Trump added.
This phrasing, a bizarre regurgitation of mainland Chinese propaganda about recent events in Hong Kong, is very disappointing to hear out of Trump's mouth.
The Hong Kong protesters, not rioters, but orderly protesters, aren't simply struggling for freedom against a vicious totalitarian regime. They also embody the struggle over international order in the 21st century. The struggle between freedom and statist repression will decide the entire world's future in this century.
Washington Examiner, August 9, 2019
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Trump dreams of being a dictator like Putin and Kim Jung Un. And if were not for that stubborn constitution, the rule of law, and the free press, he would be living the dictator's dream right now.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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@Mike-lt6sj
WRONG!! Both fa scism and
Comm unism are conservative ideologies.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard..
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, liberty, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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Hundreds of former federal prosecutors have signed onto an open online letter that says Trump's behavior toward the Russia investigation more than justified an indictment—for obstruction of justice. The open letter organized by the nonprofit group PROTECT DEMOCRACY, had roughly 400 signatures when it was initially posted. The letter now has almost a thousand signatures.
The letter's second paragraph states, “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
In making the case that Trump obstructed justice, the letter singles out three of his alleged actions that are detailed in the Mueller report: his effort to get Don McGahn, the White House counsel, to fire the special counsel; his attempt to limit the scope of the inquiry by instructing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to carry a message to then Attorney General Sessions; and his repeated efforts to tamper with witnesses, including Cohen and Paul Manafort, by, among other things, raising the prospect of pardons.
The letter says Trump’s actions “satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge” and asserts that the evidence of “corrupt intent”—a key element of any obstruction case—is overwhelming.
The full list of names shows that more than three hundred of the signatories served at the Department of Justice for at least a decade. A hundred and sixty of them racked up twenty years or more. More than sixty did at least thirty years. And two of them did forty years: John Kolar, a former senior trial counsel, and E. Thomas Roberts, who headed the narcotics division in the District of Maryland.
Many of the signatories worked for different parts of the DoJ, in many parts of the country, at many different levels. There are former heads of major divisions, such as the financial-crimes and civil-fraud units, and former U.S. Attorneys. But there are also countless trial attorneys, appellate attorneys, and assistant U.S. Attorneys—the anonymous figures who prosecute cases on a day-to-day basis. And all of them are agreed that if Trump were sitting anywhere except the Oval Office, he would be facing a lengthy rap sheet.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them.
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump.
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Nick Grossnickle
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress is rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that the Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
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I know there are some Dems who don't believe Biden should run. I'm not one of those Dems. I really like all of the Dem candidates so far. They each bring a little something different to the table, while at the same time, united together in bringing a sense of normalcy and decency back to the white house, and the country. If this was going to be a normal election, like elections of the past, I would probably support one of the other candidates, but there is nothing normal about the situation the country is in today.
We currently have a demagogue, traitor, and a wannabe dictator in the Oval Office. The way I see it, the best person suited to take down a national disgrace like Trump is Biden. I'll never forget how Joe systematically dismantled Paul Ryan in their VP debate. Ryan came to the debate armed with nothing but lies, and Joe shot everyone down, and he did with a smile on his face. I thought Paul Ryan was going to cry. I have no doubt that he would do the same thing to Trump. I also believe that out of all of the candidates, Joe is the only one with the experience, and knowledge, to be able to walk into the white house on day one, and immediately start repairing the damage that Trump has done to this country, and the damage that Trump has done to the relationships with our foreign allies.
There were some who didn't think that Pelosi should be the next Speaker, and I was one of them. I believed it was time for some new and fresh blood to take the lead. And if these were normal times, that would have been true. But these aren't normal times. What we are witnessing now is unprecedented. And Pelosi turned out to be the perfect person to confront Trump. I don't believe any other Speaker could have checked Trump like Nancy has done. If Joe does get the nomination, I'm pretty sure he will pick a female VP as his running mate. And I like all of the female candidates so far, however my 3 favorites are Warren, Harris, and Klobuchar. Regardless of who he gets the nomination, I look forward to them taking down the traitor in the Oval Office, and the SDNY will be waiting for him with open arms when they do.
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@DARKhorses73
I'm a Marine veteran, and he absolutely did. It was confirmed by military Generals, including General Kelly, who's son died in Afghanistan. Why would he lie about something like that?
On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29.
Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen Marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”
Semper Fi..
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@Matok1
Very accurate and well stated.
The origins of the term Liberal can be traced back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of liberty ("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
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@sueu6263
That's an understatement.
As White House counsel under President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John Dean was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history. Dean gave and interview after Trump was elected in 2016.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump. He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
He was not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thought Trump would probably get away with it.
“I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
In Trump, Dean says he has observed many of his former boss’s most dangerous traits—obsessive vengefulness, reflexive dishonesty, all-consuming ambition—but none of Nixon’s redeeming qualities.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean, unmolested by any such struggle.
The Atlantic, January 17, 2017
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Trump is currently going through the 5 stages of grief and loss.
1. Denial:
Avoidance, confusion, shock, and fear.
2. Anger:
Frustration, irritation, anxiety. Currently Trump is stuck between this stage and stage 1 of grief.
3. Bargaining:
Struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others. It’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control, or to feel like you can affect the outcome of an event.
4. Depression:
Feeling overwhelmed, helplessness, hostility, flight.
5. Acceptance:
Moving on...
This is the stage that a malignant narcissist like Trump will never reach, because he will NEVER allow himself to truly admit that he lost the election. In fact, Trump may spend the rest of his life waking up every morning at stage 1, and slowly working his way down to stage 4 by the end of the day, and starting the process over again the next morning. 😄
Trump reminds me of Gollum when he lost his precious. Poor Gollum never made it to stage 5 of acceptance either. 😄
"He stole it from us!!!! Trixie Bidenses!!!!!"😭😭
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Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
What Kushner tried to do is exactly what American traitors have done in the past when they've decided to start working for the Russian government. It's basically what Aldrich Ames did in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Union Embassy in DC, and turned over highly classified information to the Russians.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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@dudemandude5075
Here are some examples of Trump's so called conservative Christian "values." I can't wait to see you try to defend them.
Trump’s history of creepy comments about the looks of his daughter Ivanka are well known. But his younger daughter, Tiffany, has largely stayed out of the spotlight—much like her father’s equally creepy comments about her anatomy..
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with these packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedophile started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Maddison Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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If your loyalty, and allegiance is to Trump, then vote red. If you're ok with unchecked nepotism in the white house, then vote red, if you're OK with the most corrupt administration in American history, then vote red. If you're ok with republicans cutting social security, medicare and Medicare, in order to pay for the massive tax cut Trump and republicans gave to corporations, and the most wealthy, then vote red. If you're ok with a pathological narcissist in the Oval Office, who has now told more than 5000 lies in his 2 years in office, then vote red. But if your loyalty is to America, and her ideals, then voting BLUE💙💙💙. It's literally that simple. America vs Trump. Make a decision.
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So why should we believe anything that Trump says, when he can't even tell the truth as to whether or not he ever met Putin before the election.?
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
Trump's July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos
STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yet you said for three years, '13, '14 and '15, that you did have a relationship with Putin."
TRUMP: "No, look, what — what do you call a relationship? I mean he treats me..."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I'm asking you."
TRUMP: "with great respect. I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You would know if you did."
TRUMP: "I think so."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "I mean if he..."
TRUMP: "Yes, I think so. So I've — I don't think I've ever met him. I mean if he's in the same room or something. But I don't think so."
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Reece Beauchamp
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but the Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records..
Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle, according to the latest examination of spending by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Most of that has been spent by the Trump campaign ($1.3 million), the Republican National Committee ($123,000) and the Great America political action committee ($104,000), records show, the center reported.
The Washington Post explained in a story in July how such Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
But 48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
Spending will continue to grow as the election nears. Senate Republicans are hosting a two-day “Save the Senate” retreat at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel early next month, according to The Intercept. Room rates during that time will be nearly triple the average, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The top preferred businesses by spenders were Trump’s Washington hotel, followed by his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, according to the center. Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami was in fifth place for the amount of incoming campaign expenditures.
Traitor Trump is making a fortune while fleecing America and violating the Constitution. And his supporters defend this by saying he donates his presidential salary of 400k a year, so that makes it okay for him to fleece the American people out of tens of millions of dollars since he's been in office. His presidential salary amounts to slave wages compared to what he's actually making illegally by using the office of the presidency. If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you're probably a Trump cultist.
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Trump and his grifter family are running their criminal enterprise out of the white. That's what the entire Trump administration has been about since the very beginning. It's why Jared and Ivanka were brought into the white house. They aren't working for the country, or the American people, they are working for themselves. They are working to enrich themselves even more. Every move they make is a calculated business move for their own financial gains.
It's not an accident that Trump has been hostile towards America's longtime traditional allies, like Canada, Australia, The UK, and France. It's because financially, those countries don't really have anything to offer Trump and his criminal organization. And it's not an accident that Trump has been so cozy with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. Even before he became president, he benefited financially from Saudi, China, and Russia. Many of Trump's products are manufactured in China, and Ivanka has received more than 20 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president.
Saudi Arabia bought an entire floor in Trump's Tower, and Saudis have been spending a fortune at Trump's new Hotel in DC. And we already know that Russians and Saudis, both bailed out Trump when he was going bankrupt in the 90s. If it were not for the Saudis and Russians, Trump would not have survived the 90s. What Trump and his family are doing, amounts to nothing more than a smash & grab. All anyone has to do is take a step back and open your eyes, and you'll see that what Trump and his family are doing is happening right in front of our faces.
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Bovine One
Trump has been violating the Constitution since noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “PROFIT, GAIN, or ADVANTAGE. This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials PROFITEERING from federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decision making to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or profiting from the new federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1888 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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@ivareskesner2019
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves freedom loving"patriots."
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Bovine One
Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, Lindsey Graham at $800,000, John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
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Trump is more than happy to make 800 thousand Americans suffer until he gets what he wants, even if what he wants has been rejected by the majority of Americans.
Trump: " My immature and petulant needs, far outweighs the needs of 800 thousand Americans who will go without a pay check."
If we have so many terrorists coming across the border, why haven't we seen massive terrorist attacks across the country from these terrorists? The answer is simple...terrorists are not crossing into America at our southern border. The only terrorist attacks in America, are coming from Americans. American right-wing extremists who are plowing cars into crowds of people, and shooting up concerts, schools, clubs, bars, grocery stores, pizza parlors, movie theaters, churches, and Synagogues.
Right now, you or your child, are far more likely to be gunned down by an American in a mass shooting, than being the victim of a terrorist attack at the hands of some foreigners who snuck across the southern border. REALITY MATTERS.
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@QuantumOfSolace1
"I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion, reminded soldiers that ‘TheNazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine Corps General James Mattis,
June 3, 2020.
Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful
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Trump’s campaign chairman Manafort, shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies. Manafort was also accused of covering up other meetings and contacts with the Russian, an elusive man named Konstantin Kilimnik who worked for Manafort on election campaigns for pro-Kremlin politicians in eastern Europe.
Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the the election. US Intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian operation was ordered by Putin to help Trump’s campaign.
Mueller has also said that Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign, described Kilimnik as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU”
Manafort’s attorneys did not deny that Manafort gave Kilimnik the data, instead stating that he had not lied about it but was merely “unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed”. The attorneys also confirmed that Manafort had met Kilimnik in Madrid, claiming he “had not initially remembered” the meeting but recalled it when confronted with records showing the two were in the Spanish capital at the same time. LOL!!!😂 So Manafort tried to pretend that he didn't remember taking a flight across the Atlantic Ocean to meet up with a Russian agent in Spain in order to pass polling data on to him.😂😂
It was previously known that Kilimnik and Manafort had met twice during 2016 in the US. The date of the Madrid meeting was not stated, but a source familiar with Manafort’s team said it was in early 2017 after Trump had entered office.
Trump said he knew “nothing” about his then-campaign chief Paul Manafort sharing polling data with a Russian spy during the 2016 presidential campaign. 😂 Sure Donnie....we believe
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If Trump did nothing wrong as he claims, then why is he blocking people from testifying in the Senate trial, like Mulvaney, Bolton, and his White House counsel John Eisenberg? If he did nothing wrong, then surely these people should be able to testify and prove that he did nothing wrong.
When Lt.Col Vindman twice told a superior of his concerns about Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine for the investigation in exchange for military aid, the White House lawyer John Eisenberg had the full transcript of Trump's phone call moved to the highly classified White House server, which is usually reserved for code-word level intelligence but not transcripts of diplomatic discussions. Why would the full transcript of Trump's so called "perfect" phone call be hidden? If he did nothing wrong, releasing the full transcript should exonerate him of any wrong doing.
The only logical conclusion is that Trump is guilty, and he knows that releasing the full transcript, and allowing Mulvaney, Bolton and others to testify under oath would be his undoing. Trump knows that after seeing what happened to Manafort, Cohen and Stone, that no one else is going to risk going to prison for his crimes.
Trump's own National Security Adviser, John Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
JULY 10
At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, asks Mr. Volker to connect him to Giuliani. The two men later meet in Madrid.
At a White House meeting later that day in Bolton’s office, two Ukrainian officials press for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Sondland blurts out that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, promised that Mr. Zelensky would be invited if Ukraine announces “investigations.”
Bolton immediately halts the meeting. At a follow-up meeting, Sondland again presses the Ukrainians to announce investigations, this time specifying Burisma and the 2016 election as targets. Fiona Hill, one of Bolton’s top deputies, calls that session to a halt.
She and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, her subordinate, report the meetings to John Eisenberg, the chief legal adviser to the National Security Council. Bolton tells Ms. Hill to deliver a message from him: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
The fact that Trump refuses to allow these people to testify is an admission of guilt.
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The 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, they also received funding from Saudi Arabia to plan their attack while they were here in America. But none of that matters to Trump. His first trip abroad as President was to Saudi Arabia, so he could kiss the rings of his Saudi benefactors.
Congress is furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Democrats began investigating the administration’s nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Trump, Kushner, and Ivanka have been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with these packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedophile started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Maddison Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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It shouldn't surprise anyone that the most corrupt president in American history, would pick someone like Kavanaugh. If I'm the president, and I find out that my scotus nominee might actually be a rapey sexual predator , and someone who displayed a hostile and belligerent attitude towards the hearing committee, while committing perjury, I would simply pull his nomination. Because as the president, I wouldn't want my name attached to something like that. But then again, I actually have at least a modicum of morals, and integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Trump on the other hand, has never been burdened with anything resembling a conscience, or morals. This is a man after all, who tried to rewrite his ailing father's will in order to claim his father's entire fortune for himself. Now if Trump would do that to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the American people?
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There is no crisis on the border. The crisis is in America, and Mexico is not the source. A wall will not stop gun violence, because the problem is here in America. Guns don't come from Mexico, they are manufactured and sold here, and those same guns are flowing into Mexico. And those guns aren't being walked across the border, they are being shipped across at border crossings. The problem is here in America.
Mass shootings aren't being committed by illegal immigrants, they are being committed by Americans, again, the problem is here in America. So no wall will fix that.
Drugs aren't being walked across the border, it's being shipped into America by air, sea, border crossing, and tunnels. So again, no wall will fix that. We could lock up 5 El Chapos today, and tomorrow, there will be at least 10 new Chapos fighting each other to take the old Chapos place,....WHY? Because the problem with drugs isn't in Mexico, it's here in America. The demand is what drives the drug trade. So PLEASE, republicans, stop blaming immigrants, Mexico, the lack of a wall, drug cartels, El Chapos, Don Quixote, or whomever, for America's problems, because they aren't the problem. The problem is right here in my country, the country I love.
Semper Fi
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Trump: "I take no responsibility at all. Taking responsibility is not my deal in life. I admit that I take many things, but responsibility isnt one of them. I'm not in charge of the coronavirus task force, I placed Mike Pence in charge of that. So if you want to point your fingers at someone, don't look at me, point them at Mike Pence. And for the record, I was never a big fan of testing, because I like the numbers where they are right now. So when the number of infection cases goes up because of more testing, don't blame me. I take no responsibility for any of this, and the reason why is because everyone knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House. So again, don't blame me, blame the people who voted for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham who continues to defend me. I'm the same person that I've always been, an unethical con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that.".
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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If truly you believe in democracy, freedom, and liberty, why would you ever vote republican?
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world..
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Ever since his inauguration, Trump has been busy collecting the dignity, integrity, moral compasses, and the souls of republicans who have come crawling and groveling before him, prostrating themselves at his feet, like the sniveling slavish sycophants that he's turned them all into. Barr, Sessions, Graham, Kennedy, Moscow Mitch, Jordan, Nunes, Meadows, and Gaetz , rounds out the Allstar list of Trump's most subservient sentient suppositories.
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Let's be clear, Flynn didn't lie to Pence or Trump about his contacts with the Russians, it was Trump and Pence who lied to the American people, because they knew all along about his contacts with the Russians. He was literally acting on their behalf.
When Trump fired Michael Flynn, in Feb 2017, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official and then lied to Pence and others about the interactions. But emails among top transition officials, show that Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents showed that Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
After learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia.
On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
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@Heathen
It's called sedition, which is a high crime.
Fun Fact: No state can secede from the Union, period. Because there is no provision within the constitution that would allow a state to secede from the Union.
The only thing they can do is engage in sedition and treason. And the confederacy tried that once.
The late, and VERY conservative Supreme Court Judge, Antonin Scalia answered a letter from a screenwriter asking for tips on a screenplay involving Maine seceding from the union:
Scalia: "I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one Nation, indivisible.)"
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Misty Violet, Republican.
It was Obama who created the improved healthcare for veterans. Look it up. Trump tried to take credit for it.
