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tcm · 4 years

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A Journey Into French Cinema By Susan King

Do you remember the movie or filmmaker that changed your life? When you realized film was more than entertainment? When you were moved so emotionally that you couldn’t shake the feeling you had when watching the movie? Veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, who directed such acclaimed films as THE CLOCKMAKER OF ST. PAUL (‘74); COUP DE TORCHON (‘81) and ‘ROUND MIDNIGHT (‘86), was just a boy when he fell in love with the films of such directors as Jacques Becker and Jean Renoir.

Their films gave him “tremendous emotion,” he told me in a 2017 interview for the American Cinematheque. “Tears and love. Because of them, I think, I understood my country. I think I fell in love with France because of those films. Not because of politicians, but because of Renoir, because of Claude Sautet, because of Marcel Pagnol.”

In 2016, he directed a valentine of a documentary, MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA. It’s a must-see for French film fans, as well as those who are just dipping their toes into the country’s cinema. The documentary looks at the works of Becker and Renoir, as well as Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Sautet, the writer-director team of Jacques Prevert and Marcel Carne and the pioneering New Wave filmmakers Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

“The main reason I decided to do the film is that I wanted to say, ‘Thank you’ to all of those people who changed my life,” noted the 79-year-old Tavernier. “I mean those directors, screenwriters, composers, actors and actresses. Some of those films gave me hope, gave me strength. You know there is a Chinese proverb which says that when you drink the water of the well, you must always thank the man who built it.”

Jean Renoir (1894-1979) didn’t build French cinema, but he was definitely one of the chief architects. The son of renowned Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, French filmmaker of the 20th century. He was also one of the most influential with the New Wave directors because he was what the New Wave considered an auteur, a filmmaker who exerts his personal influence and artistic control so that he is considered the author of the movie.

Renoir made countless classic films both in France and in the U.S., where he fled when the Nazis took power of his country. Renoir earned his only Oscar nomination for Best Director for THE SOUTHERNER (‘45). But two of his greatest accomplishments are LA GRANDE ILLUSION (‘37) and THE RULES OF THE GAME (‘39). LA GRANDE ILLUSION, which was released in the states in 1938, was the first foreign language film to earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Film.

Set during World War I, LA GRANDE ILLUSION is a powerful anti-war statement as well as a look at the class structure in France. Renoir’s frequent collaborators, superstar Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio and Pierre Fresnay, play three French officers who are captured and sent to a POW camp run by an aristocratic German commander played Erich von Stroheim. Though critics often have cited THE RULES OF THE GAME as Renoir’s masterpiece, I prefer GRANDE ILLUSION because he imbues his characters with empathy and sympathy.

THE RULES OF THE GAME opened 91 years ago this month in France, just a few months before the German occupation. Audiences, especially the wealthy, didn’t want to see this film as it satirized the ruling class. Renoir would later say that he tried to salvage the film by cutting it, “and to start with, I cut scenes in which I myself played too large a part, as though I was ashamed, after the rebuff, of showing myself on screen. But it was useless.” Renoir was figuratively bound and quartered by French audiences for RULES OF THE GAME because it skewers the aristocracy. The rich and spoiled have no morals bounding in and out of each other’s arms and beds during a hunting weekend at the country estate of a wealthy marquis (Dalio). The scene of the rabbit hunt is horrific, as these frivolous beings kill countless defenseless animals trying to escape their rifles. And the estate’s staff and workers are equally amoral.

The only character who has heart is Octave played by Renoir, a big bear of a man who is “friends” with the aristocracy but in the end is really alone. THE RULES OF THE GAME only stayed in theaters for three weeks and was actually banned as “demoralizing.” The shortened version did play in the country after World War II, but it wasn’t until 1956—when two French lab technicians found over 200 boxes with bits and pieces of the cut material— that the film restored to its originally glory.

In 1999, a The Village Voice poll placed it as the second-best film of the century after Citizen Kane. During the 1930’s, Jacques Becker (1906-1960) was an assistant to Renoir. And just as Renoir, he was very much admired by the New Wave. Truffaut once wrote that Becker “is an intimate and realistic filmmaker who is in love with verisimilitude and everyday realities.” Tavernier described Becker as “the finest French filmmaker of the ’40 and ‘50s the most even in quality, the smartest in his choices.”

Among his acclaimed films are the gangster noir TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (1954), starring Gabin, and the taut prison escape drama LE TROU (1959). But his loveliest, most emotional film is CASQUE D’OR (‘52), starring Simone Signoret, as the mistress of a ruthless gangster (Claude Dauphin), who falls passionately in love with a reformed ex-con (Serge Reggiani). Though it’s telegraphed early that their love affair will end tragically, it’s so well-acted, compelling and even suspenseful. Signoret won the BAFTA honor for Best Foreign Film Actress.

Early in his career, Tavernier worked with Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973), who was a mentor to the New Wave directors and was best known for his superb almost minimalist film noirs including BOB LE FLAMBEUR (‘56), LE DOULOS (‘62), LE SAMOURAI (‘67) and LE CIRCLE ROUGE (‘70). Tavernier notes in MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA that Melville was a bully, having squabbles with his actors and would also dress down his crew in front of everybody.

“That was a nightmare for me,” he told me. “When I was coming to work, I was sick. I was young. It was demanding, as frightening as school. It’s only later on the set of other directors that I discovered the atmosphere was not like that. That doesn’t change anything about the talent of Melville, but he created an atmosphere which was frightening, especially for a young kid like me.”

#French films #french new wave #bastille day #Jean Renoir #jean pierre melville #TCM #Turner Classic Movies #Susan King

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kikenhanna17world · 4 years

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A Journey Into French Cinema By Susan King Do you remember the movie or filmmaker that changed your life? When you realized film was more than entertainment? When you were moved so emotionally that you couldn’t shake the feeling you had when watching the movie? Veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, who directed such acclaimed films as THE CLOCKMAKER OF ST. PAUL (‘74); COUP DE TORCHON (‘81) and ‘ROUND MIDNIGHT (‘86), was just a boy when he fell in love with the films of such directors as Jacques Becker and Jean Renoir. Their films gave him “tremendous emotion,” he told me in a 2017 interview for the American Cinematheque. “Tears and love. Because of them, I think, I understood my country. I think I fell in love with France because of those films. Not because of politicians, but because of Renoir, because of Claude Sautet, because of Marcel Pagnol.” In 2016, he directed a valentine of a documentary, MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA. It’s a must-see for French film fans, as well as those who are just dipping their toes into the country’s cinema. The documentary looks at the works of Becker and Renoir, as well as Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Sautet, the writer-director team of Jacques Prevert and Marcel Carne and the pioneering New Wave filmmakers Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.“The main reason I decided to do the film is that I wanted to say, ‘Thank you’ to all of those people who changed my life,” noted the 79-year-old Tavernier. “I mean those directors, screenwriters, composers, actors and actresses. Some of those films gave me hope, gave me strength. You know there is a Chinese proverb which says that when you drink the water of the well, you must always thank the man who built it.” Jean Renoir (1894-1979) didn’t build French cinema, but he was definitely one of the chief architects. The son of renowned Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, French filmmaker of the 20th century. He was also one of the most influential with the New Wave directors because he was what the New Wave considered an auteur, a filmmaker who exerts his personal influence and artistic control so that he is considered the author of the movie. Renoir made countless classic films both in France and in the U.S., where he fled when the Nazis took power of his country. Renoir earned his only Oscar nomination for Best Director for THE SOUTHERNER (‘45). But two of his greatest accomplishments are LA GRANDE ILLUSION (‘37) and THE RULES OF THE GAME (‘39). LA GRANDE ILLUSION, which was released in the states in 1938, was the first foreign language film to earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Film.Set during World War I, LA GRANDE ILLUSION is a powerful anti-war statement as well as a look at the class structure in France. Renoir’s frequent collaborators, superstar Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio and Pierre Fresnay, play three French officers who are captured and sent to a POW camp run by an aristocratic German commander played Erich von Stroheim. Though critics often have cited THE RULES OF THE GAME as Renoir’s masterpiece, I prefer GRANDE ILLUSION because he imbues his characters with empathy and sympathy. THE RULES OF THE GAME opened 91 years ago this month in France, just a few months before the German occupation. Audiences, especially the wealthy, didn’t want to see this film as it satirized the ruling class. Renoir would later say that he tried to salvage the film by cutting it, “and to start with, I cut scenes in which I myself played too large a part, as though I was ashamed, after the rebuff, of showing myself on screen. But it was useless.” Renoir was figuratively bound and quartered by French audiences for RULES OF THE GAME because it skewers the aristocracy. The rich and spoiled have no morals bounding in and out of each other’s arms and beds during a hunting weekend at the country estate of a wealthy marquis (Dalio). The scene of the rabbit hunt is horrific, as these frivolous beings kill countless defenseless animals trying to escape their rifles. And the estate’s staff and workers are equally amoral.The only character who has heart is Octave played by Renoir, a big bear of a man who is “friends” with the aristocracy but in the end is really alone. THE RULES OF THE GAME only stayed in theaters for three weeks and was actually banned as “demoralizing.” The shortened version did play in the country after World War II, but it wasn’t until 1956—when two French lab technicians found over 200 boxes with bits and pieces of the cut material— that the film restored to its originally glory. In 1999, a The Village Voice poll placed it as the second-best film of the century after Citizen Kane. During the 1930’s, Jacques Becker (1906-1960) was an assistant to Renoir. And just as Renoir, he was very much admired by the New Wave. Truffaut once wrote that Becker “is an intimate and realistic filmmaker who is in love with verisimilitude and everyday realities.” Tavernier described Becker as “the finest French filmmaker of the ’40 and ‘50s the most even in quality, the smartest in his choices.” Among his acclaimed films are the gangster noir TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (1954), starring Gabin, and the taut prison escape drama LE TROU (1959). But his loveliest, most emotional film is CASQUE D’OR (‘52), starring Simone Signoret, as the mistress of a ruthless gangster (Claude Dauphin), who falls passionately in love with a reformed ex-con (Serge Reggiani). Though it’s telegraphed early that their love affair will end tragically, it’s so well-acted, compelling and even suspenseful. Signoret won the BAFTA honor for Best Foreign Film Actress. Early in his career, Tavernier worked with Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973), who was a mentor to the New Wave directors and was best known for his superb almost minimalist film noirs including BOB LE FLAMBEUR (‘56), LE DOULOS (‘62), LE SAMOURAI (‘67) and LE CIRCLE ROUGE (‘70). Tavernier notes in MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA that Melville was a bully, having squabbles with his actors and would also dress down his crew in front of everybody. “That was a nightmare for me,” he told me. “When I was coming to work, I was sick. I was young. It was demanding, as frightening as school. It’s only later on the set of other directors that I discovered the atmosphere was not like that. That doesn’t change anything about the talent of Melville, but he created an atmosphere which was frightening, especially for a young kid like me.”

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

NASCAR is niche. A recent Morning Consult survey of the sport’s fans found that they’re much more male, white and Southern than other sports fans are. It’s a subculture status that some fans have relished but which NASCAR itself seems eager to shake — in the last two years, its TV ratings bottomed out after peaking in the mid-2000s, according to SportsBusiness Journal. They’ve declined for six years running, in fact. Since the mid-aughts, the sport has actively sought to expand its fan base — seeking race venues outside the South, for example — and in doing so, sometimes drawing the ire of its core fans. “We believe strongly that the old Southeastern redneck heritage that we had is no longer in existence. But we also realize that there’s going to have to be an effort on our part to convince others to understand that,” then-NASCAR President Mike Helton said in 2006.

Like so many institutions in American life, the sport was grappling with what its place would be in a more diverse county and culture.

So when the NASCAR Cup Series’ only Black driver, Bubba Wallace, called for a ban of the Confederate flag earlier this summer, saying “No one should feel uncomfortable when they come to a NASCAR race,” NASCAR readily complied. It had already formally asked fans to stop bringing the flags to events in 2015 following the murders of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist. President Trump weighed in on NASCAR’s decision, tweeting that its flag ban was to blame for its “lowest ratings EVER!” (ratings are actually up following the flag ban).

But according to the Morning Consult survey from June, 44 percent of NASCAR fans agree with the president and said that fans should be allowed to bring the flag to races. Only 30 percent were fine with the ban. And at NASCAR races in June and July, Confederate flags reappeared. Not in the stands, but high above them; a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans rented planes to fly the flag over the racetracks. The group’s leader, Paul Gramling Jr., told the Columbia Daily Herald that “The Sons of Confederate Veterans is proud of the diversity of the Confederate military and our modern Southland. We believe NASCAR’s slandering of our Southern heritage only further divides our nation.”

Gramling’s statement about the “diversity” of the Confederate army and his use of the term “modern Southland” speak volumes. Enslaved men were conscripted as soldiers and servants in the Confederate Army — they were hardly volunteers for the Southern cause — and Gramling’s “Southland” conjures the image of a cohesive nation, as if the Confederacy, which existed for less than five years, had not been decimated long ago.

The SCV and NASCAR’s oblique tussling might seem like a fringe issue in an election year when a pandemic and an economic crisis imperil millions of lives, but their divergent visions of what the culture of the American South is — who it’s for and of — embodies much about the political and cultural climate in which we find ourselves. Trump and NASCAR are in similar positions: overly reliant on a slowly shrinking, mostly white base. NASCAR is trying to expand its audience in order to stay relevant; Trump is not. The sport has realized something that the president can’t seem to grasp, which is that overt shows of racism turn most Americans off.

Electoral politics has played a role in normalizing on a national level the kind of neo-Confederate views that the SCV — and Trump — have condoned and promoted in recent weeks. You don’t have to have grown up in the American South to have thought that the Confederate flag was inextricably tied to what the SCV calls “Southern heritage,” but which really means a particular slice of Southern white culture. Going back decades, blocks of white votes in the South have been courted aggressively by non-Southerners who have played to the culture that has grown around these symbols and a particular nostalgic language about the Confederate past. During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, a California governor of Illinois birth, appeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi — where Freedom Rider activists were famously murdered in 1964 — and gave a speech about “states’ rights,” which was read by many as euphemistic in the most loaded way possible, given the context of the place. The country had gotten comfortable with delicate work-arounds like that — the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights. For decades, parts of the country have tolerated a semantic category that blandly normalized a strain of white resentment at the Confederate defeat. Sometimes the language is more blunt, of course: the War of Northern Aggression, “the South will rise again” or “It’s only halftime.”

According to the 2010 census, 55 percent of the country’s Black population live in the South. While the region is still nearly 60 percent white, its Black and Hispanic populations are significant, and while traditionally rural, diverse, growing cities like Atlanta and Charlotte have become important business hubs. North Carolina’s Research Triangle region boasts the sort of academic power and national draw often associated with the Northeast Corridor’s Ivy League. NASCAR’s bid to diversify, geographically and otherwise, is in keeping with the modern South’s changes.

But strong vestiges of the racist Confederacy have held on in the region. Mississippi removed the Confederate stars and bars from its state flag only last month, becoming the last state in the Union to do so. While the majority of Americans — 52 percent — favored the removal of Confederate statues from public spaces, according to a Quinnipiac University survey from June, 52 percent of those from the South opposed removal, the only region of the country where a majority supported keeping the statues.

In the midst of a floundering campaign, Trump grasped onto Southern white culture — that particular strain of it — as a way to pull his head above water. A large base of his support does indeed lie in the South, as has been the case for all recent Republican presidential candidates; Bill Clinton won Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia in 1996, but no Democrat has since. Trump ran a race-baiting campaign in 2016, and his 2020 campaign has continued to play on long-standing tropes of racial fear, like violent “liberal Democrat” cities. Ironically, his use of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Ore., is about as far from states’ rights as you can get.

But Trump seems to be speaking to the SCV types and not the more “mainstream” white voters he actually needs to win. The SCV, for what it’s worth, is more than the “historical, patriotic, and non-political organization” that its website says it is. Its branches have donated to Republican politicians and it controversially purchased the Silent Sam Confederate statue that was torn down at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In other words, the group is representative of the types of (white) voters who are Trump’s ride-or-dies.