NOV 5, 2018
Trump lie: “And we gave our great warriors their largest pay raise in more than a decade.”
in fact: The military pay increase in the 2019 defense bill, 2.6 per cent, is lower than the 3.4 per cent increase under Obama in 2010. More than a decade" is simply incorrect.
Trump lie: “And there's more coming. We passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor rather than waiting on line for weeks and months to see a doctor. Forty-four years, they tried to pass that. And I came up with that idea,(LIE) and I thought it was brilliant. (It was brilliant. It just wasn't his idea) I went back to my people and I said, you know what we'll do? There's no way there are so many people in line, takes months and months. I said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to have those people get off line, go outside, see a doctor. And we'll pay for the doctor. I said, ‘I'm so smart. I am the most brilliant human being that has ever lived.’ 😂😄😂
FACT: The Veterans Choice health program was passed and created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, simply modified the program. Thanks President Obama!!!!😄
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “LittleTaiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. He still remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert for his arrest. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was sitting in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News.
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For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump...
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News..
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@user-xf8qr4qz4f
A ccult environment like Trump ism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
Steven Hassan, is an expert in ccults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the UnificationChurch, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “TheCult of Trump." When polled, Trump ccultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon..
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many ccults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.
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@anti-rioter-15
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity, like his idol Pooopin.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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@anti-rioter-15
An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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@TA_Plus_Hemi
An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'
--Trump, Feb, 2018
That's exactly what anyDictator would do.
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@TA_Plus_Hemi
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity, like his idol Pooopin.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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@anti-rioter-15
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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@TA_Plus_Hemi
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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@anti-rioter-15
An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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@anti-rioter-15
An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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An ode to DJT
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a man to test the will and goodness of a free people. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who failed at everything but theft and broken promises, to live in a golden palace, and convince the poor he serves their needs. So God made a dictator. God said I need a wicked man to lead the common folk with h8tred and fear. So God made a dictator. God said I need a corrupt man who is above the law and immune from justice. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who will useViolence to seize power. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man whose followers will call black white, call evil good, and call criminals hostages. So God made a dictator. God said I need his political party to obey without question, and the press to fear his wrath. So God made a dictator. God said I need a cruel man who uses his power and position to punish and harm his opposition. So God made a dictator. God said I need a man who breaks the faith of even his most godly followers, and leads them to idol-atry, and place him above me. So God made a dictator. And then God said, I sent this man to test you, and until you cast him down, you have failed. So God made a dictator.
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"Last night, a man stole my Prada purse at gunpoint. After it happened, I told him, "I'm calling the police mister." He responded "Mrs. Bowers, please don't. That won't promote unity and healing. And we need to come together after that horrific robbery we both just experienced."
I'm kidding.That wasn't someone who robbed me. It was the Republicans who aided and abetted Donald Trump’s domestic terrorists who swarmed the Capitol in hopes of overturning our democracy. Instead, they just posed for selfies in silly costumes while criming. Yeah, they're that stupid. Oh, and they also ki//ed some people. Yes, the same folks who are all about "Blue Lives Matter" and "Respect the Flag" disrespected the flag to end a blue life. It's almost as if they don't REALLY believe any of the things they say. Which is why I side-eye any calls for bipartisanship from them now. "Oops, our attempt at a bloody, treasonous insurrection failed. So let's just forget the whole thing. Bygones and hold hands." While they regroup on their latest app for white supremacists.
Remember after 9/11, when everyone was all, "Let's not go after Bin Laden for that lapse into terrorism. If you do, he'll just do more terrorism. Instead, let's just send him a Gwyneth Paltrow vageen candle, and work with him towards unity and healing?" Yeah, I don't either. But the insurrection at the Capitol never would have happened without 2 things: 1 Donald - and the rest of the Republicans'- lies about the election. 2, something not getting nearly as much attention: Christian nationalists. The riot was full of them. But then again, so is any gathering of white supremacists. There were Dominionist prayers before, during, and after the Capitol's windows were smashed. The mob was invoking their "Thou Shall Not Ki//" mascot, while they were ki//ing.
So what is it now? "Render unto Caesar - a Molotov cocktail!!" Or " Onward Christian domestic terrorists?" Frankly, I blame in part the gimmick called "Religious Freedom." It has taught us that the laws that apply to so-called "everyone" don't apply to conservative Christians. That makes us....oh, what is the word? LAWLESS. Because when I hear the "Well, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley didn't actually storm the Capitol" defense, I'm reminded of how popular the "Well, Bin Laden didn't actually fly the planes" defense was after 9/11. You know, cause Charles Manson never actually ki//ed anyone either.
Criming is so much more tidy when you get others to do it for you. Because pretending to care about pretend election fraud, to overturn a REAL election, is inciting REAL sedition. And when the Christian Nationalists you inspire namedrop you while they're committing domestic terrorism -- congratulations!!
You know your reckless encouragement worked."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
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In Trump's diseased mind, he actually believes that thousands of Americans are willing, EVEN HAPPY, to go without pay for months, or even years, JUST FOR HIM. Trump's Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was right when he said that Trump is a terrible human being.
Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like a true sociopath. Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath.
• Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
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In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
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It's clear that Trump sees himself as a dictator like Putin and Kim Jung Un. During the shutdown, he said that thousands of Americans are okay with going without pay for months, or even years, just for him, because apparently they love him so much. And suffering for him would be an honor. The same way the people of NK are honored to suffer for their dear leader, Trump believes Americans are willing to do the same for him.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
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The media is NOT the enemy of the people. The media is the enemy of Trump's lies, and his attempts to hide his crimes, and his fraudulent life.
A free press is the enemy of any dictator or demagogue like Trump. Trump says that the free press is the enemy of the people, but what he really means, is that the free press is the enemy of his demagoguery. A free press is the natural enemy of his lies. And he wants to be able to lie with impunity. Trump desperately needs to be able to lie without anyone checking him on his lies.
Demagoguery is an appeal to people that plays on their emotions and prejudices rather than on their rational side. Demagoguery is a manipulative approach — often associated with dictators and amoral politicians — that appeals to the worst nature of people. Demagoguery isn't based on reason, issues, and doing the right thing; it's based on stirring up fear and hatred to control people.. Trump's demagoguery has been on full display since day one
Since information from the press can undermine a demagogue's spell over his or her followers, modern demagogues have often attacked and demonized the free the press. They will usually claim that the media can't be trusted. They have even called out for violence against newspapers who opposed them, claiming that the press was secretly in the service of moneyed interests, or a deep state conspiracy against them , or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get them. This is dictatorship 101.
Ladies and gentlemen...I give you demagogue, Don the con...
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@fakeweightsfredokwomo3016
Try telling Trump and the insurrectionists who stormed our Capitol that.
When Trump said "stop the steal" it was code word for his followers to "start the steal."
DJT sat in the White House, and watched theVio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
AndVio.lence was the only option they had left. DJT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, theViolence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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@fakeweightsfredokwomo3016
The insurrection the entire world watched live on TV.
SidneyPowell's weekslong campaign to invalidate the results of the 2020 election was not based in fact, her lawyers said in federal court back in March.
Powell asked a federal judge to dismiss the $1.3 billion defamationSuit filed by DominionVoting Systems in January.
In court, lawyers for Powell told the judge that "no reasonable person" would believe that her false claims and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election were "truly statements of fact."
The filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claims Powell's statements were so absurd they couldn’t be taken seriously.🤣
“Plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements at issue as 'wild accusations' and 'outlandish claims,'" her lawyers wrote. "They are repeatedly labeled 'inherently improbable' and even 'impossible.' Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support defendant’s position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact."
"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by MobRioters,"
'He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."
"Some say the riots were caused by antifa," There's absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so."
"These facts require immediate action from President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
“Let's be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election."
-- Kevin McCarthy
January 13, 2021
"January 6th was a disgrace.
American citizensAttacked their own government. They used T€RRorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like."
“Fellow Americans beatAnd BL00.d.i.e.d our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They built a gallows and chanted about mvrdering TheVP."
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
AMob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
"There is no question that PresidentTrump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."
--Mitch McConnell, February 13, 2021.
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Remember all the times that Trump falsely accused President Obama of doing exactly what he's doing now?
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran. I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic?”
--Trump, Nov 16, 2011
"Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!"
--Trump, Oct 22, 2012
"I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!"
--Trump, Sep 16, 2013
"Remember what I previously said--Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is."
--Trump, Sep 25, 2013
"Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"
--Trump, Nov 10, 2013
We now know that as usual, Trump was only fantasizing about what he would do if he were president.
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Trump's interest in doing business in Russia was first piqued in 1986, when he met the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin and they began discussing building a "large luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin in partnership with the Soviet government," as Trump recounted in his 1987 book, "The Art of the Deal."
Trump traveled to Russia in 1987 to survey potential locations for his hotel as landmark policies like perestroika and glasnost made the Soviet Union more open to foreign investments. Trump went back to Russia in 1996 and announced a plan to invest $250 million in Russian real estate and slap his name on two luxury residential buildings.Trump boasted about his plan when he met the Russian politician Aleksandr Lebed in New York in 1997, telling Lebed, "We are actually looking at something in Moscow right now ... Only quality stuff. And we're working with the local government, the mayor of Moscow, and the mayor's people. So far, they've been very responsive
Trump began seeing significant returns from Russian investments in US properties bearing the Trump name in the 2000s. A Reuters investigation last in 2017 found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, for instance.Reuters noted that its tally of Russian investors may be conservative. At least 703 — or about one-third — of the owners of the 2,044 units in the seven Trump buildings are limited liability companies, or LLCs, which have the ability to hide the identity of a property's true owner.
In the mid-2000s, the Trump Organization partnered with a company called the Bayrock Group, contracting it to pursue a development deal in Moscow. This effort was led by the Russian-born businessman Felix Sater, a man Trump lied about even knowing, and who's become a key figure in Mueller's investigation and Cohen's plea deal. At a 2008 conference, Trump Jr. also said, "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." In the 18 months prior to the conference, Trump Jr. made six trips to Russia.
In 2013, Trump traveled to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. During the visit, he said, "I have plans for the establishment of business in Russia. Now, I am in talks with several Russian companies to establish this skyscraper."In 2015 and 2016, Cohen and Sater teamed up in an attempt to put up a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen said discussions on the plan lasted until June 2016, which was after Trump had clinched the GOP nomination for president.Cohen was in touch with the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin's press secretary over the matter, which reportedly included a plan to offer Putin a $50 million penthouse in the tower.
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If anyone is curious as to why Trump despises John Brennan, here's why.
In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies began picking up evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia..
The contents of these communications have not been disclosed, but what Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference last year, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. “Individuals who go along a treasonous path,” he warned, “do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.” In an interview this year, he put it more bluntly: “I think [Trump] is afraid of the president of Russia. The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.”
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had “assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation,” as a federal court once put it.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it but before he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump..
Trump knows, that Brennan knows, he's a compromised Russian asset.
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@Crash1025Bandicoot7
In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸
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All the times Trump falsely accused President Obama of doing, what he is now doing:
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran. I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic?”
--Trump, Nov 16, 2011
"Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!"
--Trump, Oct 22, 2012
"I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!"
--Trump, Sep 16, 2013
"Remember what I previously said--Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is."
--Trump, Sep 25, 2013
"Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"
--Trump, Nov 10, 2013
We now know that as usual, Trump was only fantasizing about what he would do if he were president. Isn't he pathetic?
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@bellanoir9479
Here are some examples of Trump's so called conservative Christian "values."
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate her bra size—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
Defend that!!🤣
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In the month of October alone, Trump has told at least 1100 lies. That's an average of 30 lies a day. I couldn’t lie that much even if I tried. I couldn't lie that much on a dare, not even on a triple dog dare could I lie that much. Because at some point, I would slip up and tell the truth about something. That many lies makes Trump an illegitimate president. In no way should an elected official get away with lying to the American people on such a massive scale. I don't know of any profession, that would tolerate someone who is that untrustworthy.
If you are lower to middle-class, and you're voting Republican, you are basically cutting your own throat. Mitch McConnell announced a few weeks ago, that republicans are planning to cut social security, Medicaid and Medicare, in order to pay for the massive tax cut that they gave to the most wealthiest corporations and people in the country. If that's not enough for you to realize that you shouldn't vote republican, then you deserve to lose your social security. You deserve to lose everything you have.
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Leslie Franklin
Exactly, and well stated. Capitalism is fine, but unregulated Capitalism is a cancer, because the 2 fundamental flaws of capitalism are greed and corruption. The government has a responsibility to but regulations in place as a check on greed and corruption, for the simple fact that greed cannot stop itself. So whenever you hear republicans say they want smaller government, it's code for less regulations on big banks, corporations, and billion dollar industries. And less regulations is code for corporate welfare, less regulations is a green light for Wall Street and others to move full steam ahead with ruining the economy again, and then asking the government and the American people to bail them out again. And it's already begun. Many of the regulations that Obama but into place because of the recession, have already been stripped away by republicans.
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Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
What Kushner tried to do is exactly what American traitors have done in the past when they've decided to start working for the Russian government. It's basically what Aldrich Ames did in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Union Embassy in DC, and turned over highly classified information to the Russians.
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute.
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Bill Browder, an American investor, whose business in post-Soviet Russia ran afoul of Putin, believes Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and Libertarian Rand Paul, have both been compromised by Russia.
In 2016, Dana Rohrabacher flew to Moscow for a meeting with Russia’s deputy general prosecutor. When he returned to D.C., the California Republican lobbied to take an expanded version of the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan law that allows the US to sanction Russan human rights offenders, OFF the congressional agenda. The bill was named in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, Browder’s lawyer, who died in 2009 in a Moscow prison. (Browder successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act in 2012.)
Rohrabacher also returned from Russia with a propaganda film he screened for colleagues in his office. Rohrabacher’s attempt to block the expanded bill failed.
“There is absolutely no reason why any member of Congress would do this … unless there was something else going on,” Browder said. “Somehow the Russians have got damaging information on Dana Rohrabacher, or that they’ve found some way of financing him in such a way that they’ve influenced his behavior.”
Rohrabacher isn’t the only congressman Browder suspects is in Putin’s pocket.
“The other person I am very suspicious about is Rand Paul,” Browder said, noting that the Kentucky Republican senator traveled to Moscow in August and a week later called on Trump to lift sanctions on a pair of Russian lawmakers who are on the so-called Magnitsky list.
“Why would he do that? The people of Kentucky don’t want that to happen,” Browder said. “It makes no sense to me why a U.S. politician under the circumstances right now would be trying to loosen sanctions on Russia.”
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As it stands now, practically anyone, and anything connected to Trump is now under investigation. His inauguration, his transition team, his Trump crime organization, his fake charity foundation, his fraudulent taxes, his tainted campaign, and his illegitimate presidency, are all under investigation. Most Americans already knew that Trump was totally unfit, and unqualified to be president, but I don't think anything prepared us for an unmitigated disaster of this magnitude. Trump's presidency has been such an unprecedented, and unimaginable debacle, that it can only be defined as a miracle. Because it cannot be explained with logic, reasoning or science.
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In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
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The media is NOT the enemy of the people. The media is the enemy of Trump's lies, and his attempts to hide his crimes, and his fraudulent life.
A free press is the enemy of any dictator or demagogue like Trump. Trump says that the free press is the enemy of the people, but what he really means, is that the free press is the enemy of his demagoguery. A free press is the natural enemy of his lies. And he wants to be able to lie with impunity. Trump desperately needs to be able to lie without anyone checking him on his lies.
Demagoguery is an appeal to people that plays on their emotions and prejudices rather than on their rational side. Demagoguery is a manipulative approach — often associated with dictators and amoral politicians — that appeals to the worst nature of people. Demagoguery isn't based on reason, issues, and doing the right thing; it's based on stirring up fear and hatred to control people.. Trump's demagoguery has been on full display since day one
Since information from the press can undermine a demagogue's spell over his or her followers, modern demagogues have often attacked and demonized the free the press. They will usually claim that the media can't be trusted. They have even called out for violence against newspapers who opposed them, claiming that the press was secretly in the service of moneyed interests, or a deep state conspiracy against them , or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get them. This is dictatorship 101.
Ladies and gentlemen...I give you demagogue, Don the con...
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@raindr0p
😂😂😄😆
Trump Dec 7, 2019:
“People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water. We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where it rushes out to sea because you could never handle it. And you don’t get any water. You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. You can’t wash your hands practically, there’s so little water comes out of the faucet” and then you “end up using the same amount of water.”
😂😄😂😅
On Dec 23, at turning point USA, Trump gave what could be considered his most stupefying soliloquy to date.
“I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. (Don Quixote disagrees) I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?"
--Trump
Trump at a rally in Milwaukee, Jan 14, 2020
"I'm also approving new dishwashers that give you more water so you can actually wash and rinse your dishes without having to do it 10 times — four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN.😄
"Anybody have a new dishwasher? I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for that. It's worthless. They give you so little water. You ever see it? Air comes out. So little water."
"Sinks, toilets, and showers — you don't get any water. You go into a shower — and I have this beautiful head of hair. I need a lot of water," (to wild cheers from the crowd) "And you go into the shower, right? You turn on the water. Drip. Drip. Drip. I call the guy: 'Is something wrong with this?' 'No, sir, it's just the restrictor.'"
"We're getting rid of the restrictors!!! You're going to have full shower flow!!" Once again, his crowd of cultists goes wild!!!
Just let all of that sink in for a moment. Trump really enjoys giving the world little peeks inside of his diseased riddled mind. I dare any Trump cultist to try and explain to me exactly what it was that Trump was trying to say, or what salient point he was trying to make. I dare you....
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@RyanESmith-wf4cu
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "patriots."
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The FBI obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with the NRA, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, in 2016.