But Trump has misjudged — or refuses to see — that much of white America is changing how it thinks about racial issues. A Monmouth University survey from June found that 49 percent of white Americans thought police were more likely to use excessive force against a Black person, up from only 25 percent in 2016. A Morning Consult poll from May and June of this year found that 49 percent of white Americans supported the protests unfolding across the country, and 54 percent of suburbanites supported them (white people are the majority in 90 percent of America’s suburban counties, according to Pew Research Center).

Someone seems to have leaned into Trump’s ear and told him he needs these white suburbanites in order to have a fighting chance of winning in November. Last week, he called on “The Suburban Housewives of America” — as if harkening to a membership organization from 1955 — and said that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden would “destroy” their American dream by promoting affordable housing for all in the suburbs. In Trump’s framing, by hoping to diversify the suburbs, Biden would destroy the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream.” A majority of Americans in a Pew survey conducted in 2019 said Trump had made race relations in the country worse, and while white, Black and Hispanic people still differ in their views on racial issues, it’s clear that recent events have brought greater racial awareness to the forefront of white Americans’ minds.

Republicans are increasingly worried about Trump losing a state like Ohio — once thought solidly in Trump’s camp — in large part because of the president’s diminishing support in suburban areas. (I wrote at length about this Ohio suburban phenomenon back in 2019.) His embrace of the racist totems of the white South — which large swaths of the white South itself eschews — could now potentially cost Trump with the Midwestern or Northeastern (whatever you want to call Pennsylvania) voters he needs to hold onto in order to win.

Trump, a New York City-born pol who doesn’t quite seem to “get” the ‘burbs — and has never been a particularly subtle political thinker or communicator — crucially misunderstood that the muscular Southern racism the Confederate flag has long represented doesn’t work in the white suburban realms of respectability anymore. That cohort — Republican and Democratic — absorbs and displays its biases more mutedly in 2020. Trump, who came to political power riding a wave of racist conspiracy theory — it was only fair to ask questions about whether the first Black president was actually American, wasn’t it? — now suddenly seems ill-equipped for the political times.

He forgot that most of the country requires a modicum of plausible deniability in its dog whistles.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Clare Malone

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

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President Donald Trump delivered his most extensive remarks on the QAnon conspiracy theory Wednesday, defending followers as ‘people that love our country’ and going out of his way not to condemn some of the most bizarre claims associated with the movement. ‘I’ve heard these are people that love our country,’ Trump said at the White House. He was asked about the group hours after issuing a tweet backing Florida Republican primary winner Laura Loomer, who has pushed conspiracy theories that deny the school shootings in Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in 2012. ‘I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much,’ President Donald Trump said Wednesday when asked about the QAnon movement Trump has also congratulated Marjorie Taylor Greene, who won a Republican primary in Georgia, calling her a ‘future Republican star,’ even as retiring and centrist Republicans issue warnings about the rise of the movement gaining a foothold in the party. Trump, who has backed other QAnon supporters and retweeted its followers in the past, gave the impression he had only a general understanding of the movement. ‘I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much,’ Trump said. He connected the movement, which like Trump raises alarms about a ‘Deep State,’ to his own concerns about violence in Democratic-run cities. ‘These are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on in place like Portland and places like Chicago,’ Trump said. He didn’t flinch when asked about the most far-fetched views of some QAnon followers, that he is saving the world from a satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. In this Aug. 2, 2018, file photo, a protesters holds a Q sign waits in line with others to enter a campaign rally with President Donald Trump in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Facebook says on Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020, it will restrict QAnon and stop recommending that users join groups supporting it, but the company is stopping short of banning the right-wing conspiracy movement outright Save The Children hold a demonstration in Tucson against child trafficking and peodophilia. #Save Our Children is a national advocacy group that believes child trafficking has reached pandemic proportions and that politicians, establishment elites, and Hollywood celebrities are part of an organized conspiracy to aid, protect and participate in peodophilia and child trafficking Conspiracy theorist QAnon demonstrators protest during a rally to re-open California and against Stay-At-Home directives on May 1, 2020 in San Diego, California Marjorie Taylor Greene with Laura Loomer – two GOP primary winners who earned online plaudits from President Trump Attendees gather before the start of a rally with U.S. President Donald Trump in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018 ‘Well I haven’t heard that. But is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?’ he asked. ‘If I can help save the world from problems I’m willing to do it,’ he continued. ‘I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are actually. We are saving the world from a radical-left philosophy that will destroy this country.’ Trump then during his response attacked calls to defund the police, ‘open borders,’ touted his border wall, and said poll numbers are ‘extraordinary’ on the border issue. ‘But I will say this. We need strength in our country, not weakness.’ Some QAnon followers also believe a ‘Deep State’ is behind an underground child sex trafficking ring. Among the group’s claims are that there is a Satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals led by some of the world’s most famous names and covered up by the media and ‘deep state,’ with Trump claimed to be secretly dismantling it. Among its wilder claims are that children are being kept in tunnels under major cities, that they are being trafficked on popular consumer websites such as Wayfair, and that JFK Jr. is alive and has been spotted on Marine One. The central figure in the conspiracy is Q, supposedly a high-level government official who leaves clues – or ‘drops’ – on message boards about the imminent ‘great awakening,’ when the pedophile cabal will be ended. Followers have speculated that Trump is Q and are only likely to be encouraged by his answers at the White House. Another key figure is Mike Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, who is said to both be the victim of the deep state and central to the cabal’s imminent downfall. Followers often put three gold stars on their social media profiles and Flynn himself took part in the ‘pledge’ in which QAnon believers recite the Pledge of Allegiance then add at the end ‘where we go one, we go all.’ Followers wrongly believe the slogan was on the bell of the ship John F. Kennedy served on in the Navy, and abbreviate it to WWG1WGA on social media profiles and in hashtags. Q’s success is at best mixed: he predicted that JFK Jr. would be Trump’s 2020 running mate after emerging from hiding on July 4 2020, a moment known as ‘the storm’; that there was going to be an unsealing of 25,000 indictments in November 2017 followed by a period of military control, while Hillary Clinton was going to make for the border as a result, but would be extradited; and that members of the cabal were arrested at National Cathedral in Washington D.C. during George H.W. Bush’s funeral in January 2019. QAnon followers have held up their signs at Trump rallies, and former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn last month posted a video where where said the QAnon slogan: ‘Where we go one, we go all’ at the end of an oath. NBC has reported that Facebook groups connected to QAnon have millions of followers. Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger released a YouTube video last week calling on party leaders to ‘denounce’ the conspiracy theory now that it has gained a hold in the party. ‘The president hasn’t fully denounced it or denounced it at all. Now, it’s time for leaders to come out and denounce it,’ he said, while calling on people to try to persuade followers. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California has said he will seat Greene despite past racist statements, and declined to wade into her primary. According to Travis View, who has researched the group, its followers believe that a ‘worldwide cabal of satanic pedophiles” run “all the major levers of power,’ USA Today reported. The FBI warned in May 2019 lays out the threat of ‘conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists.’ “The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,’ according to the memo, reported by Yahoo News. It mentioned QAnon as well as the Pizzagate, a debunked conspiracy theory that Clinton associates were running a child sex ring out of the basement of a popular Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant. The restaurant does not have a basement. Earlier Wednesday White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany backed up Trump’s tweet about Loomer while providing some distance, saying the president hadn’t done a ‘deep dive’ into the Florida GOP primary winner. The 27-year-old right-wing activist is known for pushing conspiracy theories about school shootings and making anti-Muslim statements – and won the GOP primary Tuesday for the Florida Congressional district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Loomer celebrated Wednesday by talking to fellow right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, calling the hoaxes she’s pushed ‘factual stories that we have been ahead of the curve on for years,’ as J.T. Lewis, a gun rights activist who supports Trump and whose brother died in the Sandy Hook shooting, called for Loomer to be pushed from the party. Donald Trump congratulated Laura Loomer (pictured) on winning the GOP primary for the district that covers his Mar-a-Lago estate. The White House said Wednesday the president hasn’t done a ‘deep dive’ on Loomer’s statements White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday that the president ‘routinely congratulates people who … get the Republican nomination for Congress’ Loomer called into Alex Jones’ Infowars show and said that the conspiracy theories and hoaxes they’ve been pushing are ‘factual stories that we have been ahead of the curve on for years’ ‘Laura Loomer is a Parkland and Sandy Hook hoaxer. She has no place in the Republican Party!’ Lewis tweeted. Despite Loomer’s controversial views, Trump tweeted congratulations to her late Tuesday. ‘Great going Laura. You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!’ Trump wrote. She also has the backing of Jones, Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s former political adviser Roger Stone and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a diehard Trump supporter. Speaking to Jones on his InfoWars show, she complained, ‘I was told that if I wanted to win my race … that I could never do InfoWars again and that I could not speak to you because they say that you are toxic, just like they say about me, and I said screw you, Alex Jones is a freedom fighter, he’s a patriot, he’s fighting for the First Amendment and I am never going to sideline any of my friends.’ ‘We were the people who led the culture revolution in 2016 when President Trump was nominated and elected,’ Loomer told Jones Wednesday. ‘That is what the Republican Party is missing now.’ Loomer will face Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel in the fall. The four-time congresswoman is expected to win easily in the deep blue district. She ran unopposed in 2018 and beat her Republican rival in 2016 by 27.6 points. McEnany said Trump’s support for Loomer was standard protocol. ‘Well, the president routinely congratulates people who have officially – get the Republican nomination for Congress, so he does that as a matter of course,’ she said at the White House briefing Wednesday. McEnany was asked about Loomer and about Marjorie Taylor Greene, a GOP candidate from George for the House of Representatives who prescribes to the QAnon conspiracy theory and has also made anti-Muslim statements. ‘He hasn’t done a deep dive into the statements by these two particular women, I don’t know if he’s even seen that,’ McEnany said. ‘But he supports the Muslim community, he supports the community of faith more broadly in this country.’ The president tweeted in a show of support for Loomer late Tuesday after she defeated five candidates to win the Republican primary for the US House of Representatives seat that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach WHO’S BANNED LAURA LOOMER PLATFORMS Twitter Facebook Instagram PAYMENT SYSTEMS PayPal Venmo GoFundMe RIDESHARES Uber Lyft TECH FIRMS XFinity / Comcast processing of her campaign mass texts EVENTS CPAC – Conservative Political Action Conference in 2019 Courtesy of Ali Alexander Loomer took the lead in the Republican primary with 42.7 percent of the vote, with nuclear engineer turned professor Christian Acosta coming in second with 25.5 percent. Other candidates in the race included a former burlesque dancer who now runs an exotic animal business and a former IRS investigator. Trump cast his vote by mail in Florida’s 21st District primary election, after changing his official residence from New York to Palm Beach back in October 2019. He and Melania’s ballots were returned to Palm Beach officials Monday in time for their votes to be counted, reported the Washington Post. The president’s decision to cast his own vote by mail comes after he has repeatedly claimed mail-in ballots lead to widespread fraud and even threatened to redo the election if he loses through what he has blasted a ‘rigged’ system. It is not clear if the president voted for Loomer but his social media post confirmed he approved of her victory. He’ll be able to vote for her in the November election, which he plans to do absentee. Loomer has been a high-profile figure on the fringes of the alt-right since working for Project Veritas when she was a college student. While working with Jones of InfoWars she went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and accused students there of ‘reading a screen or notes.’ ‘It’s obvious these kids are reading a screen or notes someone else wrote for them. Notice how media is only talking to the same group of students. They aren’t talking to the pro gun ROTC students who actually saved lives, unlike these students,’ she tweeted. She also pushed a theory that there was a second gunman in the Las Vegas massacre in September 2017 and went to a press conference a month later to harry the Las Vegas county sheriff with her claims. ‘All of the evidence that is being leaked is further showing how the Deep State is covering it up,’ she said. The controversial 27-year-old has been slammed for making anti-Muslim comments on several occasions in recent years. She called the FBI the ‘Federal Bureau of Islam’ as she pushed deep-state conspiracy claims. In November 2018 she was accused of hate speech when she called Representative Ilhan Omar ‘anti-Jewish’ – which led to her being removed from Twitter. ‘Isn’t it ironic how the twitter moment used to celebrate ‘women, LGBTQ, and minorities’ is a picture of Ilhan Omar?’ Loomer tweeted about the Democratic Minnesota congresswoman. ‘Ilhan is pro Sharia Ilhan is pro-FGM Under Sharia, homosexuals are oppressed & killed. Women are abused & forced to wear the hijab. Ilhan is anti Jewish.’ Trump cast his vote by mail in Florida’s 21st District primary election, where Loomer (pictured) took the victory The controversial conspiracy theorist has been accused of hate speech on more than one occasion. In November 2018 she was accused of hate speech when she called Representative Ilhan Omar (left) ‘anti-Jewish’. She slammed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (right) for suspending her account over the incident Far-right activist Loomer, who has the backing of Trump’s friend and former adviser Roger Stone, Representative Matt Gaetz and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, will now take on Democratic Representative Lois Frankel (pictured) in the November general election When she was banned from Twitter over the incident, Loomer handcuffed herself to Twitter’s New York offices. That same month, she was removed from a congressional hearing on social media when she hit out at CEO Jack Dorsey for ‘shadowbanning’ conservatives and accused him of trying to sway the midterm elections toward the Democrats. This came after she was banned from using Uber and Lyft in November 2017 for tweeting that ‘someone needs to create a non Islamic form of @uber or @lyft’ and complaining that she was late to a meeting because she could not find a ‘non-Muslim’ driver. In June 2017, Loomer rushed the stage during a Shakespeare In The Park production of ‘Julius Caesar’ in New York to accuse the cast of normalizing ‘political violence against the right’ and calling them ‘Isis’. ‘Stop the normalization of political violence against the right!’ she shouted. ‘Shame on the New York Public Theatre for doing this! You guys are ISIS! CNN is ISIS!’ She also ambushed actress Alyssa Milano at the 2018 Politicon conference in Los Angeles, suggesting she was in cahoots with Linda Sarsour, a Muslim co-founder of the Women’s March. ‘I want to ask you right now to disavow Linda Sarsour because she is a supporter of Sharia law. And under Sharia law, women are oppressed, women are forced to wear a hijab,’ Loomer said, identifying herself as a ‘conservative investigative journalist.’ ‘My question is, will you please disavow her because she is advocating for Shariah law,’ Loomer yelled at Milano, who was seated onstage. As Loomer was ushered out of the room, she yelled that #MeToo was a ‘sham movement.’ THE VIRAL STAR BANNED FROM SOCIAL MEDIA WHO IS GETTING A SHOT AT CONGRESS Laura Loomer burst onto the conservative stage in 2015 when she, a Jew, was a student at Barry University, a Catholic University run by nuns near Miami. Loomer, one of a few Republican students in an overwhelmingly liberal school, participated in a ‘gotcha’ video at the urging of Project Veritas, a right-wing group that uses hidden cameras to expose what it sees as Liberal bias in colleges, non-profits and government. Loomer surreptitiously taped her encounter with school officials during a meeting where she asked permission to set up a new club called Sympathetic Students In Support Of The Islamic State. The footage seemed to indicate school officials were in favor of starting such a club on campus but appeared to suggest she drop the ‘Islamic State’ from the name. The footage went viral, and school officials suspended Loomer for what they saw as her attempt to embarrass the school. The story made Loomer an instant celebrity in the Alt-Right’s cyber-world, but it also launched her anti-Muslim reputation. Loomer is a polarizing personality and took this photo with self-proclaimed ‘dirty trickster’ and one of the most notorious Republican insiders Roger Stone Loomer has been banned from several social media platforms for promoting speech labeled as hate speech targeting Muslims and posted for this photo with Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle ‘I’m not anti-Muslim,’ she said, ‘I study Islamic terrorism.’ With video cameras in tow and a huge distribution network online, Loomer continued with higher-profile gimmicks to expose what she saw as the Left’s corruption. In the summer 2017, she and other conservative activists stopped the Shakespeare play in Central Park. In January 2019, she was back in the news when she got three alleged illegal immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala to set up their tents on the lawn of Speaker of the House Pelosi’s Napa Valley home in her home state of California. In time, Loomer and her crew were kicked off Pelosi’s lawn by police, and Loomer was handed a warning for trespassing. Loomer has also been at war with mainstream social media platforms. One November morning in 2018 in Manhattan, she chained herself to the door of the local Twitter headquarters to protest her banishment from social media for hate speech. At first, Loomer worried the moves by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others would make it impossible for her to make a living and raise campaign contributions. Now, Loomer proudly describes herself as The World’s Most Censored woman, and she has managed to find other ways to conduct her political agenda and fundraising away from PayPal. She is, for example, active on Parler, where she has 89,000 followers, and Gab, where she has 27,000. Both are conservative platforms that allow a looser definition of free speech and, at times, have been accused of providing a haven for white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The post Donald Trump says QAnon followers ‘like me very much and I appreciate it’ appeared first on Shri Times News. from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Eh83q0

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-like-donald-trump/

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

We Need Somebody Who’ll Finally Get Tough On Foreign Policy

Why Do So Many Republicans Like Donald Trump?

Well, there’s no doubt that Trump talks a tough game when it comes to other countries â he sort of makes it sound like the world will just roll over in front of him, exposing its collective belly for him to scratch. You may remember when he insisted that he’d bring oil prices down by swearing at OPEC leaders back in 2011, when he was teasing a possible 2012 run. Here’s what he told a Las Vegas audience, as detailed by Mother Jones.

We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you’re not going to raise that f***ing price.

He also had a simple message for China, saying “listen you motherf****rs, we’re going to tax you 25 percent!” This is in keeping with the general level of seriousness he seems to apply to his prognostications â he also insists that if he’s elected, he’ll force the Mexican government to finance a border wall, and that’s still nowhere near the most antagonistic component of his far-right immigration plan.

If you’re the kind of person who wants some more strident red lines in international negotiations, say â to try to secure those ever-elusive “better deals” that some conservatives have been harping on lately â that’s fine, even if we might disagree. But be forewarned: what Trump’s putting out there is little more than presumptuous bombast, so don’t be shocked if that ridiculous wall idea never comes to fruition.

Why Do Trump Voters Believe His Lies It’s Not Because They’re Stupid

The cornerstones of President Trumps campaign were promises to appeal Obamacare and ban Muslims from the US. It took Trump less than 70 days to fail on both promises.

And yet, despite his epic fails, lies and incompetence, Trumps base supports him like theyre spanx and hes Marie Osmond. What explains this loyalty? Science has the answer.

Have a look at this puzzle.

Which drawing best illustrates the correct mechanics and structure of a bicycle?

How you answer will help explain the loyalty of Trump voters. Ill explain in just a bit. But first

What I wanted to know is WTF!?

How can two people look at President Trump and have such polar opposite observations? To find out, I conducted an experiment. I set up a fake account and joined more than 50 pro-Trump Facebook groups. I created a meme that said: What do you like about President Trump, then I shared it.

I got more than a thousand responses in 24 hours and the things people wrote most is that they like Trump because hes not a politician hes a real American not corrupted by Washington, and beholden to no one.

The next most common response was that Trump believes in God.

This was followed in near equal measure by Trump Loves America, he keeps his promises, that hes a good businessman, that he cant be bought, and that he tells the truth.

OK. So, one of them is true! Trump is not a politician. One could go either wayhis love for America.

I got nearly 700 responses.

WATCH NOW:

Opinionthe Gop Needs Women And Centrist Voters Ousting Cheney Only Nets Them Trump Loyalists

More important, experts say, are the shifting demographics of those neighborhoods. “Suburbs are simply far more diverse than they used to be,” a FiveThirtyEight analysis explains. “Suburbs have also become increasingly well-educated, and that may actually better explain why so many suburbs and exurbs are turning blue.” Both communities of color and Americans with higher education tend to vote Democratic combine those factors and you have a recipe for major electoral shifts.

And there’s no indication that shift is reversing. Recent polling from Harvard’s Kennedy School shows Biden dominating the suburbs, where 6 in 10 voters view the president favorably. Biden and Democrats’ lead in suburbs is such an existential threat to the GOP that Georgia Republicans have collapsed into infighting over how suburbs once represented by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich are now reliably Democratic bulwarks.

The Call for American Renewal is also hoping to recapture the support of women who have been fleeing the GOP since Trump’s first campaign. That may be harder than they think, too. Though it’s possible the group could restore some of the ground Trump lost to women, who went nearly 6-in-10 for Biden, Republicans have been losing women voters for years.

Mild dissatisfaction with Trump isnt the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes.

Poll Results Are Fake Unless Theyre Good Trump Says

During his speech at the Dallas convention Sunday night, Trump said he only would have believed the results of CPACs straw poll if they were his favor, Business Insider reported.

Now, if its bad, I just say its fake, the former president told the crowd, reported Insider. If its good, I say thats the most accurate poll, perhaps ever.

In the past, Trump has decried similar things he doesnt like as false, like referring to unfavorable media coverage as fake news.

A Large Share Of Republicans Want Trump To Remain Head Of The Party Cnbc Survey Shows

A CNBC survey conducted in the days before former President Donald Trump‘s impeachment trial finds a large share of Republicans want him to remain head of their party, but a majority of Americans want him out of politics.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey shows 54% of Americans want Trump “to remove himself from politics entirely.” That was the sentiment of 81% of Democrats and 47% of Independents, but only 26% of Republicans.

When it comes to Republicans, 74% want him to stay active in some way, including 48% who want him to remain head of the Republican Party, 11% who want him to start a third party, and 12% who say he should remain active in politics but not as head of any party.

“If we’re talking about Donald Trump’s future, at the moment, the survey shows he still has this strong core support within his own party who really want him to continue to be their leader,” said Jay Campbell, a partner with Hart Research and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

But Micah Roberts, the survey’s Republican pollster, and a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, emphasized the change from when Trump was president. Polls before the election regularly showed Trump with GOP approval ratings around 90%, meaning at least some Republicans have defected from Trump.

Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were voting in the best interests of the country. Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.

We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country. We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might. For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.

But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy! Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on. They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way.

Trumps Role As Republican Party Leader Is Becoming Stronger

This weekends CPAC straw poll results showed that Trumps popularity along with DeSantis in the Republican Party has grown in the last six months, according to Forbes.

In February, only 55% of attendees of a similar CPAC event in Orlando, Florida, said they wanted Trump to lead the ticket in 2024, Forbes reported.

If Trump stayed in political retirement, or at least stayed off the presidential primary ballot in 2024, DeSantis lead the poll with 43% attending Republicans choosing him in Februarys hypothetical presidential primary.

Inside the newsroom: Words matter, including the hateful Murder the media

He Appeals To Rural Voters

More than any other group, Americas rural people have been disempowered and abandoned due to the policies pushed by urban elites. Theyve seen their jobs evaporate and their local culture obliterated, only to be replaced by a Walmart and McDonalds in every town. They also realize that most of the media and academia see them as ignorant and backwards and laughable. instead, Trump treats them with respect. If you look at an electoral map of 2016, Clinton won all the urban areas and Trump won all of the rural ones. Thats because he was the first politician in memory who didnt sneer at them.

Hes Nationalist Rather Than Globalist

Why Do People Act Like Black Conservatives Don’t Exist? | NBC News

He realizes that the ex-factory worker in Ohio lost his job because it was sent to Malaysia. He knows that some banker in Brussels is more interested in increasing his stock portfolio than whether doing so will render huge swaths of the American heartland jobless and pill-addicted. He cares more about what a homeowner in Iowa thinks about him than what some sneering cosmopolite at a Parisian cocktail party thinks.

Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Across the party as a whole, an NBC News poll released late last month found, a majority of Republicans considered themselves supporters of the GOP, compared to just 44 percent who supported Trump above all, the first time that has been the case since July 2019.

But mild dissatisfaction with Trump isn’t the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes, and they’re buckled in for the long haul. That creates the opening for more traditional Republicans to toy with forming a new party but it’s a slim one.

Why Does Donald Trump Still Seem To Hold Sway Over The Republican Party

Why after leading the Republican Party during a period when it lost its majority in the US House of Representatives and the Senate and its power in the White House does former president Donald Trump still seem to hold the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Reagan in his thrall?

For US politics watchers, who on the weekend watched on as 43 Republican senators voted to acquit Trump of an act of reckless incitement played out in front of the cameras, that is the $64,000 question.

Or rather, it’s the 74,222,593-vote question.

That is the record number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump last November more than has been cast for any previous president. Unfortunately for them, an even greater number 81,281,502 voted for his rival, now-President Joe Biden.

As much as anything else, those numbers sum up the quandary Republicans find themselves in.

They have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and only remain competitive because older white voters, who tend to be more likely to support conservative candidates, also tend to vote in greater numbers in a non-compulsory electoral system.

Those same voters are also the most likely to cast a ballot in next year’s house and senate primaries, and the next midterm elections in November 2022 which will again determine who holds power in congress. They are the voters who initially flocked to Donald Trump.

All The Republicans Who Wont Support Trump

Numerous top G.O.P. officials have said publicly or privately that they will not be backing the presidents re-election. Some have even endorsed Joe Biden. Heres a look at where they all stand.

Follow our latest coverage of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election here.

As November draws nearer, some current and former Republican officials have begun to break ranks with the rest of their party, saying in public and private conversations that they will not support President Trump in his re-election. A number have even said that they will be voting for his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

As Mr. Trumps political standing has slipped, fueled by his failures in handling the coronavirus pandemic and by the economic recession, some Republicans have found it easier to publicly renounce their backing.

Here is a running list of those who have said they will support Mr. Biden in the fall, those who simply wont support Mr. Trump, and those who have hinted they may not back the president.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who announced their opposition to the election of Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican Party nominee and eventual winner of the election, as the President of the United States. It also includes former Republicans who left the party due to their opposition to Trump and as well as Republicans who endorsed a different candidate. It includes Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the nominee. Some of the Republicans on this list threw their support to Trump after he won the presidential election, while many of them continue to oppose Trump. Offices listed are those held at the time of the 2016 election.

Why Do Evangelical Christians Love Trump

To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault.

White evangelical support for Donald Trump has long puzzled observers. To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault. Scholars have commented on his crassness, defined by historian Walter G. Moss as a lack refinement, tact, sensitivity, taste or delicacy. Others have observed how he has broken rules of civil political engagement.

But in my research on evangelical masculinity, I have found that Trumps leadership style aligns closely with a rugged ideal of Christian manhood championed by evangelicals for more than half a century.

As I show in my book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, conservative evangelicals embraced the ideal of a masculine protector in the 1960s and 1970s in order to confront the perceived threats of communism and feminism.

Believing that the feminist rejection of macho masculinity left the nation in peril, conservative white evangelicals promoted a testosterone-fueled vision of Christian manhood. In their view, America needed strong men to defend Christian America on the battlefields of Vietnam and to reassert order on the home front.

Why it Matters

How I Do My Work

The Baffling Continued Support For Donald Trump Explained

Donald Trump has, by almost any measure, been the worst president in U.S. history, or at least within the memory of people living in 2020. But for some reason, he has remained popular with a sizable segment of Americans. While Joe Biden defeated him in the presidential election, 74 million Americans voted for Trump, and a large percentage of Republicans, like Trump himself, are denying that he actually lost the election. So why do Trumps diehard fans stay that way?

Yes, hes made some people happy with his tax cuts and appointments of right-wing judges, and he is beloved by white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, but he has downplayed a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 276,000 Americans and caused an economic crash. One would think his personal style, bullying, and insults would alienate many people. Yet his approval ratings have remained stable at around 40 percent for most of his presidency, and the 40 percent cant all be fringe elements. What could possibly account for the continued unwavering support of Trump loyalists?

I think that there are a number of things at play, crosscurrents, if you will, said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

Winterhof likewise said she observed a decline in enthusiasm among voters who were counting on Trump for positive change and agreed that Biden was better positioned than Clinton among voters overall.

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

The history of American third parties doesn’t offer much hope. Last year, Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen garnered just 1.2 percent of the vote in a typical third-party showing. In fact, no third-party candidate has achieved a double-digit popular vote total since Ross Perot in 1992, and data trends indicate that popular support for third parties has been in steady decline since then.

And even if the GOP 2.0 secures a marquee name like former Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to champion its message, the role would likely be as a political spoiler rather than a serious candidate: Even former President Theodore Roosevelt, at the time one of the most popular figures in American culture, barely surpassed a quarter of the popular vote and garnered just 88 electoral votes in an iconic third-party campaign in 1912. No one on the Call for American Renewal bench commands anything near Roosevelt’s profile and platform.

That hasn’t stopped disaffected Republicans from setting their sights on fence-sitting “Biden Republicans” mostly suburban moderates who broke with Trump but remain aligned with GOP ideas like small government that have gone extinct in the post-Trump GOP. Those voters were largely responsible for Trump’s upset victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Biden returned formerly right-leaning suburbs to the Democratic column to help power his 2020 win.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

Why LGBTQ Republicans Hate The Party’s Platform But Like Donald Trump

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

He Says He Wants To Make America Great Again

Aided by global finance and a compliant press, Americas middle and working classes have been sold down the river. Nearly all of the manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and what jobs remain here have seen their wages pushed down due to unrestrained immigration. America, once the shining light of the world, became a country ashamed of itself and that felt obligated to apologize to the rest of the world for being more successful than other countries. Something is deeply wrong when someone feels obligated to apologize for winningafter all, you never see that in sports. Trump wants to return us to a better time when people bragged about being American instead of apologizing for it

What Americans Really Think

Social scientists and psychologists believe that people subscribe to conspiracy theories for the simple reason that these theories often tend to validate their views of the world. Republicans believe all kinds of things about President Obama, and many liberals believe similar theories about President George W. Bush.

“For both liberals and conservatives, for everybody, there’s just this tendency to want to believe things that fit our worldview as we believe it,” said Joanne Miller, a political scientist the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the new study. “Both liberals and conservatives are subject to that. It’s a human tendency to want to believe what we believe.”

In particular, conspiracy theories offer a simple explanation, with an identifiable villain, for the complicated reality of modern politics. That simplicity is appealing.

Miller and her collaborators — Christina Farhart and Colorado State University’s Kyle Saunders — used data from surveys of Americans who were asked whether they thought statements about politicians and public figures were true.

A few conspiracy theories were on the list. Four were designed to suss out conservative respondents:

that Obama was born outside the United States;

that his health-care reform established “death panels;”

that global warming was a hoax

and that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

There were four more theories for the other side:

Why Do Republicans Continue To Support Trump Despite Years Of Scandal

It was late September last year when a whistleblower complaint revealed that President Trump had tried to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Within moments the scandal captured headlines. What followed was months of back and forth as Republicans supported the president while the Democrats used their political capital to get him impeached.

But this was not the first time or the last time the president was caught in the middle of a scandal. Since the impeachment trial that followed the Ukraine incident, episodes from The New York Times uncovering unsavory details from President Trumps tax returns, to his questionable dismissal of multiple Inspectors General, to his refusal to clearly condemn white supremacists have all sparked widespread media attention and partisan fighting in 2020.

Although with his polls dropping, some Republicans may finally be distancing themselves from the President, the question has been regularly asked the past four years: why do the Republicans continue to support the President despite these troubling charges being leveled at him? And, what is it that the Democrats stand to gain from repeated allegations?

In addition to demonstrating how polarization accelerates scandals, the paper also found that:

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities i.e., racial minorities engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us, insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well-hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trumps vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth.

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Monday, October 12, 2020

Canada celebrates Thanksgiving amid coronavirus second wave, mixed messages (Washington Post) TORONTO—With cases of the coronavirus rising this spring, Carole Robert’s “close-knit” family scrapped Easter. A family reunion planned for the summer was also a wash. So when Robert got on the phone with a sister recently to talk Thanksgiving—a holiday she typically celebrates with some 35 family members—she knew what was coming. “It’s completely canceled,” said Robert, who lives in Vankleek Hill, Ontario, roughly 60 miles from Ottawa. “There’s always next year.” Canadian Thanksgiving comes earlier than the American version—families will gather to eat turkey and avoid discussing politics on Monday. But in this pandemic year, authorities across the country are urging Canadians to curtail their holiday plans. Some suggest celebrating only with others who are already living under the same roof. Others advise moving the party outdoors or online. In a rare nationally televised address last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it might be necessary to cancel Thanksgiving to “have a shot at Christmas.” Whether Canadians obey those pleas remains to be seen. Forty percent of Canadians surveyed by the Montreal polling firm Leger this month said they haven’t or won’t change their Thanksgiving plans because of the pandemic.