José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said the FBI requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.
“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.” 😲 😲 😲
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In 2005, Manafort started working for billionaire Russian Oleg Deripaska. Manafort, a Republican operative who had hired himself out to a variety of global villains, promised he would “influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet Republics to benefit Putin’s government.
Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
The question now is why would Manafort continue to lie for Trump? Why would Manafort, who has a law degree from Georgetown and years of experience around white-collar crime, behave like this? What incentive does he have to spend most or all of his remaining years in prison rather than betray Trump? One way to make sense of his behavior is the possibility that Manafort is keeping his mouth shut because he’s afraid of being killed.
That speculation might sound hyperbolic, but there is plenty of evidence to support it. In February, a video appeared on YouTube showing Manafort’s Russian employer, Deripaska, on his yacht with a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich. In the video, from August 2016, Deripaska could be seen speaking with a high-ranking Kremlin official. The video was such a source of embarrassment to Moscow that it fought to have it removed from YouTube. Vashukevich, who was then in a Thai jail after having been arrested there for prostitution, announced that she had heard Deripaska describe a plot to interfere in the election and that she has 16 hours’ worth of audio recordings from the yacht to support her charges. In a letter to America authorities, her associate wrote, “We risk our lives very much.”
Vashukevich’s name has disappeared from the news media. In all probability, either the FBI or Russian intelligence has gotten to her. Whatever has happened to her, her testimony suggests both that Russia is still hiding secrets about its role in Trump’s election and that someone who knows Deripaska well believes he would and could kill her for violating his confidence.
Russia murders people routinely, at home and abroad. In the nine months after Trump’s election, nine Russian officials were murdered or died mysteriously. At least one was suspected to have been a likely source of information for the British agent Steele. The attorney for the firm that hired Steele told the Senate last August, “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier.”
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Conservatism, by its very core nature, is an absolutist, black-and-white way of thinking. Conservatism is rooted in the past; it is hidebound, dogmatic, intellectually incurious, unwilling to explore and examine differing viewpoints, and completely, often rabidly dismissive of evidence to the contrary of its beliefs and core principles. "Conservative" people tend to be adamantly, willfully, often venomously ignorant of the truth, because the truth offends them. They seem to be hard-wired into this obstinacy, to the point of pathological obsession. This is why repubicans are simply incapable of governing. Because Republicans don't want to govern, they want to rule, and there's a big difference between the two. Ruling, and authoritarianism, lies at the heart of what conservatism has always been about...
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A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.
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@paulharrison3419
No one lies like Trump. No one.
In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection..
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@paulharrison3419
Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him..
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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8a41jt
Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, Israeli intelligence officials gathered at CIA headquarters, where they were told something astonishing: Russia, the agency believed, had “leverages of pressure” over the incoming president. Therefore, the agency advised the Israelis to consider the possibility that Trump might pass their secrets on to Russia. The Israelis dismissed the warning as outlandish. Who could believe that the world’s most powerful country was about to hand its presidency to a Russian dupe? That the United States government had, essentially, fallen?
A few months later, Trump invited Russian diplomats into the Oval Office. He boasted to them that he had fired “nut job” James Comey. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” At the same meeting, Trump passed on to the Russians a highly sensitive intelligence secret Israel had captured from a valuable source inside ISIS. It was the precise danger Israel had been cautioned about.
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The FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" was a counter-espoinoge operation against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010.. By July 2015,
Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley had been living for two decades
in Canada and then in Europe before they ever set foot in the United States
to start spying for Russia here. We now know that the FBI was on to them
as spies as soon as they got here.
The FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" was against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010. Andrey Bezrukov, and Yelena Vavilova, were highly trained in terms of espionage, but also in terms of language and accent and mannerisms, which would allow them to blend in.
In the 80s, they arrived in Canada as a couple. They had false identifies that had been stolen from real Canadians. The identities were stolen from a little boy in Montreal in the 1960s,
whose name had been Donald Heathfield and sometime in the 1960s, that
little child had died in infancy. There had also been a little girl named
Tracy Lee Ann Foley who had also died in Montreal in the 1960s in
childhood.
Decades later in the 1980s, these two Russian agents, with their stolen identities, started a fake life in Toronto. They lived in Toronto through the ’80s and into the ’90s. In the ’90s,
Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley, had two sons.
After their sons were born in Canada in the ’90s, the family moved sometime
in the mid to late ’90s to France where the father, Donald Heathfield, went
to grad school. They were both fluent in French and English.
They didn’t speak Russian at home with their boys even though they were
from Russia and were native Russian speakers. Their sons had no
idea that their parents were Russian at all. When the story of their very
unusual family was ultimately told, the boys would ultimately say they had
no inkling their parents were Russian, they never heard their parents speak
Russian. They never heard their parents speak about Russia. They
certainly had no idea their parents were Russian spies.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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@jossbomound6632
Oh it's very clear. The investigation is over. The plane crashed after being hit by a Russian-made Buk missile over eastern Ukraine, a 15-month investigation by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) found in October 2015.
In September 2016, an international team of criminal investigators said evidence showed the Buk missile had been brought in from Russian territory and was fired from a field controlled by Russian-backed separatists. (Russians)
The Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT) concluded in May 2018 that the missile system belonged to a Russian brigade, and Australia and the Netherlands announced both were holding Russia responsible for downing the aircraft.
Then, in June 2019, the JIT named four men who were involved in bringing the missile into the area in eastern Ukraine, and charged them with theMurders of 298 passengers and crew. It announced that international arrest warrants had been issued.
The suspects, who prosecutors plan to try under Dutch law at a court hearing beginning on 9 March 2020, are:
• Igor Girkin (also known as Strelkov), a former colonel in Russia's FSB intelligence service, according to prosecutors. He was given the minister of defence title in the rebel-held eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk
• Sergei Dubinsky (known as Khmury), who was employed by Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, was a deputy of Mr Girkin and was in regular contact with Russia, investigators said
• Oleg Pulatov, known as Giurza, a former soldier of GRU special forces and deputy head of the intelligence service in Donetsk, according to the JIT
• Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian national who has no military background but led a combat unit as a commander in Eastern Ukraine, prosecutors said
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@KarmaSwiss
Then please explain this.
In 1994, a Democrat led Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — commonly called the assault weapons ban.
It prohibited the manufacture or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons. The act also banned magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.
In 2004, the Republican led Congress refused to renew the 10 year assault weapons ban after it expired.
Before the 1994 ban:
From 1981 – the earliest year in our analysis – to the rollout of the assault weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of deaths in mass shootings in which an assault rifle was used was lower than it is today.
Yet in this earlier period, mass shooting deaths were steadily rising. Indeed, high-profile mass shootings involving assault rifles – such as the ki//ing of five children in Stockton, California, in 1989 and a 1993 San Francisco office attack that left eight victimsDead – provided the impetus behind a push for a prohibition on some types of gun.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest MassShooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Saving hundreds of lives
We calculated that the risk of a person in the U.S. dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower during the period in which the assault weapons ban was active. The proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer mass-shooting-related fatalities per 10,000 shooting deaths.
Taking population trends into account, a model we created based on this data suggests that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the whole period of our study – that is, from 1981 through 2017 – it may have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the years in which there was no ban.
Michael J. Klein, New York University
The Conversation
Published: June 8, 2022
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The FBI obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with the NRA, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, in 2016.
José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said the FBI requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.
“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.” 😄😂😄😂
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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@Michael_919
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
2
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@ecurewitz
Thank you!!
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
2
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@tonysmith2045
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
2
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"Christian nationalists like to say that this is a christian nation. Not only is that historically inaccurate, not only is that theologically blasphemous, but it's also just not true. Look around us. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would forgive student debt. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would guarantee healthcare to every single person. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would love all of our LGBQ neighbors. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would make sure that every child in this state and country is housed, fed, clothed, educated, and insured. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would never make it, because we know the table of fellowship is open to everybody, including our Buddhist, Hindu, JewishMuslimsSikh, and atheist neighbors. Jesus could have started a Christian theocracy, but love would never do that. Christian nationalists are more committed to the love of power, than to the power of love. And it exposes a lack of faith. Because the opposite of faith is not doubt, the opposite of faith, is control."
--Texas Rep James Talarico
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with these packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedophile started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Maddison Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we are freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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Gary Miller
July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections..
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Clinton’s emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
5 hours later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
7/16/2018
Trump in Helsinki: "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia." What???😲😲
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikpiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
Trump today: "I don't know anything about Wikileaks, that's not my deal in life."😲
Anyone who's been paying attention can see why it would have been Russia. It might have something to do with the fact that Trump invited Russia to meddle in our election on national tv
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Gary Miller
June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
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Gary Miller
A big question that should be asked is why did Kushner ignored the intelligence community’s warnings about Russia. Once it became public that they were interfering in our election, which was in June, why did you continue to have contacts with them?
White house whistle-blower Tricia Newbold, who reported that Trump and his white house endangered national security by breaking security procedures in issuing security clearances to Jared, Ivanka and more than 20 white house aides and officials, who were deemed untrustworthy by intelligence agencies.
In fact, Kushner never raised Russia’s meddling during his two post-election meetings with Russians, according to his own accounts. Kislyak contacted Kushner on November 16th, and they met on December 1st. Once again, the Russians seemed to have a level of access to the Trump campaign that other countries, including Western allies, could only dream of. In his testimony, Kushner confirmed that at this meeting, which took place in Trump Tower, he and Kislyak and Michael Flynn, the incoming national-security adviser, who also attended, discussed using communications equipment at the Russian Embassy.
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by Jared Kushner, who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated.
Gen.Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach. “Would they take the meeting?” he said. “So, then you get the willingness. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. So, while Kushner claimed that the meeting was irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”
The Kushner-Kislyak relationship continued. On December 13th, at Kislyak’s urging, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Putin. Again, what jumps out from Kushner’s account of the meeting is the easy access that the Russians had—“I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Ambassador has been so insistent,” and “said he had a direct relationship with” Putin, Kushner noted—and the obvious attempts to soften up Trump’s closest aides and family members. Gorkov, whose bank, Vnesheconombank, was affected by the Obama Administration’s sanctions against Russia..
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@MrHalified
Trump, Don jr, and Rudy incited the insurrectionists on that day. The insurrectionists even said that they were there on Trump's orders. It's all on video. Trump has literally been encouraging his followers to engage in violence against their fellow Americans since 2016.
As far back as 2015, Trump has been connected to documented acts of violence, with perpetrators claiming that he was even their inspiration. In fact, dozens of people enacted violence in Trump’s name in the years before the Capitol attack.
October 23, 2015:
After being interrupted by protesters at a campaign rally in Miami, Trump warned he’ll “be a little more violent” next time when addressing protesters. “See, the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time.’ The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent."
January 23, 2016:
At a campaign rally in Iowa, Trump, in describing the loyalty of his supporters, notoriously said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and sh○○t somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
March 9, 2016:
A white male Trump supporter punched a Black male protester being escorted out of a Trump campaign rally in Fayetteville, NC. The Trump supporter was recorded on video saying he enjoyed “knocking the he// out of that big mouth” and “Yes, he deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to ki// him.” He was arrested and charged with assault a day later.
FEBRUARY 2016:
"Knock the krap out of him. would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees." Trump said this at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
MARCH 2016:
"Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt anyone anymore." Trump said this during a rally in St. Louis as protesters were being escorted out by security. Trump became frustrated that it was taking so long to escort the protesters out. He then said " You know, part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."
October 18, 2018: At a rally in Montana, Trump celebrated Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who body-slammed a reporter in May 2017, telling the crowd, “Any guy who can do a body-slam ... he’s my guy.”
Gianforte assaulted journalist Ben Jacobs after Jacobs asked him a question about the GOP health care bill, on the day before Gianforte won election. Gianforte ultimately apologized (after his spokesperson first denied the assault) and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault.
On January 6, Rudy Giuliani addressed the crowd at Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally hours before the attack on Capitol Hill.
During his rant, Giuliani repeated baseless claims that widespread election fraud affected the outcome of the presidential election.
"Let's have trial by combat!!" Rudy shouted to the crowd.
On the very day that Congress counted the electoral votes that certified President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, Trump opened up the US Capitol to an insurrection.
He told a crowd rallying south of the White House to “walk down to the Capitol,” adding, “You will never take back our country with weakness.”
WAKE UP!!!
Lies are destroying this country.
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Matthew Hutchinson
😂 You don't understand my logic, because you don't believe in logic, the same way Trump and his cultists don't believe in science. And I never said Trump would start WW3. Trump is the traitor who said he wanted to run America the same way Kim Jung Un runs NK.
Trump dreams of being a dictator like Putin and Kim Jung Un. And if it were not for that stubborn constitution, the rule of law, and the free press, he would be living the dictator's dream right now.
June 15 2018, Trump praises Kim Jung Un ' control over his people.
"He's the head of the country," Trump said of Kim Friday during a Fox interview.
"And I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different."
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump added. "I want my people to do the same."😲
Sept 30 2018, Trump confesses the love he has for his muse, Kim Jung Un, during a rally.
"I like him, he likes me. I guess that’s okay. Am I allowed to say that?” Trump said.
“And then we fell in love, okay” he said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.😂
Face it, Trump is a national disgrace.
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@xelamercedes
No more research needed.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
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Devina
Or, maybe he simply believes that Biden has a better chance at beating Trump. This election is not like any other election. Removing Trump from office is the number one objective. If we the people, fail to remove the existential threat to America from the Oval Office, it will mean the beginning of the end of our democracy, and the end of our 243 year old constitutional Republic. We will have traded those 243 years away for a career criminal, con-man, traitor, and tyrant. It would also mean watching Trump do the unthinkable, placing another one of his unqualified cultist on the Supreme Court. This will easily be the most important and consequential election in our lifetime, so we can't F this one up, because there won't be any "do-overs." This election isn't really about Bernie or Biden, it's about Trump.
VOTE 💙 NO MATTER WHO!!! And that includes the Senate, because nothing changes unless we the people take back the Oval Office and the Senate.
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@jnywd8450
In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸
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Hundreds of former federal prosecutors have signed onto an open online letter that says Trump's behavior toward the Russia investigation more than justified an indictment—for obstruction of justice. The open letter organized by the nonprofit group PROTECT DEMOCRACY, had roughly 400 signatures when it was initially posted. The letter now has almost a thousand signatures.
The letter's second paragraph states, “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
In making the case that Trump obstructed justice, the letter singles out three of his alleged actions that are detailed in the Mueller report: his effort to get Don McGahn, the White House counsel, to fire the special counsel; his attempt to limit the scope of the inquiry by instructing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to carry a message to then Attorney General Sessions; and his repeated efforts to tamper with witnesses, including Cohen and Paul Manafort, by, among other things, raising the prospect of pardons.
The letter says Trump’s actions “satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge” and asserts that the evidence of “corrupt intent”—a key element of any obstruction case—is overwhelming.
The full list of names shows that more than three hundred of the signatories served at the Department of Justice for at least a decade. A hundred and sixty of them racked up twenty years or more. More than sixty did at least thirty years. And two of them did forty years: John Kolar, a former senior trial counsel, and E. Thomas Roberts, who headed the narcotics division in the District of Maryland.
Many of the signatories worked for different parts of the DoJ, in many parts of the country, at many different levels. There are former heads of major divisions, such as the financial-crimes and civil-fraud units, and former U.S. Attorneys. But there are also countless trial attorneys, appellate attorneys, and assistant U.S. Attorneys—the anonymous figures who prosecute cases on a day-to-day basis. And all of them are agreed that if Trump were sitting anywhere except the Oval Office, he would be facing a lengthy rap sheet.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
During a press conference back on March 20, Trump said to reporters: "Really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. I'll have just two or three that I like in this room." That's a textbook tactic of every demagogic dictator and cult leader throughout history.
Steven Hassan, is an expert in cults and an ex-Moonie cult member (as in the Unification Church, founded by a Korean businessman, Sun Myung Moon), published “The Cult of Trump” last spring. When polled, Trump cultists come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and farcical talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
Hassan remembers, during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Adolf-H. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end." Hassan finally broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
When they are finally confronted with truth and reality, many cults and their leaders — as we remember from the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — come to a catastrophic end.?
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Dave A.
Indeed.
Trump has been violating the Constitution since was sworn in at noon on January 20, 2017. His decision prior to his inauguration to keep ownership and control of his businesses —a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in.
Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government. Impeachment, as outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, is a political remedy for a president’s egregious violations of these prohibitions.
The Framers of the Constitution were very aware of the dangers from foreign influence on any president. This is why they created rules to prevent foreign governments from purchasing undue influence on a sitting President. Essentially buying a sitting President, which is basically what Putin and Saudi Arabia have done withTrump.
The rule prohibits anyone holding any “Office of Profit or Trust under the United States” from receiving any “emolument” from foreign powers. An emolument, for purposes of the Constitution, according to two courts, is any “PROFIT, GAIN, or ADVANTAGE. This rule is what has become known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and is located at Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
The Framers of the Constitution were also worried about undue influence from individual States in the union, and by officials PROFITEERING from federal offices. The Framers were concerned that a powerful state might sway the president’s decision making to its own benefit.
To prevent against these types of abuses, the Framers developed the Domestic Emoluments Clause, at Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, which is a blanket prohibition against the president receiving any sort of advantage from any state government, or PROFITING from the federal government.
Not only have U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent at least $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle.
A recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks..
FUN FACT: The emoluments clauses are our country’s original anti-corruption laws. They are written into the document that created our government and defined our system of laws.
At a Cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the backlash and outrage over his attempt to profit from holding the G7 Summit at his Doral resort on “you people with this phony emoluments clause."😲😲
A perfect example of the utter contempt that Trump has for our Constitution, and the rule of law.