Humpback whales have made a comeback in New York City (CBS News) A whale sighting in New York would have been almost unimaginable a few years ago. Now, the city is welcoming back whales. The Hudson River, which flows along the western stretch of Manhattan, is a lot cleaner than it was in the past, “and so it’s bringing nutrients out rather than pollution,” said Paul Sieswerda, president of the group Gotham Whale, which advocates for whales and marine mammals in New York City. The Clean Water Act and the Mammal Protection Act, enacted in 1972, likely helped revive plankton levels in the area. Over the years, the food chain has been built up, and humpback whales are now enjoying some New York fine dining. “The whales come here to eat. New York is famous as being a good place to find good food. And the whales have found menhaden, which the local fishermen call ‘bunker,’” Sieswerda said. In 2011, just three whales were spotted in the area. Last year, there were more than 300.

Supreme Court confirmation battle starts Monday (NYT) Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat, goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. Republicans applaud her as a dazzling legal scholar, while Democrats fear the creation of a conservative majority that would threaten the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage and abortion rights.

In hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, residents dig out, again (AP) LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP)—A blue tarp covered a hole in their roof, torn open when the last hurricane blew through. Friday night, the next hurricane tried to rip the tarp away. Earnestine and Milton Wesley had decided to ride out Hurricane Delta in their Lake Charles home, damaged just weeks earlier by Hurricane Laura. As the wind rustled the tarp above them, they grabbed it through the hole in the ceiling and held on tight. “We fought all night long trying to keep things intact,” Milton said. “And with God’s help we made it.” Delta made landfall Friday evening near the coastal town of Creole with top winds of 100 mph (155 kph). It moved over Lake Charles, a city where Hurricane Laura damaged nearly every home and building in late August. Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter estimated that hundreds of already battered homes took on water, as Delta dumped more than 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain on Lake Charles over two days. And people were already exhausted and stressed—for two weeks the Wesleys had been sleeping on their back porch to escape the heat because they had no power.

Brazil reaches 150,000 deaths from COVID-19 milestone (AP) Brazil’s count of COVID-19 deaths surpassed 150,000 on Saturday night, despite signs the pandemic is slowly retreating in Latin America’s largest nation. The Brazilian Health Ministry reported that the death toll now stands at 150,198. The figure is the world’s second highest behind the United States, according to the tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

UK at ‘tipping point:’ England braces for more restrictions (AP) Millions of people in northern England are anxiously waiting to hear how much further virus restrictions will be tightened as one of the British government’s leading medical advisers warned Sunday that the country is at a crucial juncture in the second wave of the coronavirus. England’s deputy chief medical officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, said the U.K. is at a “tipping point similar to where we were in March” following a sharp increase in new coronavirus cases. All across Europe including the U.K., there have been huge increases in coronavirus cases over the past few weeks following the reopening of large sectors of the economy, as well as schools and universities. Although coronavirus infections are rising throughout England, northern cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle have seen a disproportionate increase. While some rural areas in eastern England have less than 20 cases per 100,000 people, major metropolitan areas such as Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham have recently recorded levels above 500 per 100,000, nearly as bad as Madrid or Brussels. As a result, national restrictions such as a 10 p.m. curfew on pubs and restaurants have been supplemented by local actions, including in some cases banning contacts between households.

Dozens stage attack on police station in Paris suburb (Reuters) About 40 unidentified people armed with metal bars and using fireworks as mortars tried to storm a French police station in the Paris suburbs on Saturday night, officials said on Sunday. “Violent attack last night on the police station of Champigny with mortar shots and various projectiles. No police officer was injured,” the Paris police headquarters said on Twitter. The motive for the attack, the third on this police station in two years, was not immediately clear. The police station is located in a housing estate area known for drug trafficking and deemed by authorities as a high-priority district for order to be restored. “It was an organised attack of about 40 people who wanted to do battle,” Champigny Mayor Laurent Jeanne told BFM. “For a few days it has been tense with people who have a certain willingness to do battle with the police. It’s anti-police sentiment. We weren’t far off from a disaster.”

Italian teenage computer whiz beatified by Catholic Church (AP) A 15-year-old Italian computer whiz who died of leukemia in 2006 moved a step closer to possible sainthood Saturday with his beatification in the town of Assisi, where he is buried. Carlo Acutis is the youngest contemporary person to be beatified, a path taken by two Portuguese shepherd children living in the early 1900s who were proclaimed Catholic saints in 2017. Already touted as the “patron saint of the internet,” Acutis created a website to catalog miracles and took care of websites for some local Catholic organizations. While still in elementary school, Acutis taught himself to code using a university computer science textbook, and then learned how to edit videos and create animation. “Carlo used the internet in service of the Gospel, to reach as many people as possible,” Cardinal Agostino Vallini said during his homily. Before he died, Acutis told his mother that he would give her many signs of his presence after death. “Before he left us, I told him: If in heaven you find our four-legged friends, look for Billy, my childhood dog that he never knew,” the mother said. One day she got a call from an aunt who was unaware of the mother-son pact, saying “I saw Carlo in a dream tonight. He was holding Billy in his arms.”

Much of America has stopped celebrating Columbus Day, but the explorer remains revered in Italy (Washington Post) While many Christopher Columbus statues were toppled this year in the United States—dragged into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, beheaded in Boston—the towering marble monument to the explorer in his hometown, Genoa, Italy, is disturbed only by pigeons. As Americans feud over whether Columbus Day should remain a federal holiday—or whether the man who first charted the transatlantic route in 1492 should be remembered as a colonial oppressor—in Italy, Columbus is still held in high esteem. Italians tend to think of him as the sum of their best qualities: ingenuity, courage and resilience. “More than 500 years after his death [Columbus] has to suffer new insults,” Francesco Giubilei and Marco Valle wrote in the conservative newspaper Il Giornale in July. “Thinking that by destroying his statues and eradicating his memory one may solve [U.S. society’s racial tensions] is hypocritical and wrong.”

Police in Belarus crack down on protesters, detain dozens (Reuters) Security forces in Belarus detained dozens of protesters on Sunday and used force, including water cannon and batons, to break up crowds demanding a new presidential election, TV footage showed. Footage published by local news outlets showed police officers wearing black balaclavas dragging protesters into unmarked black vans and beating protesters with their batons at a rally that drew thousands onto the streets of Minsk, the capital. Belarus, a former Soviet republic closely allied with Russia, has been rocked by street protests and strikes since authorities announced that veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko had won an Aug. 9 vote by a landslide. People have since taken to the streets every week to demand that Lukashenko step down and allow for a new election to be held. Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager who has been in power since 1994, denies his win was the result of cheating.

A Convicted Kidnapper Is Chosen to Lead Government of Kyrgyzstan (NYT) A man who had been convicted of kidnapping was chosen to be the prime minister of Kyrgyzstan on Saturday after feuding politicians agreed on a new government in an effort to end nearly a week of violent turmoil in the Central Asian country. An agreement to put the government under the man, Sadyr Japarov, who was sprung from jail this past week by anti-government protesters, should help calm street violence. But it stirred alarm in some quarters that criminal elements had prevailed in a power struggle set off by disputed parliamentary election results last Sunday. Russia, struggling with a rash of unrest across the former Soviet Union, including protests in neighboring Belarus and fierce fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has a military base in Kyrgyzstan but has mostly stood aside from the political chaos in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. Moscow reached out to a senior security official offering help, but that official was then promptly fired. On Friday, Kyrgyzstan’s embattled president, Sooronbay Jeenbekov, declared a state of emergency in Bishkek, ordering troops onto the streets and confining residents to their homes. “The threat of losing our country is real,” he warned. Violence continued, however, fueled largely by Mr. Japarov’s supporters, who hurled rocks and other projectiles at the followers of a rival would-be prime minister, Omurbek Babanov, and attacked journalists. Several shots were fired. The unrest began with a wave of public anger over the victory of pro-government parties last Sunday in a parliamentary election tainted by credible allegations of widespread vote-buying. Protesters stormed jails and government buildings, sending the president into hiding. The election results were then quickly annulled, opening the way for a new vote, but the turmoil escalated as rival opposition politicians began fighting for government posts, unleashing mobs of young men to confront each other on the street. Arkady Dubnov, a Central Asia expert in Moscow, said the new prime minister, Mr. Japarov, who just days ago was serving an 11-and-a-half-year sentence for organizing the 2013 kidnapping of a regional governor, had prevailed “because his supporters turned out to be the strongest.”

Flooding in Cambodia leaves at least 11 dead (AP) Flooding in Cambodia has killed at least 11 people since the beginning of the month, a disaster official said Sunday. Seasonal rains were made worse by a tropical storm, which caused flash floods in several provinces last week, said Khun Sokha, a spokesman for the National Committee for Disaster Management.

#headlines #news

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newagesispage · 4 years

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SEPTEMBER 2020

PAGE RIB

The Rolling Stones have released an old unreleased track they did with Jimmy Page. Scarlet also has a brand new video starring Paul Mescal.** The Rolling Stones will open a store on Carnaby St. in London, Rolling Stones #9 on Sept.9.

*****

Where the hell is Matthew Gray Gubler??

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Africa had been declared polio free.

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Check out Dream Hustle Code!! It is a worthy cause.

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Iowa has lifted the ban on felons voting. Hooray!!

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They have discovered the longest living vertebrate, a 400 year old shark.

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Hey Clockface is the new album coming in October from Elvis Costello.

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Drunk History has been cancelled. NO!!!!!!!!! Netflix??

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Michigan will pay $600 million to the victims of the water crisis.

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They are remaking The Thing.

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Fresh Prince will reunite for their 30th.

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Scary Clown applied for help to get a sea wall to protect his golf course due to climate change.

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Micky Dolenz is said to be recording Dolenz sings Nesmith, an album of songs written by Mike Nesmith.

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PEAD or the Presidents Emergency Action Documents are periodically revised and nobody seems to know a thing about them. Word is the rules are being revised right now but how will we know?? These are the most secret documents in the government. Congress is not even privy to them. Does that seem right??

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Wendell Pierce will star in The Thrill is On where he will play B.B. King.

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Quibi has brought us the Mapleworth murders with John Lutz, Paula Pell, JB Smoove and Tina Fey.

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Kutcher and Leno have been sticking up for Ellen. Watch your back, girl!!

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The West Wing is reuniting,

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Roman Polanski sued the Academy in 2019 for reinstatement but he has now lost that bid.

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The California Supreme court has reversed the death penalty for Scott Peterson.

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From Beirut to Florida to Belarus to Russia, our leaders never stop letting us down. The state of the world with the anger, the rebellion shows us just how selfish those in power are. ** The military budget: $732 billion, $ needed to bail out the Post office: $25 billion. This one we have to fight for and bring back our mailboxes for goodness sake!!** There are 3 republican Senators who are very uncomfortable with the President’s bashing of the Post Office. **UPS gives mountains of money to McConnell and Trump.

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This is an administration more interested in suppressing the vote than the virus. -President Obama ** Brookings.edu will tell you how well your state runs the vote.

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Sam Jay has a great stand up special to see called 3 in the morning.

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If your religion makes or keeps you stupid, it’s not a good religion. –Michael Mckean

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There are calls to dissolve the NRA because of massive fraud.

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Rep. David Schweikert was reprimanded and ordered to pay a $50 thousand fine for misuse of funds.

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Days alert: Gabi is right about one thing: Gwen seems like a skank.** What must it feel like for Ari Zucker to keep getting dragged back into Trump’s dirty laundry??**So good to see Paige and Eddie again!!!! **Phillip is back!** I wish they would give Eve something better to do and like last month, I wish Jack and Jen could really do something . Perhaps they could hustle stories like back in the day.

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Jerry Falwell Jr. has been asked by Liberty University to take an indefinite leave of absence as President and chancellor. He has now resigned. As I wrote about months ago, the torrid story of the pool boy has finally come full circle. It’s about time!!

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Face the Nation: When asked if he supported the tweet from that seemed to suggest he was ok with Kyle Rittenhouse, the attorney General of Ky. Daniel Cameron Said, “I condone violence on all it’s forms.” So he was of course asked if he meant CONDEMN and he agreed but I am not so sure. The first response seemed closer to the truth.

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Alabama legislator Will Dismukes who was spotted at a celebration for the KKK Grand Wizard, is charged with stealing thousands from a floor company he worked at.

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How many Trump friends own pay day loan places?? They must be making a mint on all the desperate poor.** The Trump administration is scaling back protections for over 1,000 species of birds. ** It seems MAGA hats are made in China and Joe’s hats are made in the U.S. by union members.** A Judge has rejected Trump’s latest bid to hide his tax records.

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Is this true? Cops make $150 thousand in Chicago to police schools. That is about half of what teachers make. Mind you, officers also still make their regular pay. The school district voted that even if a school decides not to use police in their school, that $ is still allotted for the cops and cannot be used for other things.** Baron Trump’s school is under orders to stay closed.** It is a blessing that the WH, the NBA and some companies can quarantine and test often. How about spreading some of that around to the food vendors or people at the bottom of your food chain?? It isn’t fair that so many small businesses are going under because they have nowhere to turn.

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Louis Dejoy was raked over the coals. He claims to have stopped taking mailboxes and sorting machines but the damage is done. He seemed to say ,”no” a lot in the hearing. He does not seem to know much about his post office. Why are the rules different for the Post Office as opposed to other government agencies?? ** Washington postal workers have reinstalled mail sorting machines. Fingers crossed that they keep their jobs.

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Arizona Senator McSally told supporters they might come up with more campaign cash for them if they do a bit of fasting.

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I always get a tear when I see John McCain give the thumbs down that day or when he defended Obama from that awful woman during their campaigns.

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The DNC went off without much of a hitch. Everybody looked and sounded good. Tammy Duckworth was especially noteworthy. Bloomberg seemed to have bought himself a prime spot and lashed out at Trump from the business side of things.** Jon Favreau had a good take that the RNC’s message was that if you’re rich and white, you can do anything.** At the RNC: Tom Cotton just said America is safer now than 4 years ago, but one of the themes of this convention is that America’s cities are more violent than ever, -John Avlon** Pence: Make America great again again! WTF?** The last night of the RNC did not have to compete with sports but the DNC still won the ratings race, if that matters to U.

*****

The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has resigned.

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What if we just put confederate General hats on all the mailboxes? –Conan** Hurricane Laura knocked down a confederate monument that they had voted to keep.

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Claudia Conway is seeking emancipation. Her parents Kellyanne and George are stepping away from their respective opposing political roles.

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The Senate intel committee informed the DOJ in mid 2019 that it believed Trump Jr., Kushner, Eric Prince, Manafort, Bannon, Sam Clovis and Hope Hicks all committed crimes.** Bannon was arrested as well as Brian Kolfage, for pocketing funds from the We build the wall fund that Mexico was supposed to pay for. Bannon was arrested by the postal service on a yacht belonging to another alleged criminal.

*****

Loved the Colbert show talking about “prayers in the air” and Trevor Noah calling out the ‘militia members’ for what they are: ‘gang members.’

*****

The Nazi brownshirts, or Sturmabteilung were born of unemployed veterans and thugs that the party reached out to act as security for their meetings. –Mike Stuchbery

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A former FBI agent has documented white supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across the U.S.

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It’s silly to believe an illness can stem from having sex with a demon, but just to be safe I’m giving it up anyway. – Emo Phillips

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Kamala Harris means more Maya Rudolph!!!!

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So Seth Meyers had a poll about his sea captain and NBC would not let them use their site?? It didn’t matter for it does not seem they took it seriously anyway. The duck, who was not part of the poll is a nice touch though as is the fish. Long live the sea captain!! That is Forte, Armisen and Samberg, right??

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Sturgis? Smashmouth ??really??

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Sen Penn married Leila George.