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KT
But Hillary isn't the president now is she?
When are Trump cultists going to get over the fact that Hillary lost the election?
The 5 stages of Trumpism:
1. It's a total lie, never happened, fake news.
2. Ok, so it happened, but it's not a big deal.
3. Ok, so it might be a big deal, but it isn't illegal.
4. Ok, so it's illegal, but but but Hillary and Obama, something unintelligible, so it's okay.
5. WHATEVER LIBBY!! YOU'RE JUST A SORE LOSER. MAGA!!!
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The FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" was a counter-espionage operation against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010.. By July 2015,
Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley had been living for two decades
in Canada and then in Europe before they ever set foot in the United States
to start spying for Russia here. We now know that the FBI was on to them
as spies as soon as they got here.
The FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" was against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010. Andrey Bezrukov, and Yelena Vavilova, were highly trained in terms of espionage, but also in terms of language and accent and mannerisms, which would allow them to blend in.
In the 80s, they arrived in Canada as a couple. They had false identifies that had been stolen from real Canadians. The identities were stolen from a little boy in Montreal in the 1960s,
whose name had been Donald Heathfield and sometime in the 1960s, that
little child had died in infancy. There had also been a little girl named
Tracy Lee Ann Foley who had also died in Montreal in the 1960s in
childhood.
Decades later in the 1980s, these two Russian agents, with their stolen identities, started a fake life in Toronto. They lived in Toronto through the ’80s and into the ’90s. In the ’90s,
Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley, had two sons.
After their sons were born in Canada in the ’90s, the family moved sometime
in the mid to late ’90s to France where the father, Donald Heathfield, went
to grad school. They were both fluent in French and English.
They didn’t speak Russian at home with their boys even though they were
from Russia and were native Russian speakers. Their sons had no
idea that their parents were Russian at all. When the story of their very
unusual family was ultimately told, the boys would ultimately say they had
no inkling their parents were Russian, they never heard their parents speak
Russian. They never heard their parents speak about Russia. They
certainly had no idea their parents were Russian spies.
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Matt Whitaker is clearly the type of person that's willing to tarnish his name and future career, for an undeserving con-man like Trump. Trump has clearly conned Whitaker into helping him obstruct justice. And this is what Trump does. He doesn't see others around him as people, he sees them as instruments to be used and manipulated. These unwitting instruments will be tricked into believing that they are friends with trump. They never realize, until it's too late, that Trump is a complete sociopath, and sociopaths don't have friends. He will simply use them to help advance his his own unethical, criminal, amoral, and self-serving goals. And once you've outlived your usefulness, or you have simply failed to deliver on the things he desperately needs to survive, you will find yourself being ridiculed, and insulted by him, and then being tossed under the bus. If you want to know what happens to people who foolishly cozy up to Trump, look no further than Sessions, Cohen, Manafort, Gates, Reince Priebus, Spicer, Hope Hicks, Flynn, Bannon, Papadopoulos, Mooch,...whew. I'm exhausted. Did I leave anyone out?
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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Jessica Andis
Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, Lindsey Graham at $800,000, John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
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My Teams Suck
That's a textbook example of whataboutism, from a Russian bot.
Deflecting or changing the subject is called "what-aboutism" — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. And it's use in Russia helps illustrate how it has been a useful tool for Trump and his sycophantic defenders here in America. It's an attractive tactic for Trump and Putin, allowing them to be vague but appear straight-talking at the same time. What-aboutism is essentially a schoolyard taunt, brought to a national and global level.
The idea behind what-aboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A's faults — "Yeah? Well WHAT ABOUT that bad thing you did?"
It's not a complicated tactic — any grade-schooler can master it. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia.
Whataboutism has been common in Putin's Russia. The Atlantic cited one such example in 2014, noting that when the Kremlin faced criticisms of its treatment of protesters, government officials responded, "What about the United Kingdom? Breaking the law during public gatherings there could lead to a fine of 5,800 pounds sterling there or even prison."
One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it's a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings..
Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a black-and-white worldview. But in this worldview, it's very difficult to be the good guy; idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be "unmasked" as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency. If nobody is perfect, then it means that Trump should get a pass for any wrongdoings. This tactic has been used in Russia for years, and it was perfected within the Soviet Union. It has allowed Russian dictators like Putin to get away with endless crimes against his own people.
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Everything Trump touches dies. He's like a walking talking ebola virus. You could say he's patient zero, the same way Typhoid Mary was patient zero. He infects everything, and everyone around him. Just look at Trump's failed casinos and businesses, just ask his former and current wives. Just ask Manafort, Flynn, Cohen, Rick Gates, Roy Moore, Papadopoulos, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Hope Hicks, Rob Porter . Last but not least, just look at what this diseased man is doing to our country, and our democracy.
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Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
Almost everything Trump does violates the Constitution. He overreaches his power by bypassing the proper legal process to get security clearances for people like his son-in-law Jared, who have already been denied them. Trump has grotesquely violated the Emolument Clause, has clearly not divested from his businesses, has been caught red-handed using the Presidency to boost his own personal financial gains. He has used our military to help prop up his failing resort in Scotland.
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
He has openly admitted to obstructing justice, and the list goes on and on. Trump's so called "freedom lovers" are nothing more than counterfeit patriots who pretend to cherish something that they have never even read. If they truly cared about the Constitution, they would have turned on Trump after his 1st year in office.
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.”
― DaShanne Stokes
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. We will be back to where we were before the Declaration of Independence. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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Whitaker seems like the type of person that's willing to tarnish his name and future career, for an undeserving con-man like Trump. Some people never learn from other people's mistake. Trump has clearly conned Whitaker into helping him obstruct justice. And this is what Trump does. He will you use you to help advance his his own unethical, criminal, amoral, and self-serving goals. And once you've outlived your usefulness, or you have simply failed to deliver on the things he desperately needs to survive, you will find yourself being ridiculed by him, and being tossed under a bus. If you want to know what happens to people who cozy up to Trump, look no further than Sessions, Cohen, Manafort, Gates, Reince Priebus, Spicer, Hope Hicks, Flynn, Bannon, Papadopoulos, Mooch,...whew. I'm exhausted. Did I leave anyone out?
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Decades later in the 1980s, these twoRussian adults, these twoSpies, stole those identities from thoseDeceasedKids from the 1960s and under those identities, they started a fake life in Toronto. The couple lived in Toronto through the '80s and into the '90s. In the '90s, as Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley, these fake identities, they had two sons. Their sons were born four years apart.
After their sons were born in Canada in the '90s, the family moved sometime in the mid to late '90s to France where the father, Donald Heathfield, went to grad school. He was fluent in French as well as English, as was his wife. The family spoke both French and English at home with their boys.
They didn't speakRussian at home with their boys even though they were fromRussia and were nativeRussian speakers. Their sons had no idea that their parents wereRussian at all. When the story of their very unusual family was ultimately told, the boys would ultimately say they had no inkling their parents wereRussian, they never heard their parents speak Russian. They never heard their parents speak aboutRussia. They certainly had no idea their parents wereRussianSpies.
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Although theirSpy life started in Canada though, ultimately the goal of thisSpy operation, the reason they were deployed byRussianIntelligence in the first place, was not to spy on Canada but, instead, toSpy ultimately on the United States. All that time in Canada was like training wheels for Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley. That was their time where they got to acclimate to the West, build up their skills at blending in in the West, build up their plausible background as a worldly but normal Canadian family.
And after Donald Heathfield's stint at grad school in France in the late '90s, they started in Canada, they went to France for him to go to grad school, then they finally did it. They moved to the United States. And Donald Heathfield enrolled in another prestigious grad school program. He enrolled at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
There's a photo of Donald Heathfield at his Harvard graduation from the Kennedy School in the year 2000. The photo was taken by the FBI. Because the FBI knew as soon as Donald Heathfield and his purportedly Canadian family arrived in the United States, the FBI apparently knew that they weren't Canadians at all, they were in factRussianSpies living under deep cover.
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Donald Heathfield and Tracy Lee Ann Foley had been living for two decades in Canada and then in Europe before they ever set foot in the United States to startSpying forRussia here. We now know that the FBI was on to them as spies as soon as they got here. There are also FBI photos of his wife, Tracy Lee Ann Foley at that graduation, as well.
Ultimately, a decade later, in 2010, when a federal indictment against theseSpies was unsealed, we would get tons of detail on what this spy couple was assigned to do here in the U.S. by their handlers inRussia. We learn the goals of why they were sent, we learned their specific assignment, we learned how well they did at carrying out those spec assignments forMoscow, we learned how they communicated with their handlers back inMoscow. We learned their codes, their spy technology. We got all of it in the indictment.
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The FBI was watching them and surveilling them and collecting intel on their operations for that whole six-year period. The FBI during that time had also put microphones inside the spy's house.
They had no clue how much the FBI was on to them. And the FBI was apparently on to them for years down to the smallest detail. Completely unbeknownst to these trainedSpies. The FBI was on to them for the entire time that they were in the United States. So, Donald Heathfield comes to this country from France to go to Harvard. He graduates from Harvard in the year 2000. The FBI is there at his graduation, taking pictures of him.
January 23rd, 2001, the FBI gets into a safe deposit box that Heathfield and Foley had opened up in Cambridge, Mass. Quote: "inside the Cambridge safe deposit box, officials observed and photographed a series of photographic negatives. The negatives appear to be of Tracy Lee Ann Foley when she was in her 20s. On all of the negatives of the younger Foley save one, the name of the company that produced the film on which the negatives were printed had been excised, meaning it had been cut off, the negative sheet, but on one negative," quote, "the name of the film company remained visible. They missed one." OOPS!!😅
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The FBI got into that safe deposit box, and they found that out, they found that one tiny marginal missed reference on one negative. They found that January 2001. They photographed it. They took that evidence.
They put all the negatives back, put everything back as it was and they left the safe deposit box there and then they just kept surveilling Heathfield and Foley for years. A full decade later in 2010, the FBI apparently had reason to go back into that same safe deposit box again and those negatives including the incriminating one with the CyrillicScript on it, those negatives were still there a decade later because Heathfield and Foley had no idea their safe deposit box had been compromised by the FBI for a decade. They had no idea the FBI had been on them for ten years. For all of those years, going through their safe deposit box, photographing them, andbugging their house.
The FBI had secretly gone inside their house on multiple occasions. They had photographed their notes and letters. They, in fact, had photographed this page from this notebook from Donald Heathfield which apparently includes his handwritten notes on the 27-digit password he needed to log into that software that allowed him to encrypt his messages in online pictures. They had the picture of the password code.
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Because of Trump and DeJoy, 300k Amercan citizens had their constitutional rights violated, and for that, there must be consequences, justice demands it!!!
As an American citizen, and a Marine veteran, I didn't shed blood sweat and tears, just so that my fellow Americans,, whom I served, could have their most basic constitutional right violated.
Semper Fidelis -- Always Faithful
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At a Q conference Sidney Powell — the lawyer who is the subject of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems over her false claims that the company helped rig the election against DJT— assured the conference attendees that the U.S. Constitution is no match for their righteous cause. 😮
"He can simply be reinstated," Powell said of Trump, eliciting loud cheers despite the fact that Trump cannot simply be reinstated.
Never mind the fact that there is no constitutional or legal remedy to overturn the results of an election once the Electoral College votes have been certified by Congress.
None of those points have seemed to deter Trump or his ardent cultists from the deranged belief that he will be restored to power.
Flynn floated another possibility.
When asked at the Q conference why a Myanmar-style coup "can't happen here," Flynn signal his approval of that idea.
"No reason. I mean, it should happen here. No reason. That's right," Flynn responded, causing the audience to erupt in more applause.
In a post later in the day on Parler, Flynn claimed the media had misrepresented the meaning of his comments.
"For all the fake news 'journalists': Let me be VERY CLEAR — There is NO reason whatsoever for any coup in America, and I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort," Flynn said in his post. "Any reporting of any other belief by me is a boldface fabrication based on twisted reporting."
Wow!!
If they ever meet face to face, the Flynn in that video, is going to have a serious falling out with the Flynn who wrote that post.
🤣😂🤣
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@russelljordan7688
The origins of the term Liberal can be traced back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of liberty ("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
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@Jedimack7
In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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Bovine One
It's not so dumb at all. its actually a plausible reality, especially when you take the time and do some research, and anyone who does will eventually ask themselves why was the NRA so cozy with Russian Oligarchs and officials with close ties to Putin.
In December 2015, Russian spy, Maria Butina’s Russian gun-rights organization sponsored an NRA delegation to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials ( aka, Russian spies) including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.
The attendees to Moscow included David Keene, Trump campaign surrogate Sheriff David Clarke, president and CEO of the Outdoor Channel Jim Liberatore, soon-to-be NRA president Peter Brownell and NRA donors Jim Gregory, Arnold Goldschlager and Hilary Goldschlager.
Alexander Torshin — a Russian politician and longtime associate of Butina who has since come under U.S. sanctions — played a key role in the trip, and Russia’s decade-long operation of infiltrating American conservative groups. A conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV who has done business in Russia claims that he first introduced David Keene to Torshin in 2011 while Keene was NRA president. Keene and Torshin quickly forged an alliance based on mutual interests.
In 2013, Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the Right to Bear Arms conference in Moscow. Paul Erickson, who became Butina’s asset, accompanied Keene to the 2013 conference, where he reportedly first crossed paths with Butina.
Senate intelligence and finance committees have requested documents on the NRA’s connections to Russia, including documents related to whether the NRA took Russian money and the 2015 delegation. After spending a record $54.4 million to put Trump in the White House and support Republicans in Congress, the NRA’s membership dues dropped precipitously the following year.
The NRA’s lawyers initially lied about the Russian money, they eventually admitted to receiving “a total of approximately $2,512.85 from people associated Russian addresses” and “about $525” from two Russian nationals living in the United States in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The NRA also acknowledged “membership dues” from Alexander Torshin, who has been a non-voting life member of the NRA since 2012 — the year after he first connected with Keene. Butina's partner, GOP operative Paul Erickson, has lawyered up in light of reports that he too may be targeted by federal prosecutors as a covert Russian agent. Signs that Butina has reached a plea deal follows a September filing by federal prosecutors indicating that Butina offered to provide information to the the feds about Erickson’s illegal activities.
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So while Cruz was in Cancun, and fox, the governor of Texas, McCarthy, and other republicans were busy trying to blame AOC for the crisis in Texas, she was actually busy being productive, being a leader, and being a public servant of the people.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) helped raise more than $2 million in less than 24 hours to help bring relief to the state of Texas.
On Thursday evening, Ocasio-Cortez announced she was partnering with several Texas charities and encouraged her millions of Twitter followers to donate money to help residents in Texas.
"Team AOC is launching relief efforts for Texas starting today,” the New York Democrat tweeted Thursday evening. “Our first effort is a partnership w/5 Texas orgs getting on-the-ground relief to Texans ASAP. If you’re able, please donate here - it’ll split your contribution to all 5.”
By Thursday night, more than $1 million had been raised, and by Friday morning, the charities raked in more than $2 million. The funds are being split between The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, Ending Community Homeless Coalition, Family Eldercare, Houston Food Bank, Feeding Texas and several other charities.
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A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. Trump was 4 billion dollars in debt, and American banks had stopped loaning him money after multiple bankruptcies. Trump was financially ruined until the Russians bailed him out. "They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
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Time and time again, republicans like CruzAbbottPerry continue to prove why they are incapable of leading or governing. It's a catastrophic combination of indifference, incompetence, indecency, insatiable greed, and lusts for power.
The mayor of Colorado City, TX has resigned amid a controversy over a FB post in which he said it is not the local government's responsibility to support residents in the wake of catastrophic weather and power outages this week.
TimBoyd, who was mayor of Colorado City, made his original, typo-ridden post Tuesday morning, writing that “no one owes you are your family anything; nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! … The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING!” 😲😲
Boyd continued at length, saying that he was “sick&tired” of people looking for handouts and that the current situation is “sadly a product of a socialist government.” 😲
This ladies & gentlemen, is why you never vote republican. Any questions?
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Trump lies a little bit more than waaaay too much.
Trump's 2015 interview with host Michael Savage, Trump was asked again point-blank whether he'd ever met Putin.
"Yes," Trump said. "One time, yes. Long time ago."
"Got along with him great, by the way," Trump added.
"I got to know so many of the Russian leaders and the top, top people in Russia," he said.
At a July, 2016 press conference, at the height of the general election campaign, Trump denied ever having met the Russian leader.
"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," he told reporters in Florida. "He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said, 'Thank you very much' to the newspaper, and that was the end of it. I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me."
David Letterman asked Trump in 2013 interview if had ever met Putin.
Trump: "Well I've done a lot of business with the Russians," Trump said. "He's a tough guy. I met him once," said Trump.
Feb. 17, 2016: At rally, Trump insists he has no relationship with Putin. “I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius,” Trump says. “He said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he is going to be the leader of the party, and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something.’”
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Steve Hassan, a former ccult member and licensed mental health counselor who specializes in helping those in destructive ccults, says recovery from a ccult's mind control can be facilitated if victims attain the proper information, support and interventions from former ccult members.
A ccult leader is a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fakeNews" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A ccult environment like Trump ism, discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brain washing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
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Oh well, so much for the so called party of "law and order."
It was always a charade.
Trump and his supporters believe in law and order, right up until the moment when law and order comes for them.
In other words, it's law and order first YOU, but not for THEM.
Cruelty is the point.
"It reflects a clear principle: Only Trump and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process."
"It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump."
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, blackVoters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. Trump’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, December 2019
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca
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Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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@jayannakelley9051
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won betweenObama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters that year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
let's go ahead and fix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that Washington Post
article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
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@TheRealCartman1
DJT sat in the White House, and watched theVio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
AndVio.lence was the only option they had left. DJT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, theViolence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts were unknown for seven months, even after Interpol issued a red notice for Tokhtakhounov. And then, in April 2013, this fugitive from American justice, appeared seated near Trump in the VIP section of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News.
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The media is NOT the enemy of the people. The media is the enemy of Trump's lies, and his attempts to hide his crimes, and his fraudulent life.
A free press is the enemy of any dictator or demagogue like Trump. Trump says that the free press is the enemy of the people, but what he really means, is that the free press is the enemy of his demagoguery. A free press is the natural enemy of his lies. And he wants to be able to lie with impunity. Trump desperately needs to be able to lie without anyone checking him on his lies.
Demagoguery is an appeal to people that plays on their emotions and prejudices rather than on their rational side. Demagoguery is a manipulative approach — often associated with dictators and amoral politicians — that appeals to the worst nature of people. Demagoguery isn't based on reason, issues, and doing the right thing; it's based on stirring up fear and hatred to control people.. Trump's demagoguery has been on full display since day one
Since information from the press can undermine a demagogue's spell over his or her followers, modern demagogues have often attacked and demonized the free the press. They will usually claim that the media can't be trusted. They have even called out for violence against newspapers who opposed them, claiming that the press was secretly in the service of moneyed interests, or a deep state conspiracy against them , or claiming that leading newspapers were simply personally out to get them. This is dictatorship 101.
Ladies and gentlemen...I give you demagogue, Don the con...
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June 3, 2016, Don Jr receives this email at 10:36 AM, from Rob Goldstone.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting."
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin" Goldstone wrote.
Don Jr. agrees to hold the meeting at Trump Tower, and sets the date for June 9.
On June 7, 2016, just days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump announced a “major speech” he claimed would reveal damaging information about Hillary. "I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump said. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting."
On June 9, 2016, a meeting was held in Trump Tower between three senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign – Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian Russian agents.
On July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
Translation: Trump is guilty of treason.
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@elizabethstanley7137
Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him..
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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@dannyholder9711
You'll appreciate this. It's from an article I read from the Rolling Stones magazine. It's about contractors and vendors who worked for Trump in Atlantic City back in the day.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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@j.r4985
History will record Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over that troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban's victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a "peace" deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed - the tragic collapse we witnessed was inevitable.
Imagine that you and a partner have been in a 20 year life or death struggle with a common enemy. A fight where you have both bled together. And then one day, your partner decides to enter into peace talks with your common enemy, but decides to exclude you from the negotiations. Your partner then signs a peace agreement with this terrorist organization, that doesn't include you at all. It doesn't even mention you. That's exactly what Trump did to the Afghan army, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people.
After Trump had cut the legs out from under the Afghan government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, "No, thanks."
Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered - the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.
And why would anyone think that cleaning up a 20 year debacle would be easy or pretty? Especially in a country like Afghanistan, and especially after the deal that Trump made.
Name one thing about Afghanistan that has ever been easy, pretty, or smooth.
So far, the US and it's partners have evacuated about 120,000 people since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul. That's an outstanding number considering the chaotic situation on the ground there.
And I'm a Marine veteran.
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@j.r4985
Any "deal" that Trump makes is guaranteed to end badly.
The Trump White House agreed to a May 1 troop withdrawal. Biden had to decide whether to honor a deal that included the Taliban, but not the Afghan government.
The question everyone should be asking, is why did Trump make a deal with the Taliban, a designated terrorist organization, and why was the Afghan government left out of the negotiations?
It's almost as if Trump and the Taliban plotted against the Afghan government and the people.
Trump was negotiating with the Taliban about whether or not to remove our troops, and NOT with the Afghan government, which was hosting our troops.
The Republican National Committee has conveniently removed an inconvenient webpage from 2020 in which it praised Trump for signing a "historic peace agreement with the Taliban."
The page had been removed with the web address redirecting to a 404 error page featuring the quip: "It looks like you're as lost as Biden is."
Featured as part of a section titled "President Trump Is Bringing Peace In The Middle East," the page described how Trump had "continued to take the lead in peace talks."
In the now-deleted GOP webpage, it is stated that Trump negotiated a deal for the withdrawals by May 2021 "in exchange for a Taliban agreement to not allow Afghanistan to be used for transnational terrorism."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the organization's current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at Trump’s request.
The UK's defense minister blamed the chaos in Afghanistan on Trump on Monday.
UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace has pointed the finger at Trump.
He told "BBC Breakfast" on Monday: "The die was cast when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation."
"President Biden inherited a momentum, a momentum that had been given to the Taliban because they felt they had now won. He'd also inherited a momentum of troop withdrawal from the international community, the US."
"So I think in that sense, the seeds of what we're seeing today were before President Biden took office. The seeds were a peace deal that was effectively rushed, that wasn't done in collaboration properly with the international community and then a dividend taken out incredibly quickly."
He had previously called Trump's deal "rotten" and said the international community would likely "pay the consequences."
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@jasonwilson3057
He's a criminal minded narcissistic sociopath. He always has been. His own sister said he is a horrible human being..
A Trump quote from 2004, in response to a Larry King Live caller asking him how he handles stress during a crisis.
Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. And Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily, and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all the boxes.
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Let's be clear, Flynn didn't lie to Pence or Trump about his contacts with the Russians, it was Trump and Pence who lied to the American people, because they knew all along about his contacts with the Russians. He was literally acting on their behalf.
When Trump fired Michael Flynn, in Feb 2017, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official and then lied to Pence and others about the interactions. But emails among top transition officials, show that Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents showed that Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
After learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia.
On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
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@lucylocket5262
You are correct. The problem is Republicans / conservatives in America have a lot in common with communism. Repression being one of them.
Conservatives like referring to liberals as communists, when in reality it's nothing more than pure projection. Conservatism is practically in lock step with communism.
The origins of the term Liberal traces back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”), which is also the root of the word "liberty "("the quality or state of being free").
Conservative:
tending to preserve or protect, preservative, having the power to keep whole or safe," from Old French conservatif, from Medieval Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard.
In other words, to maintain and protect the status quo, and the establishment.
From 1840 in the general sense, conservatives are disposed to retain and maintain what is established, opposed to innovation and change, or, in a negative sense, opposed to progress.
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Trump has modeled his white house and administration on Barter Town, the post apocalyptic wasteland from Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. Trump's white house and administration has degenerated into nonstop chaos, pandemonium, betrayal, back-stabbing, thievery, treason, upheaval, nepotism, cronyism, bedlam, and sanctioned lawlessness.
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😄😂😄😂 LOL!!!! Clarke was fired for negligence, , dereliction of duty, abuse of power, and criminal incompetence. He then went on to betray his country when he started working for the NRA ( National Russian Association ) and attended lavish dinners in Moscow, which were hosted, and paid for by Russian agents. Clarke was also busted for wearing an assortment of fake badges, ribbons, pendants, heirlooms, trinkets, stars, moons, clusters, quasars, and lucky charms on his uniform.😄 This so called man is a fraud, and he always been.
Black Marine veteran. Semper Fi....
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By spreading Russian propaganda, attacking the FBI and America's other intelligence agencies, Trump is doing Putin's dirty work for him. And make no mistake, it constitutes a threat to America's national security.
The FBI has always been the biggest threat to Russian agents attempting to operate on American soil..
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. And they all got a big laugh out of it, at America's expense. Let that sink in for a moment.
On July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Trump threw America and the men and women in our intelligence agencies under the bus once again when he sided with Putin.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
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Sorry Pence, but you and Trump won't be able to lie your way out if this.
We already know that Trump bribed the President of Ukraine with taxpayer money. This fact has been corroborated by the whistleblower, by official documents, texts messages, by the under oath testimony of multiple witnesses, by Trump's own senior white house aides and staff, by Mulvaney, and by State Department officials, and by Trump's own words. Trump's own National Security Adviser Bolton quit over Trump's scheme to bribe Ukraine.
Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution clearly states, that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
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Make no mistake, fox is the final destination for Kellyanne and Sarah Huckabee as well. Because no legitimate, respectable network, would ever.....ever ever ever ever, poison their name, integrity, and credibility, by hiring former liars, sycophants, and propagandists, from Trump's failed administration.
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In 2005, Manafort started working for billionaire Russian Oleg Deripaska. Manafort, a Republican operative who had hired himself out to a variety of global villains, promised he would “influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet Republics to benefit Putin’s government.
Russia’s oligarchs put their wealth and power at Putin’s disposal, or they don’t remain oligarchs for long. This requirement is not lost on Deripaska. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” Deripaska told the Financial Times in 2007. “I have no other interests.” A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” Working for Deripaska, meant Manafort was working for Putin. Deripaska hired Manafort for $10 million a year, and Manafort worked to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.
The question now is why would Manafort continue to lie for Trump? Why would Manafort, who has a law degree from Georgetown and years of experience around white-collar crime, behave like this? What incentive does he have to spend most or all of his remaining years in prison rather than betray Trump? One way to make sense of his behavior is the possibility that Manafort is keeping his mouth shut because he’s afraid of being killed.
That speculation might sound hyperbolic, but there is plenty of evidence to support it. In February, a video appeared on YouTube showing Manafort’s Russian employer, Deripaska, on his yacht with a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich. In the video, from August 2016, Deripaska could be seen speaking with a high-ranking Kremlin official. The video was such a source of embarrassment to Moscow that it fought to have it removed from YouTube. Vashukevich, who was then in a Thai jail after having been arrested there for prostitution, announced that she had heard Deripaska describe a plot to interfere in the election and that she has 16 hours’ worth of audio recordings from the yacht to support her charges. In a letter to America authorities, her associate wrote, “We risk our lives very much.”
Vashukevich’s name has disappeared from the news media. In all probability, either the FBI or Russian intelligence has gotten to her. Whatever has happened to her, her testimony suggests both that Russia is still hiding secrets about its role in Trump’s election and that someone who knows Deripaska well believes he would and could kill her for violating his confidence.
Russia murders people routinely, at home and abroad. In the nine months after Trump’s election, nine Russian officials were murdered or died mysteriously. At least one was suspected to have been a likely source of information for the British agent Steele. The attorney for the firm that hired Steele told the Senate last August, “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier.”
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@gulliverthegullible6667
Days before the 2020 presidential election, Trump was planning to declare victory on election night, even if there was no evidence he was winning. This comes from the leaked Bannon conversation recorded before the vote.
In the audio, recorded three days before the election, Bannon told a group of associates Trump already had a scheme in place for the November vote.
“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Bannon, laughing, told the group, in the audio.
“He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.”
In the meeting Bannon said Democratic supporters were more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, meaning their votes would be counted and reported later.
That would lead to a public perception that Trump was winning the election, according to the audio. Democrats would “have a natural disadvantage”, Bannon said.
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Allowing Trump to run for election in 2024, would've been like allowing Nixon to run for election again in 1976.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Those days are long gone.
Allowing Trump to run for election in 2024, would've been like allowing Nixon to run for election again in 1976..
Today, thanks to Trump, McCarthy, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crimeBoss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
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Boomer5150
Never forget, that on 9/11, just hours after the towers fell, Trump bragged to local TV station WWOR, that his building 40 Wall Steet, was now the tallest building in downtown Manhattan. On a day of such unimaginable loss and tragedy, Trump seemed to be more focused on the bragging rights of now having the tallest building in Manhattan. But in true Trump fashion, his boast about having the tallest building in Manhattan after the towers fell was a big lie. The nearby 70 Pine Street building is 25 ft, taller than Trump's.
Trump also lied about losing 100 friends on 9/11. To this day, he has not been able to name one friend he lost on 9/11.
During a July ceremony in the Rose Garden to formally sign a bill that will extend the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund through 2092, Trump told a group of more than 60 first responders that the legislation “provides pensions for those who are suffering from cancer and other illnesses stemming from the toxic debris they were exposed. Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders. ”He then told an outrageous lie when he said, “I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there—I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
Trump wants to claim victim status too it appears. He can't stand to see anyone other than himself being viewed as a victim. Once again, Super Narcissist had to make it all about him.
Trump has told similar egregious lies about his whereabouts on 9/11 in the past. On the campaign trail on April 18, 2016, in Buffalo NY, he said: " Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit."😲 Super Narcissist strikes again.
There is no evidence that Trump participated in recovery efforts, there’s also no evidence he spent time near ground zero in the week following the attack.
During a 2015 rally, Trump claimed he watched the 9/11 attacks from a window in Trump Tower.
“Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that,” he said.
There’s just one problem — Trump Tower is more than four miles away from ground zero.
But who knows, maybe Trump was trying to receive money from the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund for his poor injured eyes, and the horror that they witnessed.
NEVER FORGET
Trump: " I lost 100 friends on 9/11."
Me: " Name one."
Trump: " I can't, their names are still under audit."😄
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Suzie Q
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the plan by chief White House adviser Jared Kushner who discussed plans with the Russan Ambassador, to establish a secret communication channel with the Kremlin — using Russian facilities — without any monitoring by the U.S. was “off the map” and like nothing he has seen in his lifetime. “What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?” Hayden stated..
Trump and his people were warned by Obama, Sally Yates, and the FBI, that Russia was actively trying to infiltrate Trump's inner circle. And what does Trump do? He fired Comey, and Sally Yates, the very people who had warned him about what the Russians were up to. Even after Trump had been warned, his people were still holding secret meetings with the Russians, and they all lied about it......every single person lied about their meetings with the Russians. And then on the day after Trump fired Comey, the guy who was in charge of the FBI, the agency charged with catching Russian spies, Trump invites the Russian foreign minister, and Russia's Ambassador to the Oval Office, and brags about firing the head of the FBI. Let all of that sink in for a minute..
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Suzie Q
A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties...
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part...
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. Trump was 4 billion dollars in debt, and American banks had stopped loaning him money after multiple bankruptcies. Trump was financially ruined until the Russians bailed him out. "They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News.
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Suzie Q
For decades, Traitor Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately, Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia are connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and have working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which he’s compromised..
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly have trillions of dollars that have to be laundered. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians want, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him but he was actually in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, and he couldn’t get bank loans except some from Deutsche Bank. He was so bankrupt that almost no Western bank could loan him a dime.
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was built, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with the Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin.
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Suzie Q
Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime adviser and partner in crime was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The verdict makes Stone only the latest among a growing list of people once in Trump's inner circle of goons who have been convicted on federal charges. Here is a list of others in Trump’s inner swamp circle convicted of federal crimes.
Michael Cohen
Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Cohen pleaded guilty to bank fraud, tax fraud, and campaign violations involving hush-money payouts (for Trump) to two women – the adult film star Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison.
Paul Manafort
The lobbyist who worked as Trump’s campaign chairman was convicted in August 2018 of bank fraud, tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. The next month, Manafort admitted to conspiracy, such as money laundering and unregistered lobbying, as well as a second conspiracy count involving witness tampering. Manafort, who will spend about seven and a half years in prison for the federal cases, also faces state criminal charges in NY for fraud and conspiracy.
While working as Trump's campaign chairman, Manafort shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies, according to special counsel Mueller.
Michael Flynn
Trump’s former national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over his communication with Russia amid the presidential transition in 2016. Flynn lied about his contact with Russia’s ambassador, such as urging Russia not to react to sanctions placed by Barack Obama.
Rick Gates
Manafort’s business partner pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiring to defraud the US and lying to the FBI. He also admitted to helping Manafort manipulate financial documents, conceal foreign income, cheat tax authorities and mislead banks for credit. Gates, who was also a Trump campaign official, cut a deal with Mueller – serving as a star witness against Manafort and Stone.
George Papadopoulos
In 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the schedules of meetings with purported Russian intermediaries. Papadopoulos in March 2016 met with a Maltese professor in London, who claimed that the Russians had incriminating information on Trump’s then rival, Clinton – “thousands of emails”. Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison.
Alex van der Zwaan
A Dutch lawyer who worked with Manafort, Van der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Gates and a person potentially linked to Russian intelligence. Van der Zwaan worked on a Manafort-commissioned report to defend ex-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych from international scrutiny. He was incarcerated for 12 days.
Richard Pinedo
The online fraudster pleaded guilty after it was revealed that his business set up US bank accounts, and then illegally peddling them over the internet, had enabled a Russian operation that utilized social media to meddle with the election. His cooperation enabled Mueller’s pursuit of Russian troll farms..
Konstantin Kilimnik
The Russian political operative and Manafort associate is charged with obstructing justice. He was swept up in Manafort’s plan to leverage his relationship with Trump to settle multimillion-dollar debts to an oligarch. Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the 2016 election. In the Mueller report, Kilimnik is described as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU” by Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign.
Sam Patten
Lobbyist Patten had ties to Kilimnik. He admitted to diverting $50,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch to Trump’s presidential inauguration committee. He pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller.
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Suzie Q
David Bogatin:
In 1984, Soviet Army veteran David Bogatin purchased five luxury condos in Trump Tower for $6 million. The purchase was so substantial that Trump himself attended the closing. Three years later, he absconded to Austria and Poland after the discovery of his gasoline-bootlegging scheme, and his five apartments were seized by the government because he bought them to hide and launder money. In 1992, he became the first criminal returned to the US from Poland since the extradition treaty signed in 1927. A Senate investigation indicated he was a major figure in the NY Russian mafia...
Anatoly Golubchik, Vadim Trincher and Michael Sall:
These three individuals were convicted of taking part in an enormous illicit betting and money-laundering syndicate that ran out of Trump Tower. Each of them was a Trump condo owner, and operated out of Vadim Trincher’s Trump Tower apartment just three floors down from Trump’s penthouse. The Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization was a “nationwide criminal enterprise with strong ties to Russia and Ukraine” run by Anatoly Golubchik and Trincher, according to the Justice Department. They ran a sportsbook catering to Russian oligarchs and laundered tens of millions in proceeds through shell companies in Cyprus. Michael Sall helped them make domestic investments with the laundered capital.