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If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. –LBJ

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What if we’re the weird ones ya’ll , and he’s just Al Yankovic. –George Wallace

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Before Fox news, you actually had to drive to a Klan rally. –LOLGOP

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Larry Wilmore will host a late night show on Peacock.

*****

So, the Black*ish episode that wasn’t, will finally air, now how about letting us see the Gary Cole episode of SVU??

*****

I can’t wait for Ratched, the origin story of Nurse Ratched. Sept. 18 will bring us Sarah Paulson, Judy Davis, Finn Wittrock, Sharon Stone, Amanda Plummer, Vincent D’onofrio and Cynthia Nixon.

*****

Jim Belushi stars in Growing Belushi about his new pot farm.

*****

Why is it so hard for humans to open their minds? From law enforcement rehab to using home grown drugs for pain or listening to different cultures and religions, it should be ez to just listen. Doctors are touting psilocybin for everything from quitting cigarettes to depression. The effects can be lifesaving and science can save us all. This is not the dark ages but on some days, we would never know that.

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Fire-Nado? Double hurricanes?? Whoa!

***

Many sports teams went on strike.

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R.I.P. Reni Santoni, David Rossi, Wilforn Brimley, Gary Knopp, Pete Hamill, John Hume, Daisy Coleman, Helen Jones Woods, Brent Carver, Beirut victims, Brent Scrowcroft, Leon Fleischer, Trini Lopez, Raymond Allen, Sumner Redstone, covid victims, Robert Trump, Matt Heron, Linda Manz, Ash Christian, Robert Ryland, Justin Townes Earle, Allan Rich, Gail Sheehy, Reni Santoni, Jacob Blake, hurricane victims, Kenosha victims and Chadwick Boseman.

0 notes

claremal-one · 4 years

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What Trump Could Learn From NASCAR

Like so many institutions in American life, the sport was grappling with what its place would be in a more diverse county and culture.

He forgot that most of the country requires a modicum of plausible deniability in its dog whistles.

from Clare Malone – FiveThirtyEight https://ift.tt/2X5fSWr via https://ift.tt/1B8lJZR

#clare malone #clarethings

0 notes

thisdaynews · 5 years

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The Real Reason Obama Didn’t Pass Gun Control

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-real-reason-obama-didnt-pass-gun-control/

The Real Reason Obama Didn’t Pass Gun Control

After every mass shooting, there’s a new ritual: sharing an old Twitter post from a British columnist that says: “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

But “America” decided no such thing after the December 2012 elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. Poll after poll in early 2013 showed a near-unanimous consensus of Americans supporting legislation to close all loopholes in the background check system, and smaller majorities backing bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. A bipartisan background check bill, drafted by Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, won the support of a Senate majority. It was defeated, four months after the tragedy, by a filibustering Senate minority.

Story Continued Below

America’s gun control majority hasn’t decided that the murder of children is a “bearable” cost for preserving our constitutional freedoms. It simply hasn’t figured out how to overcome the intense opposition from the gun rights minority, in a system of government designed to give disproportionate power to lightly populated rural areas, where love of gun rights runs deep, and intense minority opposition, a category that includes gun owners. Figuring it out is crucial for gun control advocates, and it requires a better understanding of why the gun control push failed after Sandy Hook.

One easy culprit is the Senate’s filibuster rule. A background-check bill like Manchin-Toomey would likely pass without a filibuster—even red state Democrats like Manchin and Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama support universal background checks. But everyone knows that a background check bill isn’t a panacea; several of the most recent mass shooters were young men without criminal records who legally obtained their weapons.

More ambitious gun legislation remains a harder sell. Democrats put an assault weapons ban on the Senate floor in 2013, and it received only 40 votes, with several swing state Democrats who are still in the Senate—Colorado’s Michael Bennet, New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, Maine’s Angus King (a nominal independent), Montana’s Jon Tester and Virginia’s Mark Warner—voting against it.

The main problem gun control advocates had in 2013 was not the rules but the lack of a mandate, the product of Democratic squeamishness about gun control going back several years.

Many Democrats had been uncomfortable with gun control since the moment President Bill Clinton enacted the assault weapons ban in 1994, over the private opposition of the House Democratic leadership. When Democrats were decimated in the 1994 midterm elections, including Speaker Tom Foley, gun control was blamed. (In his autobiography, Clinton wrote that the National Rifle Association “could rightly claim to have made [Newt] Gingrich the House speaker.”)

Then the 1999 Columbine school shooting rekindled Democratic interest in gun control, and Vice President Al Gore cast a tie-breaking Senate vote to pass a measure requiring background checks for purchases at gun shows. But the Republican-led House teamed up with conservative Democrats, still scarred by the 1994 backlash, to squelch it.

The gun issue then dogged Gore’s 2000 presidential bid. Under pressure from his lone primary rival Sen. Bill Bradley, Gore endorsed a ban on cheap handguns, along with a photo-license requirement for purchasing other handguns. Gore futilely tried to downplay that stance during the general election, and some Democrats attributed his defeat to it. Shortly before Election Day 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry awkwardly tried to leaven his support for renewing the assault weapons ban, which Republicans had just let expire, by going goose hunting.

And so Barack Obama released an approving statement during the 2008 presidential campaign when the Supreme Court declared that the Second Amendment enshrines an individual right to bear arms, and proceeded to flip several states with significant gun-owning constituencies. In his first term, Obama did not push for gun control measures after the fatal mass shootings at Fort Hood, Texas; an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater; and the Tucson, Arizona supermarket that cut short Rep. Gabby Giffords’ congressional career. He continued to keep quiet on gun control in the 2012 presidential campaign as well.

The Sandy Hook massacre, which took place one month after the 2012 election, upended Obama’s second-term legislative agenda. The national trauma resulting from the murders of 20 small children was so profound that Obama reasonably concluded this was not a time for caution and calculation. In January 2013, Obama proposed a long list of measures, including bans on assault weapons ban and armor-piercing bullets and a limit on the size of magazines.

And yet he began his gun control push from a position of political weakness. He had not campaigned on gun control, let alone a specific set of gun control proposals. He couldn’t influence lawmakers with clear evidence of red- and purple-state voters who were dedicated to his proposals. No broad-based gun control movement was in place to apply grassroots pressure (despite the efforts of billionaire Michael Bloomberg to build one with his Everytown for Gun Safety organization).

Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association had cultivated for decades a movement of single-issue voters, fostering a cultural identity around gun ownership that fortifies its legal and constitutional arguments. We now know that the NRA leadership was internally conflicted about how to respond to the unique horror that was Sandy Hook, but the ultimate decision to continue its unwavering defiance against any gun restrictions worked perfectly, and kept most Republicans (and a few Democrats) in line.

Today, gun control advocates are more optimistic because support in polls for their ideas is strong, the NRA has been distracted by internal strife, and President Donald Trump has hinted that he could push for a background-check bill or a red-flag bill. If Trump shocks us all by challenging the NRA and breaking its back, he will have done the Democrats’ job for them. But it remains very hard to fathom that Trump, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would get behind any bill that draws the NRA’s vehement opposition. And any bill that had the NRA’s blessing would not be much of a bill.

The next serious opening for gun control legislation, then, will most likely be when Democrats get control of the White House and the Senate, however narrowly. But to be better positioned than Obama was in 2013, Democrats have to run on gun control now and run on it hard.

Some gun control advocates argue that Democrats have been running on the issue, noting that in the 2018 midterms, most of the candidates endorsed by Everytown and Giffords’ pro-gun control political action committee won, and that 15 House Republicans with “A” ratings from the NRA were replaced by Democrats with “F” ratings.

However, it’s all too easy for winning candidates to wrongly assume that nominally running on an issue means you have won the public’s commitment on it. In George W. Bush’s victory lap after his 2004 reelection, he declared, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it [on] Social Security and tax reform.” And it’s true that he had campaigned in part on a plan to partially privatize Social Security. But he learned the hard way that just because he said something on occasion on the campaign trail, that didn’t mean the voters were paying close attention.

Once Bush began his second term with a concerted push for Social Security reform, Democrats mercilessly hammered the plan. Public polling for it was limp. After months of flailing and frittering away all that political capital, Bush shelved the plan.

The lesson is that Democrats have to not just run on gun control, but also make it central to the 2020 election. That means campaigning on gun control not only in the immediate aftermath of traumatic mass shootings, but on all the other days when gun violence is still happening off our TV screens.

Most of the approximately 36,000 annual gun deaths are not from mass shootings and not from assault-style weapons. About 22,000, slightly less than two-thirds, are suicides. Others result from domestic violence, routine crimes and accidents. Of the homicides, nearly two-thirds are from handguns, not military-style assault rifles. These quieter deaths, unlike domestic terror incidents with high body counts and flamboyant weaponry, happen every day. They must be talked about every day if a movement fueled by a strong sense of urgency is to be built. Presidential candidates could begin every stump speech with a recounting of the gun deaths that happened in the past week, to drive home the point that every day without action is a day when someone needlessly dies.

Such a strategy is not without significant political risk. There is a reason why Obama did not try to build a robust gun control mandate in 2008 and 2012: He probably would have lost critical swing states like Ohio, Iowa and Colorado.

And it’s one thing to run on universal background checks, which have almost universal political appeal but limited policy impact. It’s another to run on more aggressive yet more controversial proposals like federal licensing, mandatory buybacks and ammunition limits. The co-chair of Iowa’s Des Moines County Democrats recently told POLITICO that some of those proposals, which have been embraced by several candidates in the current presidential field, amounted to “crazy talk” since “there’s a pretty heavy gun culture out here in Iowa, even among Democrats.”

But if Democrats are serious about enacting gun control, then they will have to show that seriousness now. Otherwise, this time won’t be different, and the next time won’t be different, and gun control debate really will be over.

#control #Foreign #Obama #Politics

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

Text

Donald Trump says QAnon followers ‘like me very much and I appreciate it’

‘I’ve heard these are people that love our country,’ Trump said at the White House.

He was asked about the group hours after issuing a tweet backing Florida Republican primary winner Laura Loomer, who has pushed conspiracy theories that deny the school shootings in Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in 2012.

‘I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much,’ President Donald Trump said Wednesday when asked about the QAnon movement

Trump has also congratulated Marjorie Taylor Greene, who won a Republican primary in Georgia, calling her a ‘future Republican star,’ even as retiring and centrist Republicans issue warnings about the rise of the movement gaining a foothold in the party.

Trump, who has backed other QAnon supporters and retweeted its followers in the past, gave the impression he had only a general understanding of the movement.

‘I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much,’ Trump said.

He connected the movement, which like Trump raises alarms about a ‘Deep State,’ to his own concerns about violence in Democratic-run cities.

‘These are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on in place like Portland and places like Chicago,’ Trump said.

He didn’t flinch when asked about the most far-fetched views of some QAnon followers, that he is saving the world from a satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals.

In this Aug. 2, 2018, file photo, a protesters holds a Q sign waits in line with others to enter a campaign rally with President Donald Trump in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Facebook says on Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020, it will restrict QAnon and stop recommending that users join groups supporting it, but the company is stopping short of banning the right-wing conspiracy movement outright

Save The Children hold a demonstration in Tucson against child trafficking and peodophilia. #Save Our Children is a national advocacy group that believes child trafficking has reached pandemic proportions and that politicians, establishment elites, and Hollywood celebrities are part of an organized conspiracy to aid, protect and participate in peodophilia and child trafficking

Conspiracy theorist QAnon demonstrators protest during a rally to re-open California and against Stay-At-Home directives on May 1, 2020 in San Diego, California

Marjorie Taylor Greene with Laura Loomer – two GOP primary winners who earned online plaudits from President Trump

Attendees gather before the start of a rally with U.S. President Donald Trump in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018

‘Well I haven’t heard that. But is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?’ he asked. ‘If I can help save the world from problems I’m willing to do it,’ he continued. ‘I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are actually. We are saving the world from a radical-left philosophy that will destroy this country.’

Trump then during his response attacked calls to defund the police, ‘open borders,’ touted his border wall, and said poll numbers are ‘extraordinary’ on the border issue.

‘But I will say this. We need strength in our country, not weakness.’

Some QAnon followers also believe a ‘Deep State’ is behind an underground child sex trafficking ring.

Among the group’s claims are that there is a Satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals led by some of the world’s most famous names and covered up by the media and ‘deep state,’ with Trump claimed to be secretly dismantling it.

Among its wilder claims are that children are being kept in tunnels under major cities, that they are being trafficked on popular consumer websites such as Wayfair, and that JFK Jr. is alive and has been spotted on Marine One.

The central figure in the conspiracy is Q, supposedly a high-level government official who leaves clues – or ‘drops’ – on message boards about the imminent ‘great awakening,’ when the pedophile cabal will be ended. Followers have speculated that Trump is Q and are only likely to be encouraged by his answers at the White House.

Another key figure is Mike Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, who is said to both be the victim of the deep state and central to the cabal’s imminent downfall.

Followers often put three gold stars on their social media profiles and Flynn himself took part in the ‘pledge’ in which QAnon believers recite the Pledge of Allegiance then add at the end ‘where we go one, we go all.’ Followers wrongly believe the slogan was on the bell of the ship John F. Kennedy served on in the Navy, and abbreviate it to WWG1WGA on social media profiles and in hashtags.

Q’s success is at best mixed: he predicted that JFK Jr. would be Trump’s 2020 running mate after emerging from hiding on July 4 2020, a moment known as ‘the storm’; that there was going to be an unsealing of 25,000 indictments in November 2017 followed by a period of military control, while Hillary Clinton was going to make for the border as a result, but would be extradited; and that members of the cabal were arrested at National Cathedral in Washington D.C. during George H.W. Bush’s funeral in January 2019.

QAnon followers have held up their signs at Trump rallies, and former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn last month posted a video where where said the QAnon slogan: ‘Where we go one, we go all’ at the end of an oath.

NBC has reported that Facebook groups connected to QAnon have millions of followers.

Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger released a YouTube video last week calling on party leaders to ‘denounce’ the conspiracy theory now that it has gained a hold in the party.

‘The president hasn’t fully denounced it or denounced it at all. Now, it’s time for leaders to come out and denounce it,’ he said, while calling on people to try to persuade followers.

House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California has said he will seat Greene despite past racist statements, and declined to wade into her primary.

According to Travis View, who has researched the group, its followers believe that a ‘worldwide cabal of satanic pedophiles” run “all the major levers of power,’ USA Today reported.

The FBI warned in May 2019 lays out the threat of ‘conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists.’

“The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,’ according to the memo, reported by Yahoo News. It mentioned QAnon as well as the Pizzagate, a debunked conspiracy theory that Clinton associates were running a child sex ring out of the basement of a popular Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant. The restaurant does not have a basement.

Earlier Wednesday White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany backed up Trump’s tweet about Loomer while providing some distance, saying the president hadn’t done a ‘deep dive’ into the Florida GOP primary winner.

The 27-year-old right-wing activist is known for pushing conspiracy theories about school shootings and making anti-Muslim statements – and won the GOP primary Tuesday for the Florida Congressional district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Loomer celebrated Wednesday by talking to fellow right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, calling the hoaxes she’s pushed ‘factual stories that we have been ahead of the curve on for years,’ as J.T. Lewis, a gun rights activist who supports Trump and whose brother died in the Sandy Hook shooting, called for Loomer to be pushed from the party.

Donald Trump congratulated Laura Loomer (pictured) on winning the GOP primary for the district that covers his Mar-a-Lago estate. The White House said Wednesday the president hasn’t done a ‘deep dive’ on Loomer’s statements

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday that the president ‘routinely congratulates people who … get the Republican nomination for Congress’

Loomer called into Alex Jones’ Infowars show and said that the conspiracy theories and hoaxes they’ve been pushing are ‘factual stories that we have been ahead of the curve on for years’

‘Laura Loomer is a Parkland and Sandy Hook hoaxer. She has no place in the Republican Party!’ Lewis tweeted.

Despite Loomer’s controversial views, Trump tweeted congratulations to her late Tuesday.

‘Great going Laura. You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!’ Trump wrote.

She also has the backing of Jones, Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s former political adviser Roger Stone and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a diehard Trump supporter.