Tevfik Arif:
Tevfik Arif was a former Soviet economist that built a chain of luxury hotels in Turkey and Kazakhstan, and a Bayrock partner involved in the Trump SoHo deal, which operated out of the 24th floor of Trump Tower NY In 2010, Arif was arrested by Turkish prosecutors and charged with setting up a prostitution ring.
Vyacheslav Ivankov:
Vyacheslav Ivankov implemented a money laundering scheme set up by the “boss of bosses” in the Russian mafia, Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich arranged Ivankov’s release from a Siberian gulag, and soon afterward he went to NY where he presided over the Russian mob’s expansion in the States. He was known for torturing victims, and bragging about the murders he arranged. Ivankov was notoriously difficult to track, compared to a ghost by one FBI agent. The FBI discovered he made regular visits to the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and was living in a luxury condo at Trump Tower. After being convicted of extortion in 1997, he was jailed for nine years and seven months. He died in 2009 at the age of 69 after being shot several times leaving a restaurant in Moscow..
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Suzie Q
On Dec. 29 2016, transition adviser K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump’s victory. The sanctions,,she wrote, could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails.😲
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Trump was elected president, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial..
Amid a busy schedule in Washington, Boris Titov — who was appointed by Putin to serve as a business ombudsman — told a Russian television station that new investment was likely to flow to Russia once the Obama era U.S. sanctions were lifted.
Businesses "are waiting for this signal, and they believe it will soon come," he said..
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@hegonefishing9122
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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@mrrey8937
The truth of the matter is, Trump should have been impeached and removed from office before the election, and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Trump's crimes are far worse than Nixon’s.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974..
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, McCarthy, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete.
The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crimeBoss who ruled over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Nixon’s administration may have been riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party, that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone.
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The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state..
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
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@mhall801
Marine Commandant.
"I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion, reminded soldiers that ‘TheNazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
--Marine Corps General James Mattis,
June 3, 2020
Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fraudulent.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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@KINGMARC0
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fraudulent.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fraudulent.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fraudulent.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
2
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Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fraudulent.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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2bRealist
Thanks for that textbook example of whataboutism.
Deflecting or changing the subject is called "what-aboutism" — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. And it's use in Russia helps illustrate how it has been a useful tool for Trump and his sycophantic defenders here in America. It's an attractive tactic for Trump and Putin, allowing them to be vague but appear straight-talking at the same time. What-aboutism is essentially a schoolyard taunt, brought to a national and global level.
The idea behind what-aboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A's faults — "Yeah? Well WHAT ABOUT that bad thing you did?"
It's not a complicated tactic — any grade-schooler can master it. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia.
Whataboutism has been common in Putin's Russia. The Atlantic cited one such example in 2014, noting that when the Kremlin faced criticisms of its treatment of protesters, government officials responded, "What about the United Kingdom? Breaking the law during public gatherings there could lead to a fine of 5,800 pounds sterling there or even prison."
One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it's a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings..
Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a black-and-white worldview. But in this worldview, it's very difficult to be the good guy; idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be "unmasked" as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency. If nobody is perfect, then it means that Trump should get a pass for any wrongdoings. This tactic has been used in Russia for years, and it was perfected within the Soviet Union. It has allowed Russian dictators like Putin to get away with endless crimes against his own people.
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Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or he is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.
But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.
Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s too criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.
Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution, for which he should be impeached. An oath is an oath.
Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.
The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office...
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Tony Espinola
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but the Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle, according to the latest examination of spending by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Most of that has been spent by the Trump campaign ($1.3 million), the Republican National Committee ($123,000) and the Great America political action committee ($104,000), records show, the center reported.
The Washington Post explained in a story in July how such Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
But 48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
Spending will continue to grow as the election nears. Senate Republicans are hosting a two-day “Save the Senate” retreat at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel early next month, according to The Intercept. Room rates during that time will be nearly triple the average, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The top preferred businesses by spenders were Trump’s Washington hotel, followed by his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, according to the center. Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami was in fifth place for the amount of incoming campaign expenditures.
Traitor Trump is making a fortune while fleecing America and violating the Constitution. And his supporters defend this by saying he donates his presidential salary of 400k a year, so that makes it okay for him to fleece the American people out of tens of millions of dollars since he's been in office. His presidential salary amounts to slave wages compared to what he's actually making illegally by using the office of the presidency. If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you're probably a Trump cultist.
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CPAC or, Conservative People Acting Cultish.
CPAC is an annual pilgrimage for Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, mongerers of fear and hatred, xenophobes, wealthy welfare queens, tax cheats, hypocrites, fake Christians, fake patriots, and real traitors. It's truly a diabolical and unholy mix of deplorables. So much so that I bet that room will still smell like sulfur and rotting flesh for weeks.
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@JohnDoe-ew3xt
In an interview, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz:, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
Schwartz: " When challenged about the facts, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent."
Schwartz described a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
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@Crash1025Bandicoot7
In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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@annmcgarrity9363
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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@annmcgarrity9363
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
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John Dean served as White House counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 73, he was a key figure in the Watergate saga—participating in, and then helping to expose, the most iconic political scandal in modern U.S. history at the time. Today Dean believes Trump could be one of the most corrupt presidents ever—and get away with it.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean stated. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
Dean stated that he is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with Nixon, where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle." Dean went even further in his assessment, stating: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
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@dorianshadesofgray
Rand Paul isn't even qualified to speak to Dr. Fauci without permission. Especially when you discover that Rand Paul isn't even a real doctor himself.
Rand Paul earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. After that, he completed his general surgery internship at Atlanta-based Georgia Baptist Medical Center, followed by a residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center. Despite his medical training, Paul does not hold a bachelor's degree. He attended Waco, Texas-based Baylor University to study biology and English, but left a few courses short of a diploma after he was accepted into medical school.
Rand Paul is not even a board-certified ophthalmologist, as he reportedly claimed. Paul's certification comes from a board that he created HIMSELF. 😂 But he hasn't been certified by an organization recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties for years.
The now-defunct board he created was not recognized by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, so Randy was not certified by a board recognized by the state since 2005, and since Paul's board dissolved in 2011, he has had no certification from an active body.
Basically, Dr. Dre is more of a doctor than Randy.😄
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@TheSandwichMonster
The 14 characteristics ofFascism:
• Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays..
• Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people inFascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
• Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; socialists, terrorists, etc.
• Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
• Rampant 5exism
The governments ofFascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. UnderFascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition ToAbortion is high, as isHomophobiaAnd antiG@y legislation and national policy.
• Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
• Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
• Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments inFascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
• Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascistNation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
• Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to aFascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
• Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
FascistNations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
• Obsession with Crime and Punishment
UnderFascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
FascistFegimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon inFascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
• Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections inFascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. FascistNations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
As you can see, when it comes toFascism, Trump and supporters check all the boxes.
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Rand Paul is more than likely another republican with a pocket full of rubles.
Bill Browder, an American investor, whose business in post-Soviet Russia ran afoul of Putin, believes Republican congressman Rohrabacher, and Libertarian Rand Paul, have both been compromised by Russia.
In 2016, Dana Rohrabacher flew to Moscow for a meeting with Russia’s deputy general prosecutor. We he returned to D.C., the California Republican lobbied to take an expanded version of the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan law that allows the US to sanction Russan human rights offenders, OFF the congressional agenda. The bill was named in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, Browder’s lawyer, who died in 2009 in a Moscow prison. (Browder successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act in 2012.)
Rohrabacher also returned from Russia with a propaganda film he screened for colleagues in his office. Rohrabacher’s attempt to block the expanded bill failed.
“There is absolutely no reason why any member of Congress would do this … unless there was something else going on,” Browder said. “Somehow the Russians have got damaging information on Dana Rohrabacher, or that they’ve found some way of financing him in such a way that they’ve influenced his behavior.”
Rohrabacher isn’t the only congressman Browder suspects is in Putin’s pocket.
“The other person I am very suspicious about is Rand Paul,” Browder said, noting that the Kentucky Republican senator traveled to Moscow in August and a week later called on Trump to lift sanctions on a pair of Russian lawmakers who are on the so-called Magnitsky list.
“Why would he do that? The people of Kentucky don’t want that to happen,” Browder said. “It makes no sense to me why a U.S. politician under the circumstances right now would be trying to loosen sanctions on Russia.”
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@Mmmm Scrumptious
Jack O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino..
O'Donnell: "Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican" Trump said.
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump is actually offended that anyone would even suggest that he's NOT a racist. Notice how he never seems to be offended by being called a racist. Whenever he makes racist comments, he doesn't take them back, he doubles down on them.
Trump's racist comments over the years have received praise from neo-nazis and white supremacist leaders like David Duke.
Trump: "Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife."
Jeb Bush’s wife is Mexican - American
During the campaign, Trump impugned the character of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a native-born American, hailing from Indiana, who was hearing a class action case against Trump's now-discredited fake Trump University.
"He's a Mexican," Trump said to CNN of Curiel. "We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can't even believe."
Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. It's the type of comment that only a racist would applaud..
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As a general rule, if you want to know what Republicans are guilty of, just pay attention to what they're falsely accusing others of doing.
Back in March 2020, a FloridaWoman and Trump supporter, wasArrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s OfficeArrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud.
Authorities said they were able to connect Hall to the falsified documents because of serial numbers on the applications.
Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved.
“Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had been changed) from registered Democrats to registered Republican Party members,” said Alan Hays , the Lake County supervisor of elections. "Voters denied filling out that form that would make that change.”
An investigation was launched and found more than 100 false applications. Officials say several of the applications were “completed by someone whose handwriting was almost identical on each of those applications.”
This year, a judge sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in hisDeceasedWife’s ballot.
DonaldHartle forged hisDeceasedWife's
signature and then mailed in a ballot using her name for the 2020 election, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced.
Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for Trump last September. The umbrella company also hosted a :Q"Conference earlier this year at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip.
Sounds about right.
Go figure.
Hartle, a 55-year-old registered Republican from Las Vegas, was charged with two counts of voter fraud for using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the AG said in a statement
In court Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Hartle appeared virtually in court, where he reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Judge Carli Kierny also fined Hartle $2,000 as part of the plea agreement. The original Category D felony carried a maximum prison sentence of four years.
“Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught,” Kierny told Hartle in court.
“I would like to say that I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret them, and I’m thankful for your consideration,” Kirk Hartle told the judge Tuesday.
“Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions."
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@itsoktoberight4431
At a Trump rally held by Steve Bannon in March of 2018. a visibly angry and hostile woman took to the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!!!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of Trumpists.
It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, our democracy, or the Constitution. Any American that would cheer for that, clearly supports dictatorships, and despotism.
On January 6, the world watched in horror as Trump's insurrectionists stormed our nation's Capitol. They said that they were starting a new "revolution." But here's the problem with that, in 1776, this nation fought a revolution in order to remove a monarch, and establish a democratic republic.
Trump's horde led an insurrection in order to destroy our democratic republic, and INSTALL a monarch.
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@DeusVeritas2
Yes, Biden won with only 16% of U.S. counties. And no, that's not mathematically impossible.
Along with fraud allegations that don't even have enough evidence to make it into a courtroom, much less win a single case, people who want the outcome of the election to be different keep sharing all kinds of statistics designed to make Biden's win look fishy.
The problem is that none of these purportedly suspicious numbers are actually suspicious at all.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s also more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden that is. 🤣
(Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.)
More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent.
Let's start by looking at county counts. Right now there are lots of posts going around comparing the vote counts and counties won between Obama, Trump, and Biden, making it seem like it's just not possible for Biden to have won the popular vote with the number of counties he won.
Biden won 527 counties, not 477. That's still far fewer than what Trump won, but it doesn't matter.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half of U.S. residents live in just 143 counties (or 4.6% of total counties). Counties vary vastly in size and population, from fewer than 100 people, to more than 10 million per county. In fact, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 41 whole states, and more than the 11 least populous states combined, which have a total of 416 counties between them.
So yeah, Biden could have won even fewer counties than the 500+ he carried, and still have come out on top in the popular vote. Especially since urban areas tend to vote Democrat in higher numbers than Republican.
As far as the rally visuals of Trump’s rallies go? One word—pandemic. Biden never held big rallies because he didn't want crowds because...pandemic. This one's really not hard.
And regarding the higher vote totals, well, yes. The U.S. has grown by more than 27 million since Obama was elected in 2008 and there was record turnout of voters in this election to boot. In fact, there were so many more voters this year, Biden could have lost the popular vote and still had more votes than Obama got when he won. Because that's just how numbers work.🤣
Another interesting statistic: The counties that Biden carried account for 70% of the U.S. economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 84% of counties that Trump won accounts for just 30% of the U.S. GDP, while the 16% that Biden won make up 70% of it. Even when Trump won the election in 2016, the counties he won only accounted for 36% of the economy.
let's go ahead and nix another misnomer that's floating around. Does "Simple Math" show that Biden claimed millions more votes than there were eligible voters who voted in the election?
Umm, no.
That "2020 Election Turnout Rate" of 66.2% doesn't mean 66.2% of registered legal voters, it means 66.2% of eligible voters. Super appreciate that they gave the source, but if you actually look up that WaPo article, it very clearly says "As a share of the voting-eligible population," not "registered voters." All registered voters are eligible voters, but not all eligible voters are registered voters. The eligible voting population is approximately 239.2 million, so the math in this calculation falls apart right where the multiplication starts. If you replace the registered vote total with 239.2 million, you come out with the original 158.4 million votes that were certified.
But the funniest thing about this one is just...really? Do people really think that our multi-step, multi-check electoral processes wouldn't immediately catch 13 or 17 million illegitimate votes if they actually existed? Do people really think that this very basic counting epiphany more than a month after the election took place, and after it has been checked and verified, even makes sense?
These numbers are all out there for everyone to calculate for themselves, but if people aren't calculating with the right variables, then they're going to come up with shady conclusions like these ones. And they'll accept it because it backs up their beliefs.
Misinformation is rampant and literally tearing at the fabric of our nation. It's up to all of us to battle it when we see it.
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I'm sure we all remember the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil incident in the Gulf of Mexico. I still remember watching the 24hr live video stream of thousands of gallons of oil being dumped into the gulf. Well days before the Trump administration unveiled its plans for a massive expansion of offshore drilling, it moved to gut the Production Safety Systems Rule, a set of safety regulations the Obama administration created pertaining to maintenance of offshore platforms. The changes, finalized last month and slated to take effect on Dec. 27, loosen notification and certification rules for oil companies and toss out a requirement that offshore equipment be designed to withstand the most extreme weather and pressure conditions.
In May, Trump took aim at the Well Control Rule, a safety monitoring regulation meant to prevent the kind of Deepwater Horizon incident that killed 11 workers and resulted in some 200 million gallons of crude oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. The rule requires additional inspection and maintenance of blowout preventers, a device designed to automatically seal a well, and stop an uncontrolled release of oil and gas. Stripping the Obama era regulations would loosen the inspection and oversight requirements for this equipment.
Trump's reckless, irresponsible, and controversial drilling plan called “energy dominance” would make available for oil and gas leasing, roughly 90 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, including large swaths of the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Interior Department, led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, who's currently under multiple ethics investigations is leading the charge for Trump's plan.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement estimates that rolling back these safety regulations would save oil companies just shy of $1 billion over a 10-year period. I mean sure, it could lead to another Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It could result in the loss of lives again. It could cost fishermen their entire livelihoods again. But who cares, just as long as billion dollar oil companies can save millions of dollars, that's on top of the millions they're already saving from the massive tax cuts Trump gifted them. Now that's what I call MAGA!!! 😔
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Allowing Trump to run for election in 2024, would've been like allowing Nixon to run for election again in 1976.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Those days are long gone.
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The Geek Is Strong
The Passenger plane tragedy is not disputed. An extensive investigation was conducted, and Russia was responsible for it.
Russian trolls from Putin's IRA (Internet Research Agency) went into action on July 17 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had just been shot down over eastern Ukraine, and the same IRA (Internet Research Agency) operation that Putin would use to influence the U.S. presidential election two years later, went into overdrive, pumping out lies and conspiracy theories to exculpate Moscow’s murderous clients.
The Boeing 777 passenger jet was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298 passengers, including 80 children, when it was blown out of the air above territory held by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Exhaustive research by two Dutch journalists, Robert van der Noordaa and Coen van de Ven, published in the Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, shows precisely the way Russian trolls worked to shift blame for the massacre and create a dense fog of conspiracy theories to obscure the facts.
Van der Noordaa and van de Ven analyzed 9 million Russian IRA tweets covering the period 2014-2017 that were released by Twitter in October 2018 as part of an effort to elucidate the Russian role in the U.S. presidential election.
They report that in the 24 hours after the MH17 crash, Putin's IRA posted at least 65,000 tweets, mainly in Russian, that blamed the Ukrainian government in Kiev for the disaster. Altogether, 111,486 tweets about MH17 were posted by the IRA in just three days, from July 17 through 19. (By comparison, in the 10-week period leading up to the November 2016 US elections, the IRA accounts posted 175,993 tweets.) According to the two journalists: “Never before or after did the trolls tweet so much in such a short period of time.”
What is remarkable about the three-day tweetstorm is that the trolls actually wrote their own tweets instead of limiting themselves to retweeting or copying other extremist tweets, as was the case with other international incidents. They also composed their own stories on the LiveJournal platform, a popular Russian blog website, and then shared them on Twitter.
Russian-concocted theories like the one about Ukrainian fighter jets have stubbornly persisted in the Netherlands to this day, embraced by activist citizen journalists and even ordinary citizens, despite the irrefutable findings of the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) that the plane was shot down by a Russian BUK missile.
The JIT used intercepted recordings of telephone conversations by pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists, who discussed the delivery of the missile, videos and photographs on social networks, research of the Bellingcat investigators, eyewitness accounts, forensic examinations of the plane’s debris, and simulation modeling of the explosion of the plane to establish beyond doubt that Flight MH17 was shot down from Ukrainian rebel territory by a Russian 9M38 BUK missile launched from a BUK-TELAR self-propelled system, brought from the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in Kursk.
In fact, the impending transfer of the Russian BUK missile was already made known by the newly appointed Russian prosecutor in Crimea, Natalia Poklonskaya, who tweeted on June 29 that “the rebels now have a ‘fine cookie’ against the Ukrainian air force.” Her tweet was removed shortly after Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down.
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@devinwilkerson4098
This is what voting red would look like.
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation, with complete immunity, like his idol Pooopin.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves "freedom loving patriots."
Semper Fi...
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@jamesburrows5404
So true.
On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal...
Nixon announced his resignation the next day, which would be effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.
In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign."
In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt, that one way or another, his presidency was finished."
This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Those days are long gone.
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@shlepmessing8703
Because no one lies like DJT.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him..
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul."
--José N. Harris
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Trump is more than happy to make 800 thousand Americans suffer until he gets what he wants, even if what he wants has been rejected by the majority of Americans.
Trump: " My immature and petulant needs, far outweighs the needs of 800 thousand Americans who will go without a pay check."
If we have so many terrorists coming across the border, why haven't we seen massive terrorist attacks across the country from these terrorists? The answer is simple...terrorists are not crossing into America at our southern border. The only terrorist attacks in America, are coming from Americans. American right-wing extremists who are plowing cars into crowds of people, and shooting up concerts, schools, clubs, bars, grocery stores, pizza parlors, movie theaters, churches, and Synagogues. Right now, you or your child, are far more likely to be gunned down by an American in a mass shooting, than being the victim of a terrorist attack at the hands of some foreigners who snuck across the southern border. REALITY MATTERS.
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@wouldntyouliketoknow3811
In Mar, 2019, a woman takes the stage at an event hosted by Steve Bannon and calls for a Trump dictatorship.
“Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator,” the woman told the crowd. “But if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump.” Bannon then clapped and smiled.
People who have seen this clip were shocked and appalled. Not only does the woman claim that she never thought she would agree with a dictatorship crushing the U.S., she fully supports the idea of Trump being that dictator, and single-handedly ruling over the nation.
While the woman’s words alone should strike fear into your heart for the fate of our country, the audience’s response is the most telling.
There was not a moment of concern on many of the attendees’ faces. Instead, many of the attendees, like Bannon, were grinning from ear to ear as they applauded the outrageous idea of elevating Trump to a dictator.
The woman’s comment and the crowd’s reaction is a serious cause for concern.
Why continue as a democracy when we can go the way of Russia&Venezuela?
And these very same people have the audacity to call themselves freedom loving"patriots."
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J USSC
NOV 5, 2018
Trump lie: “And we gave our great warriors their largest pay raise in more than a decade.”
in fact: The military pay increase in the 2019 defense bill, 2.6 per cent, is the largest in nine years, since the 3.4 per cent increase under President Obama in 2010. More than a decade" is simply another Trump lie.
Trump lie: “And there's more coming. We passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor rather than waiting on line for weeks and months to see a doctor. Forty-four years, they tried to pass that. And I came up with that idea, and I thought it was brilliant. I went back to my people and I said, you know what we'll do? There's no way there are so many people in line, takes months and months. I said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to have those people get off line, go outside, see a doctor. And we'll pay for the doctor. I said, ‘I'm so smart. I am the most brilliant human being that has ever lived.’ 😂😄😂
in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was passed and created in 2014 under President Obama. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, simply modified the program.
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"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
Trump has ushered in an era of alt-right hatred, fear mongering, and hysteria. What's happening with these packages, is no different than what happened with Pizzagate.
The fantastical claim that Hillary was a pedophile started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of alt-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. After following the digital trail, it was revealed that ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives were responsible. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new “post-truth” information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts.
It all led to a man named Edgar Maddison Welch, who on December 1st, 2016, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.” A friend texted, “Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint.” Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant’s kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that ACTUAL fake news has real consequences.
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
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Jeffrey Russell Jr
July 27 2016, on national tv, Trump invites Russia to meddle in our elections..
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Clinton’s emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
5 hours later that same day, the 12 Russian operatives indicted in the special counsel investigation, launched the 1st cyber attack against the DNC.
7/16/2018
Trump in Helsinki: "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia." What???😲😲
October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, PA: "This just came out," Trump said. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks."
October 12, 2016 in Ocala, FL: "This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," Trump said. "It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it."
October 13, 2016 in Cincinnati, OH: "It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks."
October 31, 2016 in Warren, MI: "Another one came in today," Trump said. "This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove."
November 4, 2016 in Wilmington, OH: "Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting," said Trump. "Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks."
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BarbaraL Lowell
LMAO!!!😂😃😂
Trump and his family operate a criminal organization. Ask anyone in NY and Atlantic City.
For decades, Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia is connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which Trump has been compromised.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took outt full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mafia..
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin..
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BarbaraL Lowell
David Bogatin:
In 1984, Soviet Army veteran David Bogatin purchased five luxury condos in Trump Tower for $6 million. The purchase was so substantial that Trump himself attended the closing. Three years later, he absconded to Austria and Poland after the discovery of his gasoline-bootlegging scheme, and his five apartments were seized by the government because he bought them to hide and launder money. In 1992, he became the first criminal returned to the US from Poland since the extradition treaty signed in 1927. A Senate investigation indicated he was a major figure in the NY Russian mafia.
Anatoly Golubchik, Vadim Trincher and Michael Sall:
These three individuals were convicted of taking part in an enormous illicit betting and money-laundering syndicate that ran out of Trump Tower. Each of them was a Trump condo owner, and operated out of Vadim Trincher’s Trump Tower apartment just three floors down from Trump’s penthouse. The Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization was a “nationwide criminal enterprise with strong ties to Russia and Ukraine” run by Anatoly Golubchik and Trincher, according to the Justice Department. They ran a sportsbook catering to Russian oligarchs and laundered tens of millions in proceeds through shell companies in Cyprus. Michael Sall helped them make domestic investments with the laundered capital.
Tevfik Arif:
Tevfik Arif was a former Soviet economist that built a chain of luxury hotels in Turkey and Kazakhstan, and a Bayrock partner involved in the Trump SoHo deal, which operated out of the 24th floor of Trump Tower NY In 2010, Arif was arrested by Turkish prosecutors and charged with setting up a prostitution ring.
Vyacheslav Ivankov:
Vyacheslav Ivankov implemented a money laundering scheme set up by the “boss of bosses” in the Russian mafia, Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich arranged Ivankov’s release from a Siberian gulag, and soon afterward he went to NY where he presided over the Russian mob’s expansion in the States. He was known for torturing victims, and bragging about the murders he arranged. Ivankov was notoriously difficult to track, compared to a ghost by one FBI agent. The FBI discovered he made regular visits to the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and was living in a luxury condo at Trump Tower. After being convicted of extortion in 1997, he was jailed for nine years and seven months. He died in 2009 at the age of 69 after being shot several times leaving a restaurant in Moscow..
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BarbaraL Lowell
For two years, ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.
The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment and arrest of at least 29 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest during the FBI raid on Trump Tower. Today, he remains a fugitive from American justice.
Tokhtakhounov's whereabouts remained unknown for the next seven months after the raid on Trump Tower. The Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.
“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News...
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BarbaraL Lowell
Trump tried to rewrite his father's will in 1990 to strengthen his position as the only person to inherit his father's estate. But Fred Trump foiled the attempt, as he feared his son could strip his estate and use it to rescue his own failing businesses, The Times reported, citing depositions and other documents it obtained.
Trump had sent his father a document that would make him the sole executor of the estate and protect his portion of his inheritance from creditors and his impending divorce settlement.
Despite his father's will having already been written by a top real estate lawyer, Trump had his own lawyers draft a new copy and sent it to his father in December 1990. Trump sent his father the 12-page document and asked him to sign it immediately. Fred Trump, then 85, and in the hospital, had not seen the document before, and saw the move as an attempt to go behind his back.
He showed the document to his daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge at the time. She recalled in her deposition that he told her, "This doesn't pass the smell test," The Times reported.
Then Fred Trump had lawyers draft new documents stripping his son of sole control of the estate. Notes from those lawyers cited by The Times show that Fred Trump's instructions were to "protect assets from DJT, Donald's creditors."
Sworn depositions made by unnamed members of the Trump family during a dispute over Donald Trump's nieces' and nephews' inheritance were obtained by The Times. Those depositions showed that Fred Trump believed the document his son wanted him to sign would put his vast business empire at risk.
Had his father signed the document, which he did not, it also would have given Donald Trump sole control over his dying father's estate.
Fred Trump was, according to the sworn Trump family testimonies obtained by The Times, angered by his son's attempt to rewrite his own will without his prior knowledge or consent.
If Trump would do this to his own father and siblings, what do you think he would do to the country and the American people?
If Trump's own father and siblings couldn't trust him, why on earth should the American people trust him?
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BarbaraL Lowell
In July 2018, Trump told another blatant lie about his father being born in Germany.
Trump gave an interview in which he threatened to impose tariffs on European countries that did business with Iran.
“I was there many, many years ago,” he said. “Meaning, my parents were born in the European Union. I love these countries; Germany, Scotland, they are still in there right?”
As Trump was traveling across Europe, he repeated that same blatant lie In an interview recorded in Scotland, he said: “Don’t forget both of my parents were born in EU sectors – my mother was Scotland, my father was Germany.”
Trump’s mother, Mary MacLeod, was indeed born in Scotland, on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. But his father, Fred Trump, was born in NY. This is well known by everyone.
So if Trump would repeatedly lie about something so irrelevant, and inconsequential, like where his father was born, something that can easily be disproved, it means that he will lie about AN - Y- THING.
This is not normal. And it's something that should concern every American.
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BarbaraL Lowell
Just imagine if President Obama had done half of the things that Trump has done. Would you had given President Obama a pass?
Jan, 2016
Trump: "My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy."
Jan 9, 2016
"Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good at that – so, you know, I’ve always taken in money,” he said at a rally in Iowa. “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy – I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle, according to the latest examination of spending by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Most of that has been spent by the Trump campaign ($1.3 million), the Republican National Committee ($123,000) and the Great America political action committee ($104,000), records show, the center reported.
The Washington Post explained in a story in July how such Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
But 48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
Spending will continue to grow as the election nears. Senate Republicans are hosting a two-day “Save the Senate” retreat at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel early next month, according to The Intercept. Room rates during that time will be nearly triple the average, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The top preferred businesses by spenders were Trump’s Washington hotel, followed by his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, according to the center. Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami was in fifth place for the amount of incoming campaign expenditures.
Traitor Trump is making a fortune while fleecing America and violating the Constitution. And his supporters defend this by saying he donates his presidential salary of 400k a year, so that makes it okay for him to fleece the American people out of tens of millions of dollars since he's been in office. His presidential salary amounts to slave wages compared to what he's actually making illegally by using the office of the presidency. If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you're probably a Trump cultist.
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BarbaraL Lowell
In September 1994, a little less than a year after Tiffany was born to Trump and his second wife, Marla Maples, the couple appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. “Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does Tiffany have of Marla’s?” asked host Robin Leach.
“She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate breasts—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
While Trump was on The View in March 2006, he was asked what he would do if Ivanka was on the cover of P-boy magazine, Trump said it depended on what was inside the magazine and added, “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
In a February 2013 appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, during a question and answer game, Williams asked Trump and Ivanka, "What's the favorite thing you have in common with your father?" Ivanka answered, "Either real estate or golf" while Trump added, "Well, I was going to say 5ex."
This is who you're defending. This is not a teenager. This is a 73 year old man who most people believe should know better.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then according to Trump supporters, it's an extremely talented cat.
It is perfectly okay to call something what it is. Trump is essentially a 73 year old man who has never matured mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and socially past the age of a prepubescent child. It's this lack of growth, cognitive capacity, and impulse control that has come to define him and his presidency. He is basically an indecent human being, who seems to possess every character flaw known to mankind.
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BarbaraL Lowell
Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Trump is a sociopath in every sense of the word. He meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
• Manipulative and Conning - check
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self - check
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying - check
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt - check
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims and accomplices, who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Stone, Sessions, Manafort, Flynn, etc) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions - check
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Trump is outraged by insignificant matters, yet remains unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy - check
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature - check
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability - check
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blamed Dems for his government shutdown, even after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown. Trump threw the crowd at his rally under the bus for chanting "send her back" even though they were only repeating his own words and beliefs.
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In February when William Barr became the new AG, his son in law, Tyler McGaughey, left his job at the DoJ, to begin working as an attorney in the white house counsel's office. He'll be advising Trump, the executive office, and the white house staff on legal issues concerning the presidency. Coincidence? I think not. Basically he'll be coordinating with Trump and his father in law, on the best way to obstruct justice, undermine the rule of law and our democracy, for the sole purpose of protecting the con-man and demagogue in the Oval Office.
Barr and Trump are in the process of orchestrating the biggest cover-up in American history.
America has never seen a president as compromised, crooked and unethical as Trump before. This is without a doubt new territory.
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Dr. Fiona Hill testimony before the House Intel committee.
"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.
Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.
Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.
These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
Russian propaganda and disinformation is bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when it's coming from fox, the current president, and his defenders like Graham, Nunes, Jordan, and Rudy. It should be reported that these traitors are all willing partners in Russia's disinformation campaign on America. And they should be treated as a threat to America, because that's exactly they are. They are all carrying water for Putin. By spreading Russian GRU lies, conspiracies, and propaganda, they have all become Putin's proxies here in America...
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A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.
Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.
Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s....
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@miltonbayne6649
The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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@miltonbayne6649 dictator.
The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including GDP, job growth, and unemployment rate.
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
(Blinder and Watson 2016)
--The Economic Policy Institute, April 2, 2024.
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@chris882211
In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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What do Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saudi Royal MBS, and Xi Jinping all have in common? They are all brutal strongmen and dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty, and want their followers to willingly believe and do anything they tell them. This is exactly why Trump has a sick and demented admiration for these tyrants. He sees himself as one of them.
Trump: “ Kim Jong Un speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump later said anyone who doesn’t cheer for anything he says is a traitor committing treason.
It doesn’t matter to Trump cultists that he chooses to side with Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia over America, because all Trump has to do is hold a rally, hug the American flag, while telling the crowd to shout, “U-S-A!” And then all of a sudden, that warm and fuzzy feeling of counterfeit patriotism washes over them.
At a rally held by Steve Bannon this past March, an angry and hostile woman took the mic and said, “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s gonna be one, I want it to be Trump!” which was met with loud cheers and applause from Bannon and the crowd of cultists. It goes without saying that any American who would cheer for that, doesn't believe in liberty, freedom, or the Constitution. Anyone American that cheers for that clearly supports fascism and dictatorships. Trump's cultists don't want an elected official to govern on behalf of the people, they want an authoritarian dictator who will force his will on the nation, and punish anyone who doesn't submit to dogmatic obedience.
Trump cultists like to talk about how much theylove and support our troops and veterans, then continue to worship a man who steps on the military every chance he gets. Trump promised he would donate to military charities, then didn’t, then lied about it. He attacked John McCain during the campaign for no reason, attacked him throughout his term, and continues to attack McCain after his passing. He even made the Navy cover-up the name of the USS John McCain during his trip to Pearl Harbor. That was pretty low even for Trump.
When Republican Congressman and war veteran Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat serving this country, tweeted to Trump, “Seriously stop talking about Senator John McCain,” Trump supporters turned on veteran Crenshaw and harassed, threatened and insulted him on twitter. They defended a known coward and draft dodger, and attacked Crenshaw, a wounded war veteran who served this country honorably. Let that sink in for a moment.
At a rally in August 2016, a war veteran presented his Purple Heart medal to Trump, and he took it and said, “I always wanted one of these, this way is much easier.” Utterly disgusting.
No other politician, Republican or Democrat, would have EVER accepted that from a veteran.
Semper Fi..
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On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Trump's inauguration was celebrated jubilantly in Moscow, where Putin supporter Konstantin Rykov hosted an all-night party. Champagne flowed as an interpreter narrated the new U.S. president's speech. In Washington, the Russian Embassy tweeted, "Happy #InaugurationDay2017!" with a photo of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
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@MA-ri5he
In President Biden’s first year in office, his administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future.
These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.
President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPS and Science Act makes the smart investments so that Americans can compete in and win the future.
UnderBiden, US oil production is poised to break Trump-era records. On Biden's watch, US oil production is poised to ShatterAll-time records set during the Trump administration.
US oil output is now projected to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever.
For context, that’s about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019. It’s also more oil than any other country on the planet produces.
Today's jobs report shows that our economy continues to lead the world, With the numbers from March in, we have officially crossed 15 million jobs created under President Biden. That is more jobs created in a single term than any president in history. Thanks to the investments passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Biden, the American economy has comeback from thePandemic stronger than ever..
Let us not forget how the jobs record of PresidentBiden compares to that of his predecessor. Trump lost 2.7 million jobs over the course of his presidency — more than any President since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the GreatDepression. While Trump wasted time tweeting ConspiracyTheories and playing political games, President Biden took action to rescue our economy and protect American families. Our economy has made a miraculous comeback.
Thanks to President Biden, more Americans now have health insurance than under any other President. And because of Biden, the cost of Insulin for senior citizen has been lowered to 35 dollars.