Speaking to Jones on his InfoWars show, she complained, ‘I was told that if I wanted to win my race … that I could never do InfoWars again and that I could not speak to you because they say that you are toxic, just like they say about me, and I said screw you, Alex Jones is a freedom fighter, he’s a patriot, he’s fighting for the First Amendment and I am never going to sideline any of my friends.’

‘We were the people who led the culture revolution in 2016 when President Trump was nominated and elected,’ Loomer told Jones Wednesday. ‘That is what the Republican Party is missing now.’

Loomer will face Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel in the fall. The four-time congresswoman is expected to win easily in the deep blue district. She ran unopposed in 2018 and beat her Republican rival in 2016 by 27.6 points.

McEnany said Trump’s support for Loomer was standard protocol.

‘Well, the president routinely congratulates people who have officially – get the Republican nomination for Congress, so he does that as a matter of course,’ she said at the White House briefing Wednesday.

McEnany was asked about Loomer and about Marjorie Taylor Greene, a GOP candidate from George for the House of Representatives who prescribes to the QAnon conspiracy theory and has also made anti-Muslim statements.

‘He hasn’t done a deep dive into the statements by these two particular women, I don’t know if he’s even seen that,’ McEnany said. ‘But he supports the Muslim community, he supports the community of faith more broadly in this country.’

The president tweeted in a show of support for Loomer late Tuesday after she defeated five candidates to win the Republican primary for the US House of Representatives seat that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach

WHO’S BANNED LAURA LOOMER

PLATFORMS

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

PAYMENT SYSTEMS

PayPal

Venmo

GoFundMe

RIDESHARES

Uber

Lyft

TECH FIRMS

XFinity / Comcast processing of her campaign mass texts

EVENTS

CPAC – Conservative Political Action Conference in 2019

Courtesy of Ali Alexander

Loomer took the lead in the Republican primary with 42.7 percent of the vote, with nuclear engineer turned professor Christian Acosta coming in second with 25.5 percent.

Other candidates in the race included a former burlesque dancer who now runs an exotic animal business and a former IRS investigator.

Trump cast his vote by mail in Florida’s 21st District primary election, after changing his official residence from New York to Palm Beach back in October 2019.

He and Melania’s ballots were returned to Palm Beach officials Monday in time for their votes to be counted, reported the Washington Post.

The president’s decision to cast his own vote by mail comes after he has repeatedly claimed mail-in ballots lead to widespread fraud and even threatened to redo the election if he loses through what he has blasted a ‘rigged’ system.

It is not clear if the president voted for Loomer but his social media post confirmed he approved of her victory.

He’ll be able to vote for her in the November election, which he plans to do absentee.

Loomer has been a high-profile figure on the fringes of the alt-right since working for Project Veritas when she was a college student.

While working with Jones of InfoWars she went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and accused students there of ‘reading a screen or notes.’

‘It’s obvious these kids are reading a screen or notes someone else wrote for them. Notice how media is only talking to the same group of students. They aren’t talking to the pro gun ROTC students who actually saved lives, unlike these students,’ she tweeted.

She also pushed a theory that there was a second gunman in the Las Vegas massacre in September 2017 and went to a press conference a month later to harry the Las Vegas county sheriff with her claims.

‘All of the evidence that is being leaked is further showing how the Deep State is covering it up,’ she said.

The controversial 27-year-old has been slammed for making anti-Muslim comments on several occasions in recent years.

She called the FBI the ‘Federal Bureau of Islam’ as she pushed deep-state conspiracy claims.

In November 2018 she was accused of hate speech when she called Representative Ilhan Omar ‘anti-Jewish’ – which led to her being removed from Twitter.

‘Isn’t it ironic how the twitter moment used to celebrate ‘women, LGBTQ, and minorities’ is a picture of Ilhan Omar?’ Loomer tweeted about the Democratic Minnesota congresswoman.

‘Ilhan is pro Sharia Ilhan is pro-FGM Under Sharia, homosexuals are oppressed & killed. Women are abused & forced to wear the hijab. Ilhan is anti Jewish.’

Trump cast his vote by mail in Florida’s 21st District primary election, where Loomer (pictured) took the victory

The controversial conspiracy theorist has been accused of hate speech on more than one occasion. In November 2018 she was accused of hate speech when she called Representative Ilhan Omar (left) ‘anti-Jewish’. She slammed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (right) for suspending her account over the incident

Far-right activist Loomer, who has the backing of Trump’s friend and former adviser Roger Stone, Representative Matt Gaetz and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, will now take on Democratic Representative Lois Frankel (pictured) in the November general election

When she was banned from Twitter over the incident, Loomer handcuffed herself to Twitter’s New York offices.

That same month, she was removed from a congressional hearing on social media when she hit out at CEO Jack Dorsey for ‘shadowbanning’ conservatives and accused him of trying to sway the midterm elections toward the Democrats.

This came after she was banned from using Uber and Lyft in November 2017 for tweeting that ‘someone needs to create a non Islamic form of @uber or @lyft’ and complaining that she was late to a meeting because she could not find a ‘non-Muslim’ driver.

In June 2017, Loomer rushed the stage during a Shakespeare In The Park production of ‘Julius Caesar’ in New York to accuse the cast of normalizing ‘political violence against the right’ and calling them ‘Isis’.

‘Stop the normalization of political violence against the right!’ she shouted.

‘Shame on the New York Public Theatre for doing this! You guys are ISIS! CNN is ISIS!’

She also ambushed actress Alyssa Milano at the 2018 Politicon conference in Los Angeles, suggesting she was in cahoots with Linda Sarsour, a Muslim co-founder of the Women’s March.

‘I want to ask you right now to disavow Linda Sarsour because she is a supporter of Sharia law. And under Sharia law, women are oppressed, women are forced to wear a hijab,’ Loomer said, identifying herself as a ‘conservative investigative journalist.’

‘My question is, will you please disavow her because she is advocating for Shariah law,’ Loomer yelled at Milano, who was seated onstage.

As Loomer was ushered out of the room, she yelled that #MeToo was a ‘sham movement.’

THE VIRAL STAR BANNED FROM SOCIAL MEDIA WHO IS GETTING A SHOT AT CONGRESS

Laura Loomer burst onto the conservative stage in 2015 when she, a Jew, was a student at Barry University, a Catholic University run by nuns near Miami.

Loomer, one of a few Republican students in an overwhelmingly liberal school, participated in a ‘gotcha’ video at the urging of Project Veritas, a right-wing group that uses hidden cameras to expose what it sees as Liberal bias in colleges, non-profits and government.

Loomer surreptitiously taped her encounter with school officials during a meeting where she asked permission to set up a new club called Sympathetic Students In Support Of The Islamic State.

The footage seemed to indicate school officials were in favor of starting such a club on campus but appeared to suggest she drop the ‘Islamic State’ from the name.

The footage went viral, and school officials suspended Loomer for what they saw as her attempt to embarrass the school.

The story made Loomer an instant celebrity in the Alt-Right’s cyber-world, but it also launched her anti-Muslim reputation.

Loomer is a polarizing personality and took this photo with self-proclaimed ‘dirty trickster’ and one of the most notorious Republican insiders Roger Stone

Loomer has been banned from several social media platforms for promoting speech labeled as hate speech targeting Muslims and posted for this photo with Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle

‘I’m not anti-Muslim,’ she said, ‘I study Islamic terrorism.’

With video cameras in tow and a huge distribution network online, Loomer continued with higher-profile gimmicks to expose what she saw as the Left’s corruption. In the summer 2017, she and other conservative activists stopped the Shakespeare play in Central Park.

In January 2019, she was back in the news when she got three alleged illegal immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala to set up their tents on the lawn of Speaker of the House Pelosi’s Napa Valley home in her home state of California.

In time, Loomer and her crew were kicked off Pelosi’s lawn by police, and Loomer was handed a warning for trespassing.

Loomer has also been at war with mainstream social media platforms.

One November morning in 2018 in Manhattan, she chained herself to the door of the local Twitter headquarters to protest her banishment from social media for hate speech.

At first, Loomer worried the moves by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others would make it impossible for her to make a living and raise campaign contributions.

Now, Loomer proudly describes herself as The World’s Most Censored woman, and she has managed to find other ways to conduct her political agenda and fundraising away from PayPal.

She is, for example, active on Parler, where she has 89,000 followers, and Gab, where she has 27,000. Both are conservative platforms that allow a looser definition of free speech and, at times, have been accused of providing a haven for white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-like-donald-trump/

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

We Need Somebody Who’ll Finally Get Tough On Foreign Policy

Why Do So Many Republicans Like Donald Trump?

We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you’re not going to raise that f***ing price.

Why Do Trump Voters Believe His Lies It’s Not Because They’re Stupid

The cornerstones of President Trumps campaign were promises to appeal Obamacare and ban Muslims from the US. It took Trump less than 70 days to fail on both promises.

And yet, despite his epic fails, lies and incompetence, Trumps base supports him like theyre spanx and hes Marie Osmond. What explains this loyalty? Science has the answer.

Have a look at this puzzle.

Which drawing best illustrates the correct mechanics and structure of a bicycle?

How you answer will help explain the loyalty of Trump voters. Ill explain in just a bit. But first

What I wanted to know is WTF!?

The next most common response was that Trump believes in God.

This was followed in near equal measure by Trump Loves America, he keeps his promises, that hes a good businessman, that he cant be bought, and that he tells the truth.

OK. So, one of them is true! Trump is not a politician. One could go either wayhis love for America.

I got nearly 700 responses.

WATCH NOW:

Opinionthe Gop Needs Women And Centrist Voters Ousting Cheney Only Nets Them Trump Loyalists

Mild dissatisfaction with Trump isnt the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes.

Poll Results Are Fake Unless Theyre Good Trump Says

During his speech at the Dallas convention Sunday night, Trump said he only would have believed the results of CPACs straw poll if they were his favor, Business Insider reported.

Now, if its bad, I just say its fake, the former president told the crowd, reported Insider. If its good, I say thats the most accurate poll, perhaps ever.

In the past, Trump has decried similar things he doesnt like as false, like referring to unfavorable media coverage as fake news.

A Large Share Of Republicans Want Trump To Remain Head Of The Party Cnbc Survey Shows

Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Trumps Role As Republican Party Leader Is Becoming Stronger

This weekends CPAC straw poll results showed that Trumps popularity along with DeSantis in the Republican Party has grown in the last six months, according to Forbes.

In February, only 55% of attendees of a similar CPAC event in Orlando, Florida, said they wanted Trump to lead the ticket in 2024, Forbes reported.

Inside the newsroom: Words matter, including the hateful Murder the media

He Appeals To Rural Voters

Hes Nationalist Rather Than Globalist

Why Do People Act Like Black Conservatives Don’t Exist? | NBC News

Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Why Does Donald Trump Still Seem To Hold Sway Over The Republican Party

Or rather, it’s the 74,222,593-vote question.

As much as anything else, those numbers sum up the quandary Republicans find themselves in.

All The Republicans Who Wont Support Trump

Numerous top G.O.P. officials have said publicly or privately that they will not be backing the presidents re-election. Some have even endorsed Joe Biden. Heres a look at where they all stand.

Follow our latest coverage of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election here.

Here is a running list of those who have said they will support Mr. Biden in the fall, those who simply wont support Mr. Trump, and those who have hinted they may not back the president.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

Why Do Evangelical Christians Love Trump

To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault.

Why it Matters

How I Do My Work

The Baffling Continued Support For Donald Trump Explained

I think that there are a number of things at play, crosscurrents, if you will, said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

Winterhof likewise said she observed a decline in enthusiasm among voters who were counting on Trump for positive change and agreed that Biden was better positioned than Clinton among voters overall.

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

Why LGBTQ Republicans Hate The Party’s Platform But Like Donald Trump

He Says He Wants To Make America Great Again

What Americans Really Think

In particular, conspiracy theories offer a simple explanation, with an identifiable villain, for the complicated reality of modern politics. That simplicity is appealing.

A few conspiracy theories were on the list. Four were designed to suss out conservative respondents:

that Obama was born outside the United States;

that his health-care reform established “death panels;”

that global warming was a hoax

and that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

There were four more theories for the other side:

Why Do Republicans Continue To Support Trump Despite Years Of Scandal

In addition to demonstrating how polarization accelerates scandals, the paper also found that:

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

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kacydeneen · 6 years

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National Issues Loom Large in Key House Race Near DC

Warner Workman has met his Virginia congresswoman several times at local events and says he's "always dumbfounded when she actually remembers my name."

Rep. Barbara Comstock's social media pages are filled with photos of her thanking local first responders at 9/11 memorials, posing with families at county fairs, attending Boy Scout events and opening new police stations in Virginia's 10th Congressional District.

Democrats: Trump Intervened Personally to Stop FBI Move

The Republican congresswoman is "always out there … getting to know people," Workman said.

Her approach worked in 2016, when she won re-election even as the district voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10 percentage points. But the 2018 midterm election could spell the end of Comstock's tenure in Congress and nearly four decades of Republican control of the district, which stretches along Virginia's northern border from the progressive suburbs of Washington, D.C., into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

States and Feds Unite on Election Security After 2016 Clashes

Comstock is running against Democratic state Sen. Jennifer Wexton, a former prosecutor from Loudoun County, which experts see as a crucial part of the district. The wealthy and increasingly diverse county has started swinging toward Democrats, as has the state overall.

Comstock, who lives closer to D.C. in neighboring Fairfax County, faces two strong headwinds: the district's burgeoning Democratic bent and those voters' opposition to the leader of her party, President Donald Trump.

Trump: 'Certainly Looks' Like Saudi Writer Dead

Experts say people are looking beyond the boundaries of their own district to inform how they vote in this election, and that makes Comstock one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for re-election.

After the two contentious years that followed Trump becoming president, "the Trump agenda is very important to voters," George Mason University political science professor Toni-Michelle Travis said.

This article, part 3 in a series, examines one of the key battleground races for control of the House of Representatives in the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Carried by grassroots momentum, Democrats must take 23 seats from Republicans to win the balance of power. They are contending with Republicans' experience and organization, and an outspoken but polarizing president.

Comstock has distanced herself from Trump on some key issues like health care — she voted against the American Health Care Act, which would have repealed "Obamacare" — and imposing sanctions on Russia. At a televised roundtable with Trump in February, she told Trump a government shutdown was a bad idea for her constituents, some of whom work for the federal government.

"This election is about results versus the resistance," Comstock said at a late-September debate with Wexton, where she touted her support of the Republican tax cut plan and "a booming economy."

But she's voted in line with Trump's agenda 97.8 percent of the time, putting her among the most consistently pro-Trump members of Congress, according to a tally kept by news outlet FiveThirtyEight. (By contrast, only a few Democrats voted along with Trump 50 percent of the time or more.)

Wexton's campaign has zeroed in on Comstock's voting record, recently running attack ads that call her "Barbara Trumpstock." This week, The Washington Post endorsed Wexton after backing Comstock in 2016, calling the Republican an "often unquestioning foot soldier in the president's ranks of Republican loyalists."

In the debate, Wexton hit back at Comstock's resistance remark, saying the Trump administration "is constantly assaulting many of the values that Americans hold dear."

Travis, the George Mason University professor, said Trump's agenda has been "so disheartening" that many voters don't see a candidate with Comstock's voting record as the best person to represent them in Congress.

"Comstock's cred has just gone down," Travis said.

Comstock campaign manager Susan Falconer argued in an email that Comstock is a bipartisan and independent leader who's deeply engaged in the district and "will stand up for what's right for the district, regardless of party." She pushed back on the reliability of the Trump agenda tracker, contending that 82 percent of votes Comstock took had support from some Democrats.

"She trusts the independent minded men and women of her district who know how important it is to have bipartisan leadership for the region in order to get these important victories," Falconer wrote, referring to the congressional delegation representing the D.C. area — all the others are Democrats.

But public polling indicates that Wexton is running ahead of Comstock. One poll from the Post this month put Wexton's lead at 12 points. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as lean Democrat. Travis argued it would be "very hard" for Comstock to pull ahead, unless something "weird" happens.

"But Wexton needs to still work at it," Travis added, saying the other party "can always win if you underestimate your opponent."