The PACT Act, which President Biden signed into law in August 2022, is the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxin-exposed veterans in over three decades. The the PACT Act aims to deliver timely benefits and services to veterans across all generations who have been impacted by toxic exposures during their military service.
Despite its overwhelming support amongst the American people, getting the PACT Act passed in Congress proved to be an uphill battle. Republicans in CongressLied repeatedly about the law and voted against it, before the pressure ramped up against them. 🇺🇸💙
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NitroExpress
Unfortunately for you and Trump, what Trump did is no different than what Nixon did. And what Nixon did was obstruction of justice.
What Trump did was basically a repeat of Nixon's Saturday night massacre, but in slow motion.
During the Watergate scandal, Nixon ordered the Attorney General Richardson to fire Archibald Cox, the head of the Special Counsel investigation on Watergate. Richardson refused, and resigned on the spot, effective immediately. We already know that Trump tried to get Sessions and others to fire Mueller. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General Ruckelshaus to fire the Special counsel prosecutor, Ruckelshaus also refused, and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then turned to the Justice Department Solicitor, General Robert Bork. Nixon ordered him to fire Cox. Bork initially considered resigning as well, but eventually did as Nixon asked.
This exercise in criminal incompetence, and abuse of power, all happened within a matter of hours on one Saturday evening on October 30, 1973. A new special counsel was appointed 11 days later. A mere 13 days after that, the courts ruled that the firing of special counsel Cox was illegal. This was the final nail in Nixon's coffin, and he drove that nail in himself.
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NitroExpress
Hundreds of former federal prosecutors have signed onto an open online letter that says Trump's behavior toward the Russia investigation more than justified an indictment—for obstruction of justice. The open letter organized by the nonprofit group PROTECT DEMOCRACY, had roughly 400 signatures when it was initially posted. The letter now has almost a thousand signatures.
The letter's second paragraph states, “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
In making the case that Trump obstructed justice, the letter singles out three of his alleged actions that are detailed in the Mueller report: his effort to get Don McGahn, the White House counsel, to fire the special counsel; his attempt to limit the scope of the inquiry by instructing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to carry a message to then Attorney General Sessions; and his repeated efforts to tamper with witnesses, including Cohen and Paul Manafort, by, among other things, raising the prospect of pardons.
The letter says Trump’s actions “satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge” and asserts that the evidence of “corrupt intent”—a key element of any obstruction case—is overwhelming.
The full list of names shows that more than three hundred of the signatories served at the Department of Justice for at least a decade. A hundred and sixty of them racked up twenty years or more. More than sixty did at least thirty years. And two of them did forty years: John Kolar, a former senior trial counsel, and E. Thomas Roberts, who headed the narcotics division in the District of Maryland.
Many of the signatories worked for different parts of the DoJ, in many parts of the country, at many different levels. There are former heads of major divisions, such as the financial-crimes and civil-fraud units, and former U.S. Attorneys. But there are also countless trial attorneys, appellate attorneys, and assistant U.S. Attorneys—the anonymous figures who prosecute cases on a day-to-day basis. And all of them are agreed that if Trump were sitting anywhere except the Oval Office, he would be facing a lengthy rap sheet.
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Trump and Kushner have literally been running their own criminal organization out of the white house. The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection is one of the returns they expect to receive.
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to the president that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Chris Christie volunteered himself for the job as head of Trump's presidential transition team. But when he went to see Trump about it, Trump said he didn’t want a presidential transition team. Why did anyone need to plan anything before he actually became president? It’s legally required, said Christie. Trump asked where the money was going to come from to pay for the transition team. Christie explained that Trump could either pay for it himself or take it out of campaign funds. Trump didn’t want to pay for it himself. He didn’t want to take it out of campaign funds, either, but he agreed, grudgingly, that Christie should go ahead and raise a separate fund to pay for his transition team. “But not too much!” he said.
And so Christie set out to prepare for the unlikely event that Trump would one day be elected president of the United States. At the end of each week, Christie handed over binders, with lists of names of people who might do the jobs well, The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trump’s very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon, the chief executive of his campaign, from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my effing money! What the eff is this?
Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my effing money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain to Trump federal law. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: Phuck the law. I don’t give a phuck about the law. I want my phucking money. Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn’t have both his money and a transition. Shut it down, said Trump. Shut down the transition. Bannon however finally convinced Trump that he needed to have a transition team.
With that, Christie went back to preparing for a Trump administration. He tried to stay out of the news, but that proved difficult. From time to time, Trump would see something in the paper about Christie’s fundraising and become upset all over again. The money that people donated to his campaign Trump considered, effectively, his own. He thought the planning and forethought pointless. At one point he turned to Christie and said: “Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves.”
From The Guardian: The Long Read, ‘This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team
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DJT sat in the White House, and watched theVio.lence that unfolded on our nation's Capitol for at least two whole hours, without doing anything and without saying a word, other than to blast his own Vice President, who eventually had to flee for his life.
The truth of the matter is, if he had not filled his followers heads with lies for months, and if he had not held that rally, where he instructed his followers to march to the Capitol and fight like he// in order to "stop the steal" the insurrection never would have happened. Because without the use of vio.lence, how else were they going to stop the so called steal?
The election was over. The only thing that remained was for Pence to count and certify the electoral votes. So the only thing they could've been fighting for, was to bring a stop to the counting of the electoral votes, which would officially certify Biden as the next democratically elected president.
AndVio.lence was the only option they had left. DJT had already exhausted every other legal and illegal option. So on January 6th, theViolence card was the only card he had left, and he played it.
Trump's failed coup was very reminiscent of AdolfH's failed coup.
November 9, 1923: AdolfH believes the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, he stages the BeerHallPutsch, or coup. It failed
In the aftermath of the failed coup, AdolfH was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison.
The insurrection was Trump's revenge against our democracy and our Constitution.
It was his way of getting back at everyone who didn't vote for him, and those who refused to violate our Constitution on his behalf. Watching his followers storm the Capitol while wearing his hat and waving flags emblazoned with his name, was the greatest day of his presidency. He had never felt more like the dictator he's always wanted to be than he did on that day. And he reveled in it.
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I use to live in Lakewood CO, and you are absolutely correct.
Republican Mike Turner announced his support for a ban on the sales of military style weapons following theDeadly
MassShooting in downtown Dayton Ohio on August 4, 2019 after he discovered his daughter was almost one of the casualties.
“I believe these are necessary steps forward in protecting our country and a testament to American values, which include protecting human life," Turner said in a statement
Turner, a Dayton native, said he would also support legislation placing restrictions on high-capacity magazines as well as so-called red-flag laws, which allow police and family members to “quickly identify people who are dangerous and remove their ability to harm others.
Turner made this statement after he found out that his teenage daughter was across the street from the shooting that night and she had just missed being out on the street when the shootingStarted by just seconds.
So now all of a sudden he cares. He should have cared back in 2012 when 20 babies were the victims in the Sandy Hook shooting. We all should have cared.
I'm a gun owner, and a Marine combat veteran. I don't own an assault rifle, because my days of going on patrols, raids and assaults are over. I live in the suburbs now, so why on earth would I need a weapon that was designed for mass carnage on the battlefield? I'm a practical person, so if I go out and buy a hammer, it's because I intend on hammering something.
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It's almost as if the Founders were clairvoyant when they placed articles of impeachment into the Constitution. They clearly had envisioned someone like Trump in America's future. Someone who would say that as president, he can do whatever he wants..
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.”
― DaShanne Stokes
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may”
― Daniel Webste
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
If what Trump has done isn't wrong, then that means that nothing is wrong. if Trump isn't impeachable, then that means that no president will ever be impeachable, no matter what they do. And that will spell the end of our democracy, our Constitution, and our republic. It will be as if we never fought and won a war of independence against a King.
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Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily, and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed..
When it comes to being a sociopath, Trump checks all the boxes.
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Trump, Fox, and other republicans, have all become proxies for Putin and his propaganda and disinformation campaign on America. By continuing to peddle Putin's long debunked conspiracies, they are wilfully volunteering themselves to become cogs in Putin's campaign to weaken America.
Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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Republicans made Putin proud today. Putin probably climaxes everytime he sees Trump and other republicans go out of their way to defend him and attack America's democratic institutions.
Trump, Fox, and other republicans, have all become proxies for Putin and his propaganda and disinformation campaign on America. By continuing to peddle Putin's long debunked conspiracies, they are wilfully volunteering themselves to become cogs in Putin's campaign to weaken America.
Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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For decades, Trump has laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. Ultimately Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control him.
Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia is connected to Russian intelligence. They were and still are, living and working in Trump's buildings. Trump has even partnered with them. There are many ways in which Trump has been compromised.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, you suddenly had Russians who became wealthy Oligarchs overnight, with billions of dollars that have to be laundered out of Russia. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
The Republicans are also implicated. The Russians didn't just go after Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.
When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took outt full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians wanted, even today.
Back in 1984, Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him, and then they discovered that he was actually living in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower to launder money as well. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
Russian Oligarchs made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash, because he couldn’t get loans from American banks anymore. The only bank that would loan him money was Deutsche Bank, which is the preferred bank for Russian Oligarchs and the Russian mafia..
There were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was constructed, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, and limited liability corporations. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin..
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Trump, Fox, and other republicans, have all become proxies for Putin and his propaganda and disinformation campaign on America. By continuing to peddle Putin's long debunked conspiracies, they are wilfully volunteering themselves to become cogs in Putin's campaign to weaken America.
Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return.
Trump has sent thousands of our troops to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil and HIS own personal business interests.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.
A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Trump, Fox, and other republicans, have all become proxies for Putin and his propaganda and disinformation campaign on America. By continuing to peddle Putin's long debunked conspiracies, they are wilfully volunteering themselves to become cogs in Putin's campaign to weaken America.
Putin's plot against America, which was to help his puppet Trump get elected began in 2014. Thousands of miles away, in a drab office building in St Petersburg, Russia, a fake newsroom was under construction with its own graphics, data analysis, search engine optimisation, IT and finance departments. Its mission: ”information warfare against the US..
We now know from the Mueller report, that what followed was a successful attack on the most powerful democracy in the world. It involved stolen identities, fake social media accounts, rallies organised from afar, US citizens (Trump cultists) duped into doing Moscow’s bidding..
In his first criminal charges related to election meddling, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies of an elaborate effort to disrupt the 2016 elections with a covert trolling campaign, aimed at helping Trump get elected.
The Russian offensive began in 2014 with an aim to “sow discord” and evolved into a concerted attempt to help Trump. Some of it relied on old-fashioned boots on the ground. Two operatives, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, travelled as tourists through at least nine states over about two weeks in June 2014 to collect intelligence for their operations. They prepared “evacuation scenarios” in case their cover was blown.
This was combined with exploiting the anonymous, borderless world of social media, where agents of chaos thrive. The Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in nondescript offices at 55 Savushkina Street St Petersburg, was operating through Russian shell companies, the agency employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious personae to technical and administrative support.
Its specialists were divided into day shifts and night shifts to fit with the appropriate US time zones. The agency also circulated lists of US holidays so that specialists could be active accordingly.
Russians posed as political and social active Americans. They created social media pages and groups, and bought political adverts such as “Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it”. They relied on identity theft, using the social security numbers, home addresses and birth dates of Americans without their knowledge. They set up fake bank accounts linked to PayPal accounts.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Clinton, and to denigrate other candidates such as Cruz and Rubio. In June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the Russians began to organise pro-Trump rallies, recruiting and paying unwitting (Trump cultists) Americans. At a time when Trump supporters were chanting “Lock her up!”, one was asked to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in Florida, while another was asked to build a cage on a flatbed truck. On 22 September, Russians created and bought Facebook ads for a series of “Miners for Trump" rallies in Pennsylvania.
Today Trump still refuses to criticize Putin, or even acknowledge that Moscow meddled in our elections. His refusal to do so is either motivated by fear, or a conscientious and wilful betrayal of his oath of office, and the betrayal of America.
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In July 2018, Trump told another blatant lie about his father being born in Germany.
Trump gave an interview in which he threatened to impose tariffs on European countries that did business with Iran.
“I was there many, many years ago,” he said. “Meaning, my parents were born in the European Union. I love these countries; Germany, Scotland, they are still in there right?”
As Trump was traveling across Europe, he repeated that same blatant lie In an interview recorded in Scotland, he said: “Don’t forget both of my parents were born in EU sectors – my mother was Scotland, my father was Germany.”
Trump’s mother, Mary MacLeod, was indeed born in Scotland, on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. But his father, Fred Trump, was born in NY. This is well known by everyone.
So if Trump would repeatedly lie about something so irrelevant and inconsequential, as to where his father was born, something that can easily be disproved, it means that he will lie about AN - Y- THING.
This is not normal. And it's something that should concern every American.
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The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return..
Trump has sent thousands of our troops to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil and HIS own personal business interests.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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Trump has lived his entire adult life by one rule, which is, ignorance is strength. You don't have to be intellectually curious, or informed, you just have to be loud, boisterous, and assertive. It also helps if you can lie with confidence. You have to be able to overwhelm the masses with so many lies, that by the time they've debunked just one of your lies, you've already told 20 more new lies.
Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer for Trump's book "The Art of the Deal" admits that the book was “full of falsehoods.” Schwartz said.
"Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.
He said that Trump had no ideology or beliefs, except that he should prevail in the end.
"Trump’s temperament and his habits have hardened with age." Schwartz said. "He was always cartoonish, but compared with the man for whom I wrote The Art of the Deal 30 years ago, he is significantly angrier today: more reactive, deceitful, distracted, vindictive, impulsive and, above all, self-absorbed."
"Every American ought to be concerned about his character." Schwartz said....
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C. Reck
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle, according to the latest examination of spending by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Most of that has been spent by the Trump campaign ($1.3 million), the Republican National Committee ($123,000) and the Great America political action committee ($104,000), records show, the center reported.
The Washington Post explained in a story in July how such Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
But 48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
Spending will continue to grow as the election nears. Senate Republicans are hosting a two-day “Save the Senate” retreat at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel early next month, according to The Intercept. Room rates during that time will be nearly triple the average, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The top preferred businesses by spenders were Trump’s Washington hotel, followed by his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, according to the center. Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami was in fifth place for the amount of incoming campaign expenditures.
Traitor Trump is making a fortune while fleecing America and violating the Constitution. And his supporters defend this by saying he donates his presidential salary of 400k a year, so that makes it okay for him to fleece the American people out of tens of millions of dollars since he's been in office. His presidential salary amounts to slave wages compared to what he's actually making illegally by using the office of the presidency. If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you're probably a Trump cultist.
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bob wallace
Not only have the U.S. and foreign governments spent money at properties owned by Trump, but Trump's own political campaign and affiliated political committees have also spent about $16.8 million at his businesses since he launched his 2016 bid, according to an analysis of federal election spending records. Trump is literally using his own campaign’s money to line his pockets with millions. It's basically the same crime he committed with his fake charity foundation.
Republican political campaigns and PACs have spent just under $1.8 million at Trump-owned businesses so far this year in the 2020 election cycle, according to the latest examination of spending by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on spending reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Most of that has been spent by the Trump campaign ($1.3 million), the Republican National Committee ($123,000) and the Great America political action committee ($104,000), records show, the center reported.
The Washington Post explained in a story in July how such Trump campaign events create a “two-fer” benefiting Trump. When he holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, not only do donors contribute to his campaign, his business collects funds from his campaign for space rental and catering, some of which ultimately ends up in his pocket.
But 48 Republican members of Congress also spent campaign money at Trump businesses through their campaign and affiliated committees, according to the center. Some of the top spenders for the 2020 cycle included campaigns for former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin ($21,000), who resigned last month, Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana Rep. Greg Pence ($14,000), Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio ($12,000) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California ($8,000).
Spending will continue to grow as the election nears. Senate Republicans are hosting a two-day “Save the Senate” retreat at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel early next month, according to The Intercept. Room rates during that time will be nearly triple the average, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The top preferred businesses by spenders were Trump’s Washington hotel, followed by his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, according to the center. Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami was in fifth place for the amount of incoming campaign expenditures.
Traitor Trump is making a fortune while fleecing America and violating the Constitution. And his supporters defend this by saying he donates his presidential salary of 400k a year, so that makes it okay for him to fleece the American people out of tens of millions of dollars since he's been in office. His presidential salary amounts to slave wages compared to what he's actually making illegally by using the office of the presidency. If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you're probably a Trump cultist.
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The Saudis have invested a lot of money into Trump's criminal organization, and they expect a return on their investment..... protection being one of the things the Saudis expect in return..
Trump has sent thousands of our troops to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil and HIS own personal business interests.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Congress was furious over Trump’s secret efforts to secure a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia. Congress was rightfully furious when they discovered that the Saudis refused to accept limits preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
It was revealed that Trump gave approval for companies to share certain nuclear energy technology with the kingdom without a broader nuclear deal in place.
House Dems began investigating Trump's nuclear talks with Saudi after the Oversight and Reform Committee announced in February it was launching a probe to “determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the US or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved seven authorizations that let U.S. companies share certain nuclear energy technology with Saudi Arabia.
lawmakers were outraged when they found out they were not told about the approvals, saying the secrecy violates the Atomic Energy Act, which requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” of 123 agreement negotiations.
"Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
In 1991, as Trump was teetering on bankruptcy yet AGAIN, and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million.
Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel....Which eventually went under anyway.
In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the UN for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The most recent example of Trump's emoluments clause violations came last year in August when a visit from Saudi officials to Trump's Trump International Hotel in NYC helped boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13% in 2018's first quarter. The bump came after two straight years of booking declines for the property.
Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels. A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging at his Washington hotel through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to Trump that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.
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