Think Nationally, Act Locally Tina Stevens-Culbreath, a Democrat from the city of Winchester, west of D.C. in the Shenandoah Valley, is concerned about a "culture of hate" in the country that stems from the 2016 election.

People "feel they are allowed to do and say basically anything that they want without consequence," Stevens-Culbreath said.

She and her husband are looking to Wexton to be a unifier, someone "we're going to need to bring this country together," as Rodney Culbreath put it. The couple founded the I'm Just Me Movement, a mentorship nonprofit that aims to promote diversity and inclusion among kids in the area.

To win, Wexton may need a strong performance in suburbs like Winchester that are further from D.C., as well as in crucial Loudon County, which is more diverse and more likely to vote Democrat, according to John J. McGlennon, a government and public policy professor at The College of William & Mary.

Voters in the area are especially attuned to national issues, he said, partly because of their proximity to D.C., which affects their livelihood.

Seventeen-year-old Ainsley Rucker said that it's become a "moral obligation" to vote in the midterms to "put the Trump administration on check," even if she can't yet cast her own ballot.

Women's rights, LGBTQ rights and education are among the issues fueling Rucker's political passion. She is the president of the Winchester Young Democrats coalition, which has expanded to every local high school since its inception earlier this year, Rucker said.

"Since we can't have our voices directly heard through voting, we feel like the only thing we can do to make ourselves heard is ... get other people to understand what we think as young people and influence the people around us," Rucker said.

Casey Turben, a longtime Winchester resident and local historian, said that Trump's election has sparked local-level activism, and it will be "the lasting story of 2016."

Rucker also pushed back on the notion that Comstock is deeply involved in the district, saying she was "refusing to answer questions" from her constituents by not holding formal town hall meetings.

Asked by NBC, Comstock's campaign manager didn't say when Comstock last held a town hall meeting. But Falconer said the congresswoman attended a recent forum on the opioid crisis in Loudon County and emphasized her many visits with local civic, religious and ethnic organizations.

Workman, the Comstock supporter, argued she just "does things a little differently" in regards to meeting with her voters, saying "she goes to the people instead of having the people come to her."

Comstock still has support in Winchester, too, a city that was nearly evenly split between Clinton and Trump in 2016.

Robert Starkey, a local electrician, said she "just seems to care for Virginia and supports guns."

And as a small business owner, Starkey said he wants a representative who will help him be successful and keep the economy strong.

"I think Comstock is for helping us with taxes," he said.

'Common-Sense Gun Laws' Gun rights is one national issue that animates the supporters of both candidates who spoke to NBC.

Workman, the Comstock supporter, said he's looking to her to protect his Second Amendment rights. A retired CIA technical intelligence officer who owns Minuteman Arms in Lovettsville, in Loudon County, Workman said he respects people who don't want to carry guns or have them on their property.

He said always will "respect the private property rights of others" and leave his gun in his car, for example, if a person or private business doesn't want firearms on their property.

Workman worries that so-called "common-sense gun laws" could lead to it becoming more difficult overall to purchase firearms, a right he deeply believes in and which he depends on to keep his shop running. Workman said he donates his store profits to veterans groups and Little League baseball in the area.

Comstock has an "A" rating from the NRA and is one of the top recipients of the group's political contributions. She has supported bills that address mental illness treatment, which she has said is one of the issues at the heart of gun violence, along with increased funding for school safety and security and strengthening the national gun background check system.

According to her campaign, she also supports banning "bump stocks," a device used in last year's Las Vegas massacre that increases the rate of fire on semi-automatic rifles, and "red flag" laws that provide a way to take weapons from people who are a harm to themselves or others.

Rucker and Winchester Young Democrats vice president Niko Christen, 15, are looking to Wexton for her plans to take on gun violence. They were in high school during a year that saw mass shootings at several U.S. schools, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where 17 people died, and Santa Fe High School in Texas, where 10 died.

The students said they want "common-sense gun laws that could prevent people who shouldn't have them from getting them," which could include "red flag" laws and a slower process for purchasing firearms.

Wexton spokesman Ray Rieling said "common-sense" gun legislation is one of the candidate's top priorities, along with affordable and accessible health care and fighting political corruption.

Wexton most strongly supports universal background checks, a "great first step for tightening up our gun violence prevention measures," Rieling said. The Democrat also supports banning military-style assault weapons and allowing the federal government to study gun violence as a public health issue, according to her campaign website.

"We may not be able to stop all the school shootings, but shouldn't we at least try to stop some?" Wexton asked the state's General Assembly in February.

The district has a large population of the kind of voters who recently have turned away from the NRA — college-educated, white-collar workers — and the issue could be what helps tip the balance for Wexton. According to a recent NBC News poll, Americans in suburbs who had a negative view of the NRA increased from 36 percent in April 2017 to 40 percent after the Parkland shooting.

Can Comstock Come Back? Comstock's campaign manager said that the Republican "has never lost a race and always overperforms expectations," noting that Comstock's district was rated as a "toss-up" in 2016 before she won by 6 percentage points.

While recent public polls put Wexton in front by at least 6 percentage points, a recent internal poll gives Comstock a slight lead, though within the margin of error.

But Turben, the Winchester historian, said the tides are changing in Virginia's 10th District. He said a Wexton victory would come with "a slump of sure GOP votes in the western boundaries of the district," adding that it would be a "loud and clear" message to Congress that the expectations rural voters have for Washington are shifting.

William & Mary professor McGlennon said that educated, affluent Loudon County represents a political shift happening in suburbs across the country.

"Suburbia has become a lot more diverse, and suburban voters have been moving strongly towards Democrats, and that has the potential to transform not just the politics of Virginia, but much of the country," he said.

While Comstock appears to be "in a very deep hole," McGlennon said, she could still win by finding a way to convince voters that she won't regularly support Trump, that "she will be an independent voice" and more attuned to her voters on social issues than a typical Republican.

"And I think that's a very tall order," he added.

It's an issue that the Wexton campaign is latching on to.

Trump is "certainly part of the conversation about everything," Rieling said, and Wexton's plans for "holding this administration accountable is an enormous issue for voters."

NBC's Sierra Jackson contributed to this report.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. National Issues Loom Large in Key House Race Near DC published first on Miami News

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goldhairwithagentlecurl · 6 years

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So letting my Political Science Major flag fly for a post because I feel its to important not too. As I am mine and a lot of others lives were changed the morning of November 9th, 2016, when DonlandTrump became our next president. We became scared and worried about our lives and that feeling has never gone away. While I have been so inspired over and over again seeing acts of protest and people stepping up and being true allies to all who need them, it does not change the fact that Trump is and will always be a treat to this nation. He has already tried to take away the Affordable Care Act (the ACA), left The Paris Agreement (also called the Paris Climate Accord), said Nazis were good people, banned Trans soldiers from serving for no given reason, was filmed saying graphic and sexually violent language towards women and has had multiple women brave enough to tell their story about him assaulting them knowing the backlash they would get, RIPPING CHILDREN AWAY FROM THERE FAMILIES AND HAVING THEM LIVING IN FUCKING TENTS CITYS! and so much more then that, that if I wrote all the stupid/horrific things he's done Tumblr might break. Yet hope is not fully lost! It might feel like that this week with the confirmation of Judge I Like Beer and I know how hard it was for Dr. Ford to tell her story, and how hard it was for all of us survivors who had to see and listen through it all. Yet I repeat hope is not lost the Mid-Terms are coming up November 6th, that's only a month away, and if we want to see change and have a Congress and Senate the truly speak to our true values we need to vote. Never forget Hilary won the popular vote by 2.8 million people she only lost due to an outdated system, Mid-Terms we do not have to worry about that and your voice matter it matters so fucking much here! If you care about women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community and honestly just human decency then go out and vote and fight for those who want to protect those values as well. America is a mess right now and it is sinking but we have the power to keep this boat afloat as best we can. So why did I write all of this? Good question I am going to list every state you can still register in some way in and hope this gets seen by people.

Its so simple just look at the list below find your state and deadline and go to https://vote.gov/ and follow the steps and TA-DAH you are a registered voter! and also important if you are already registered its always important to check your status to make sure they didn’t purge your statues, as that has been happening, which can be done on that site as well. If you live in a state where you can’t register online find out how by googleing who to call or what to do.. Anything in bold, besides the state, is important information you need to know, and anything crossed out just means a date has passed for a specific type of registration not that you can’t register at all in that state in some other way.

Alabama: The deadline to register in person, online or by mail is Oct. 22.

California: The deadline to register in person, online or by mail is Oct. 22. Note: Residents who miss the deadline can still register at an election office and vote with a provisional ballot. The vote will be counted when the registration is verified.

Colorado: The deadline to register by mail or online is Oct. 29. Residents can register in person by Election Day.

Connecticut: The deadline to register in person, by mail or online is Oct. 30. Residents can still register to vote through Election Day at a local election office.

Delaware: The deadline to register in person, online or by mail is Oct. 13.

District of Columbia: The deadline to register in person is Election Day. The deadline to register by mail or online is Oct. 16

Hawaii: The deadline to register in person, by mail or online is Oct. 9. Residents who miss the deadline can still register to vote and cast a ballot during early voting or on Election Day.

Idaho: Residents can register in person up to Election Day. The deadline to register by mail or online is Oct. 12.

Illinois: The deadline to register in person is Oct. 9. The deadline to register online is Oct. 21. After that, residents can register and vote at a local election office during a “grace period.”

Kansas: The deadline to register in person, online or by mail is Oct. 16.

Louisiana: The deadline to register in person or by mail is Oct. 9. Residents can register online until Oct. 16.

Maine: The deadline to register by mail is Oct. 16. Residents can register to vote in person until Election Day. Maine does not have online registration.

Maryland: The deadline to register in person is Oct. 16 or during early voting with a state-issued ID. The deadline to register by mail or online is Oct. 16.

Massachusetts: The deadline to register in person or online is Oct. 17. The deadline to register by mail is Oct. 16.

Minnesota: The deadline to register online or by mail is Oct. 16. Residents can register in person until Election Day.

Missouri: The deadline to register by mail, in person or online is Oct. 10.

Montana: The deadline to register in person was Oct. 7. To register by mail, the form must be received by Oct. 10. After that, late registration is available through Election Day at county election offices. Online registration is not available.

Nebraska: The deadline to register by mail or online is Oct. 19. Residents can register in person up to Oct. 26.

Nevada: The deadline to register by mail is Oct. 9, and Oct. 16 in person. Residents can register online by Oct. 18.

New Hampshire: The deadline to register in person is on Election Day. Residents cannot register online.

New Jersey: The deadline to register in person or by mail is Oct. 16. There is no online registration.

New York: The deadline to register in person or online is Oct. 12. To register by mail, the form must be received by Oct. 17.

North Carolina: The deadline to register in person or by mail is Oct. 12. (Extended to Oct. 15 for 28 counties that were affected by Hurricane Florence.) From Oct. 17 to Nov. 3, residents can register and vote simultaneously at “one-stop” early voting sites. Residents cannot register online.

North Dakota: Voters are not required to register before Election Day, but must bring acceptable proof of ID and residency to the polls.

Oklahoma: The deadline to register in person or by mail is Oct. 12. Online registration is not available.

Oregon: The deadline to register in person, by mail or online is Oct. 16. Many of the state’s residents are automatically registered when they renew their driver’s licenses.

South Carolina: The deadline to register in person, by mail or online is Oct. 17. (The deadline was extended 10 days from Oct. 7 because of Hurricane Florence.)

Utah: The deadline to register by mail is Oct. 9. The deadline to register in person or online is Oct. 30.

Vermont: Voters can register online or in person through Election Day.

Virginia: The deadline to register in person, online or by mail is Oct. 15.

Washington: The deadline to register online or by mail was Oct. 8. Residents can register in person by Oct. 29.

West Virginia: The deadline to register in person, online or by mail is Oct. 16.

Wisconsin: The deadline to register online or by mail is Oct. 17. Residents can register in person up until Election Day.

Wyoming: The deadline to register in person is on Election Day. To register by mail, the form must be received by Oct. 22. Online registration is not available.

Shout-out to The Failing New York Times cause look I am here to get fired and pumped about voting and getting people to register to vote but no way I was researching state by state so the state list and info is all from here: https://nyti.ms/2IFirG6

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years

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The decline and fall of Lindsey Graham, as told by his tweets

The bruising battle over Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination may be finished, but the political scars will last a lifetime. That is true for no one more than Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Formerly a believer that a judge must be removed if he commits perjury, the Republican from South Carolina turned a blind eye to Kavanaugh's many demonstrable fibs. Formerly known for his bipartisanship, Graham elected to play the attack dog. (Curiously enough, this turn came after the Judiciary Committee's counsel started asking Kavanaugh searching questions about his history of drinking and partying.)

SEE ALSO: No, you weren't hallucinating Lindsey Graham's ferocious tirade

For Graham watchers, the hearings were the latest evidence of the senator's disturbing transformation from Never Trumper to Trump apologist. "What happened to Lindsey Graham?" is the question asked by three separate profiles in the past month. A New York Times columnist just dubbed him "the saddest story in Washington."

Some commentators have pointed to the death of his good friend Sen. John McCain of Arizona this summer as a turning point for Graham. In reality, he's been sliding down this path for years. And the best place to witness his transformation — indeed, to glimpse the regression of the GOP as a whole — is via his Twitter account, @LindseyGrahamSC.

First, let's remind ourselves of what Graham used to be like in 2009. In Obama's first term, he was to be found working with John Kerry on a bipartisan bill to put a price on carbon emissions back when Kerry was a senator: "Yes we can (pass climate change legislation)," the pair wrote in the Times. (No, they couldn't.)

You can see the exact moment Graham realized his fellow Republicans were not as keen on Obama as he was. In the middle of a September 2009 speech to Congress, Graham starts to applaud the president's words on education, then suddenly thinks better of it.

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Graham didn't join Twitter until December 2011, and didn't start tweeting until March 2012. His first tweet thanked supporters for coming to a fish fry and vowed to make Obama a "one-term president."

But nearly all his tweets were innocuous back then: bland statements of support for GOP candidates; approving reports of his visits to Google and Apple; a photo of his fashion choices on the links.

Enjoyed playing golf today with friends from Electric Co-ops of SC. They provide invaluable service to us. #sctweets pic.twitter.com/VhKdleAS

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 14, 2012

Graham announced his own bid for the presidency on June 1, 2015. He touted his experience, and compared himself favorably to Hillary Clinton in that area. But he was also careful to strike a note of civility and bipartisanship — one that sounds like it's from a lifetime ago, not a mere three years.

To my friends in the other party: Our differences are real, and we’ll debate them. But you’re not my enemy. You’re my fellow countrymen.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) June 1, 2015

Donald Trump announced his candidacy two weeks later. Graham didn't even think it worth tweeting about. Nor did he mention Trump's comments calling Mexican immigrants criminals and "rapists." His first ever Trump tweets came a month later, after Trump denied that McCain was a "war hero" because "I like people that don't get captured."

.@SenJohnMcCain, like every other POW, went through hell & has earned our respect & gratitude

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 18, 2015

That subtweet was immediately followed by a direct attack on Trump's fitness for office.

If there was ever any doubt that @realDonaldTrump should not be our commander in chief, this stupid statement should end all doubt.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 18, 2015

Trump punched back by giving Graham's cellphone number out during a campaign speech. Graham's response was to bring a droll understatement to a knife fight.

Probably getting a new phone. iPhone or Android?

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 21, 2015

Still, Graham wasn't cowed; his attacks on Trump ramped up over the following months.

.@RealDonaldTrump unrelenting & offensive comments about @MegynKelly puts the @GOP at a crossroads w/Mr. Trump

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 8, 2015

Here's Graham's first actual joke at Trump's expense:

Donald Trump gets his foreign policy from watching television - the Cartoon Network. #CNNDebate #ReadyToLead

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 17, 2015

But when Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," Graham — like many of us — decided the reality TV star's campaign was no laughing matter.

.@Realdonaldtrump has gone from making absurd comments to being downright dangerous with his bombastic rhetoric.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 7, 2015

The next day, Graham took direct aim at the MAGA slogan using his strongest swear word.

“You know how you make America great again? Tell @realDonaldTrump to go to hell” https://t.co/pBLaZ1kgUV

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 8, 2015

The following week, Trump made an ominous statement of support for Russia's president. Back then, Graham considered it an even more serious foreign policy blunder.

Just when you think it can’t get worse: A leading American candidate for President praising Putin.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 17, 2015

Graham dropped out of the presidential race on December 21, 2015, citing poor polling numbers. But that didn't stop him from attacking Trump in unequivocal language.

Donald Trump is not a conservative Republican. He's an opportunist. He's not fit to be President of the United States.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) February 17, 2016

On February 20, 2016, Trump swept the GOP primary in Graham's home state, South Carolina. Shortly after, Graham and Trump got into the first of two Twitter spats.

@realDonaldTrump I never got past 2%. You aren't prepared to be Commander in Chief of worlds finest fighting force https://t.co/7prb7ZdEVg

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 7, 2016

On May 3, 2016, Trump's last opponent with a shot at defeating him, Sen. Ted Cruz, dropped out of the race. Graham was in an apocalyptic mood. He posted a dire prediction to his party — one that remains his most liked, most talked-about tweet, even now.

If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 3, 2016

Just nine days later, however, Trump won the delegates he needed. Graham posted this, and you can almost hear the gnashing of teeth.

I had a cordial, pleasant phone conversation with Mr. Trump yesterday. I congratulated him on winning the GOP nomination for President.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 12, 2016

If anyone on Trump's campaign expected Graham to fall into line, however, they were disappointed.

Last night, if you were looking for competency Donald Trump fell short. #CommanderInChiefForum

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 8, 2016

A day after the infamous Access Hollywood tape was released, Graham again made his anti-Trump feelings clear.

I have never been comfortable with Donald Trump as our Republican nominee.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 8, 2016

Name one sports team, university, publicly-held company, etc. that would accept a person like this as their standard bearer?

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 8, 2016

In the wake of three disastrous debate performances by Trump, Hillary Clinton was riding high in the polls. Graham's tweets indicated he considered Trump's campaign to be a lost cause.

Keeping GOP in control of Congress is best insurance policy American people can take out against Clinton agenda.https://t.co/TSfHsgrl0F

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 24, 2016

Not even the last-minute bombshell of then FBI director James Comey reopening an investigation into Clinton's emails deterred Graham from making it clear on election day that he did not vote for Trump.

In the prez race, voting for Hillary Clinton was always a non-starter and I couldn’t go where Donald Trump wanted to take the USA & GOP. #2

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) November 8, 2016

Instead the senator punched his ballot for a Republican running as an independent, Evan McMullin.

I voted @Evan_McMullin for President. I appreciate his views on a strong America and the need to rebuild our military. #3

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) November 8, 2016

Even after a perfunctory statement congratulating Trump on his surprise victory, Graham remained cautious — particularly about Trump's relationship with Russia.

I hope President-elect Trump won’t become the 3rd American president to misjudge Vladmir Putin.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 16, 2016

In the month after Trump's inauguration, Graham's tweets continued to be ambivalent. Reacting to a Trump proposal for a "border tax" on Mexico to build the wall, Graham tried to bring the funny by tweeting that it was "mucho sad."

Simply put, any policy proposal which drives up costs of Corona, tequila, or margaritas is a big-time bad idea. Mucho Sad. (2)

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 26, 2017

Graham tweeted support for all Trump's cabinet picks, but also pushed for investigations into Russia's impact on the 2016 election — and cautioned against the first Muslim travel ban.

Ultimately, I fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 29, 2017

But if there is a pivot point in Graham's relationship with Trump, it arrived in March 2017. He issued a statement in support of the second travel ban, and had a White House meeting that seemed to thaw relations — to the point where he and Trump became phone buddies again.

How good was the meeting with @POTUS? I gave him my NEW cell phone number.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 7, 2017

Still, Graham was prepared to defend Jeff Sessions against Trump's insistence that the Attorney General prosecute Hillary Clinton — even if the strongest word he could muster to describe this norm-breaking outrage was "inappropriate."

President Trump’s tweet today suggesting Attorney General Sessions pursue prosecution of a former political rival is highly inappropriate. 4

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 25, 2017

When literal Nazis and Klansmen rallied in Charlottesville, Graham was prepared to attack Trump over his "many sides" statement. But he didn't dare tweet his complaints directly, preferring to link to a newspaper interview.

Spoke with the media earlier today in Columbia about #charlottesville and steps forward.https://t.co/FFwxaUKDcj

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 15, 2017

Two days later Trump struck back at Graham directly, calling him "publicity seeking" and a "disgusting" liar. Graham then got into his second ever quote-tweet spat. In a non-threaded thread, he warned Trump that he was now being quoted approvingly by racist hate groups, implored him to "fix this" and said that "history is watching us all."

Mr. President, like most I seek to move our nation, my state, and our party forward - toward the light - not back to the darkness. (1) https://t.co/K1j4JnhCgf

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 17, 2017

But by this point, Graham could not attack Trump without sending an approving tweet literally one minute later.

Your tweet honoring Miss Heyer was very nice and appropriate. Well done. (2) https://t.co/8I6LVMDXUy

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 17, 2017

Trump's announcement calling for a troop surge in Afghanistan the following week seemed to patch things up as far as the hawkish Graham was concerned.

And then, a couple months later, the golfing began.

How bad did he beat me? I did better in the presidential race than today on the golf course! Great fun. Great host.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 9, 2017

Trump International Golf Club is a spectacular golf course. Great day of fun playing with @POTUS @realDonaldTrump. https://t.co/92Xjk8d8B2

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 10, 2017

Later that month, the supposed fiscal conservative Graham voted for Trump's deficit-ballooning trillion-dollar tax cut. By Trump's first State of the Union in January 2018, the senator was tweeting full-throated support for the "law and order president."

President Trump clearly relishes being the Law and Order president and a strong Commander in Chief. Just what America needs!

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 31, 2018

In April, two years after predicting the GOP would be "destroyed" by Trump, Graham announced he was all in for Trump 2020.

As to the 2020 presidential race, I believe President @realDonaldTrump will run for reelection and I intend to support him. https://t.co/vsExZ1XehG

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 19, 2018

The preemptive endorsement also marked a distinctive trend in Graham's tweets: Since March 2018, he has started using Trump's twitter handle. A lot.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President! You’re keeping your promise to make America safer and more prosperous. And unfortunately for me, you’re doing all this without losing a step in your golf game!@realDonaldTrump #TrumpBirthday pic.twitter.com/PJRa54FVAP

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) June 14, 2018

In July, Trump's craven display of obsequiousness towards Vladimir Putin in Helsinki shocked the world. Graham had once considered Trump's support for Putin worse than his proposal for a Muslim travel ban. Now he merely described it as a "missed opportunity."

Missed opportunity by President Trump to firmly hold Russia accountable for 2016 meddling and deliver a strong warning regarding future elections. This answer by President Trump will be seen by Russia as a sign of weakness and create far more problems than it solves. (1/3)

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 16, 2018

Even that mild display of dissent was erased a couple days later, when Graham credulously insisted Trump was not denying the conclusions of his own intelligence services.

I have just been reassured unequivocally by the White House legislative team that the President’s ‘no’ response today to shouted questions was not intended to suggest that President Trump doubts the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia is continuing to attack....

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 18, 2018

Soon enough, Graham was couching his Russia criticism within a statement that he was "totally" agreeing with Trump.

Totally agree with President Trump’s observation about Russia not being long-term pro-Republican or pro-Trump. Putin is pro-Chaos and is an Equal Opportunity Disruptor of the American electoral system. Let’s act together, let’s act now. https://t.co/iY5or4mLpA

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 24, 2018

In April 2018, Graham had signed on to a bipartisan Senate bill that would have specifically protected Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But in August 2018, the bill having gone nowhere, Graham tweeted that he hoped Mueller would "wrap up his investigation sooner rather than later."

He also gave an interview in which he appeared to back away from supporting Jeff Sessions. For the first time, Trump quoted Graham approvingly.

.@LindseyGrahamSC “Every President deserves an Attorney General they have confidence in. I believe every President has a right to their Cabinet, these are not lifetime appointments. You serve at the pleasure of the President.”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2018

There was little time for Graham to respond to that tweet. John McCain, who had not wavered in his opposition to Trump, passed away later the same day.

I will need some time to absorb this, but I want Cindy —and the entire McCain family — to know they are in my prayers.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 26, 2018

McCain had specifically disinvited Trump from the funeral, but Graham was able to wangle an invite for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Around the same time, he tweeted a photo of his meeting with Ivanka.

Great meeting with @IvankaTrump and her daughter Arabella. I appreciate all Ivanka is doing to improve the plight of women in the developing world. pic.twitter.com/OLNdxzWPop

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 29, 2018

After the McCain funeral, Graham's long transformation into a Trump surrogate seemed complete. Here he is a week later, tweeting his support in the wake of early revelations from Bob Woodward's book Fear.

By any reasonable measure we have one of the strongest economies in modern history, President Trump has rebuilt a broken military, and we are pushing back hard against America’s enemies.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 5, 2018

Meanwhile, Republican representatives in the House were in the throes of discrediting Mueller's investigation by attacking the investigators. This presented no problem for Graham.

It is increasingly clear it was the Obama Administration who politicized the DOJ/FBI, not the Trump Administration.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 11, 2018

What is interesting to follow through all this is how much more frequently Graham tells us to tune in to appearances on Fox News, Fox Business News, and CNN. The more controversial he gets, naturally, the more he does on-air "hits."

And then we come to the Kavanaugh nomination, and the revelation of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's accusation. In a startling display of hypocrisy, the senator who had gone all-in for a man he once despised now accused Democrats of acting in a Machiavellian manner.

When it comes to stopping Pres @realDonaldTrump and his agenda there seem to be no boundaries. Whether it’s coaching witnesses or reporting thinly-sourced stories without proper verification, everything is fair game and falls into the category of – ‘The Ends Justify the Means.'

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 24, 2018

By the end of the nomination process, Graham wasn't just supporting Trump in his tweets — he was starting to sound like him. Note the use of ellipses instead of numbering his tweets, the one-word descriptions, and the very Trumpian touch of capitalizing the word "victory."

…..finally thank you President @realDonaldTrump for the good judgment in selecting Judge Kavanaugh and the toughness and determination to stick by his side and see it through to Victory!

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 6, 2018

Perhaps there is more of Graham's Twitter story to be told; maybe he will disentangle himself from Trump after the midterms. But at the moment, his trail of shifting positions looks like a cautionary tale for future generations.

Here, kids, is what happens when you gain a tax cut, and a Supreme Court seat, and a whole lot of airtime, but lose your political soul.

WATCH: Someone created a storm lamp that produces lightning every time Trump tweets

#_author:Chris Taylor #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_uuid:c3011555-4b31-3bb7-855a-fafc68242672 #_revsp:news.mashable

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alamante · 6 years

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The election, the country’s sixth since democracy was restored in 1993, has been condemned as a “sham” by rights groups, following the dissolution of the main opposition party and a crackdown on the press by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).

In areas away from the capital, voters spoke of a variety of intimidation tactics deployed by the CPP.

“Some people are afraid of talking politics,” said one man, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Bo. According to Bo, the CPP, which under Prime Minister Hun Sen has governed the country for 33 years, punishes those who vote for the opposition.

In rural Cambodia, the village chief and commune counselors issue documents for everything from marriages to land purchases, making people like Bo reliant on them for simple everyday transactions.

If they know someone supports the opposition “you have to go (back) three or four times before they agree (to issue the documents),” Bo told CNN from his village home in Traing District, Takeo Province.

“They put pressure on your family and if you are a powerful man they can kill you too, like Kem Ley.”

In 2016, Kem Ley, a political analyst and government critic, was shot dead in broad daylight at a cafe in the capital city, Phnom Penh. A man jailed for the killing in 2017 said he shot Ley over a debt, but for many, including Human Rights Watch, the killing was politically motivated.

Since Ley’s killing, the government has arrested opposition leader Kem Sokha for treason and pro-government courts dissolved his Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) soon after.

The authorities also launched a series of ongoing attacks on the press, arresting several journalists and closing the Cambodia Daily newspaper over a tax dispute.

In May, staff at the English-language newspaper the Phnom Penh Post resigned en mass following the sale of the paper to a Malaysian tycoon who demanded changes to an article detailing his links with Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Since 2017, Cambodia has dropped 10 places in the World Press Freedom Index.

Biggest opposition party

The CNRP was the country’s biggest opposition party and won 3 million votes, around 44% of the total, during the last general elections in 2013. They accused the ruling party of cheating and the country was rocked by massive protests.

This year, however, Freedom Square, the traditional rallying point of the opposition, has been fenced off and renamed Exchange Square. Only the CPP has held large rallies in the capital. In the days leading up to the ballot, opposition party cars could be seen trundling through the streets of Phnom Penh flanked by a handful of supporters.

The CPP dwarfs the 19 competing parties, eight of which have only been formed in the last 18 months.

With members of the CNRP banned from involvement in politics for five years, and smaller parties unlikely to command much of the vote, the path to victory has been set for Prime Minister Hun Sen.

That win is likely to be bolstered by efforts to dissuade voters like Bo from voting for anyone other than the ruling party.

Sam Rainsy, who led the CNRP’s campaign in 2013, has been living in exile in France to avoid imprisonment for defamation — a conviction he says is politically motivated.

“This sham election is intended to legitimize Hun Sen’s killing of democracy in Cambodia with his arbitrary dissolution of the CNRP as the only credible opposition party. With no real challenger Hun Sen’s victory is a hollow and laughable one,” Rainsy said Friday.

Members of the ruling party rubbish Rainsy’s assessment. In the country’s capital the spokesman for the party’s cabinet, Phay Siphan, told CNN that the new parties had a fair chance to promote their “new ideas.”

When asked about Bo’s case, he said that any intimidation by CPP officials was “illegal” and should be stopped.

CPP support base

Supporters of the CPP say the party brought Cambodia together after the Khmer Rouge genocide and two decades of civil war. They also point to the country’s burgeoning economy.

Venerable Sareun, head monk at Baray Pagoda in Takeo, agrees. “The CPP helped us rebuild after the war,” he said, counting the first of three reasons he supports the party. “They are keeping the peace in the country and they are developing Cambodia with new roads and buildings.”

The CPP has indeed presided over high growth in recent years. “Robust economic growth averaging 7.6% per year in the past two decades has transformed Cambodia from one of the world’s poorest countries to a lower middle-income country today,” Sodeth Ly, an economist at the World Bank, wrote in 2016.

But critics say that wealth is not evenly distributed.

According to human rights watchdog Global Witness, most of the wealth has flowed to Prime Minister Hun Sen and his close-knit circle of supporters. In a July 20 report the organization claimed a business elite backed by Hun Sen are “set to profit from the sham poll.”

As pillars of Hun Sen’s regime, this small cohort of business people and politicians have enjoyed impunity and the chance to pillage state assets, the report alleged.

“This includes senators whose companies are accused of some of the most violent land grabbing Cambodia has seen this century, large-scale timber smuggling, a massive sand dredging scandal, and marijuana trafficking,” it said.

While the government has not yet responded to the most recent allegations, Hun Sen’s daughter and sons have previously criticized Global Witness and dismissed a similar report in 2016 as “lies and deceit.”

Cambodian-American author and academic Sophal Ear said that Cambodia has descended into dictatorship.

“What’s happening in Cambodia is the equivalent of Trump arranging for the Supreme Court of the United States to dissolve the Democratic Party for treason and then holding an election in 2020 with the Republican Party and 19 small parties that have no chance of beating the GOP,” he said via email.

“Trump would then have arranged for the shuttering of the New York Times on bogus tax evasion charges and arranged the forced sale of the Washington Post to Rupert Murdoch of Fox News, resulting in only pro-Trump news everywhere.”

In his village, Bo rocked back and forth on his wooden bench as he considered it all. “I feel upset because in a democracy we need to have an opposition party, especially one strong enough to compete with the ruling party, but (now) there is only one party,” he said.

“I heard there are a lot of parties that have joined this mandate but I don’t have any information about them … there is only one CPP.”

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