Turns Out Trump Wasn't Mad About Goons Shouting To 'Hang Mike Pence'
Loyalty's a one-way street.
What if we told you that Donald Trump was not at all bothered by his followers braying to "Hang Mike Pence?" Would you faint dead away to learn that he was pretty chill about threats to the safety of his vice president, and was even annoyed that the Secret Service might throw him in the car and drive away from the Capitol to save him from the mob?
No, you would not. Because you lived through the past five years of this waking nightmare, and you're not a bloody idiot.
You were watching on that horrible day when Trump tweeted to his deranged supporters as they descended on Congress that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
So you will not be FOR SHOCKED to learn that multiple witnesses told the House January 6 Select Committee that during the Capitol Riot, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows "left the dining room off the Oval Office, walked into his own office and told colleagues that President Donald J. Trump was complaining that the vice president was being whisked to safety."
As the New York Times was first to report: "Mr. Meadows, according to an account provided to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, then told the colleagues that Mr. Trump had said something to the effect of, maybe Mr. Pence should be hung."
The Washington Post matched the reporting and confirmed that Meadows's aide Cassidy Hutchinson verified the account. Because, while Meadows may be willing to risk a contempt of Congress charge, his staffers were, by and large, not.
Hutchinson already testified that multiple members of Congress were on a phone call with Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows in December on which they discussed the plan to send goons from the permitted march on the Ellipse to a very much unpermitted descent on the Capitol — a conversation which could in no wise be characterized as executive or attorney client privileged for any of the participants. And Hutchinson was the source of at least one report that Meadows was warned about the potential for violence in advance of January 6.
It's not clear who testified about one salacious detail, but both the Post and the Times got it. Apparently Meadows was in the habit of burning documents in the fireplace in his office. Which might well amount to a violation of the Presidential Records Act, so no doubt the Republicans will be calling to lock him up in email jail any second now.
HAHA.
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Herschel Walker Will Stop Mass Shootings With Department Of Looking At Young Men Who Are Looking At Young Women Who Are Looking At Social Media
Finally, a fresh new idea for stopping mass shootings!
When we last checked in with OFFICIAL REPUBLICAN GEORGIA SENATE NOMINEE Herschel Walker, he was expressing shock and surprise to learn that Donald Trump thinks the 2020 election was stolen. What? Donald Trump? Thinks the election was stolen? Herschel Walker had never heard him say that! Reporters say that! Not Donald Trump. Pshaw and hooey and poppycock!
Of course, that was earlier in the week. Now Republicans have shifted into Blame New Mass Shooting On Stuff That Isn't Guns mode. And never let it be said that Herschel Walker does not have new ideas. Try this one on for size:
\u201cHerschel Walker's solution to school shootings involves "a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media."\u201d— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1653571799
WALKER: There is a person wielding that weapon. You know, Cain killed Abel. You know, and that's a problem that we have. And I said what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things, you know they talked about doing a disinformation, what about getting a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media? What about doing that? Looking into things like that, and we can stop that that way? But they wanna just continue to talk about taking away your constitutional rights, and I think there's more things we need to look into. This has been happening for years, and the way we stop it is by putting money into the mental health field, by putting money into the other departments rather than departments that want to take away your rights.
Indeed, Cain killing Abel is a problem that we have, nobody can deny it. And verily WHAT ABOUT having a Department of Young Men That's Looking At Women That's Looking At Social Media? No one even suggested that before. Why put money into the Department Of Take Away Your Rights when you can just put it in other better departments?
We dare anyone to argue with this.
Also, you thought our headline was a joke. You silly.
Someone on the internet said Tommy Tuberville derped so Herschel Walker could fly. It's truly disturbing that it's entirely unclear Walker would enter the Senate as the absolute dumbest Republican in there. Top 10, for sure. But in a world of Tubervilles and Marsha Blackburns and Ron Johnsons and Rand Pauls? Sheesh.
We'd also add that this should be the last time anyone ever doubts that Donald Trump's best brain is capable of identifying fellow best brains to shove into Georgia Senate races. He found Herschel Walker!
This is almost as good as the time Herschel Walker explained evolution (not real because there are still apes) and how science can't make babies because only God can make babies (duh).
And those are just the idiot words. There are also the lies about his chicken business and the lies about his education and the domestic violence allegations and all the rest of it.
Senator Raphael Warnock, the next few months of your life are going to be fun.
Please win so we can all look back on this and giggle at the hilarity of it all.
Please.
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David Duke Thanks Tucker Carlson For Spreading 'Great Replacement' Lie, Asks For More Antisemitism
Just some helpful tips for America's top white nationalist.
Following the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke had a message for Tucker Carlson: Thanks for the great job making white supremacist rhetoric the common language of the GOP. On his podcast — of course he has a podcast! — Duke expressed his gratitude for all Carlson does, and hoped that maybe Carlson's success so far would lead him to start introducing more overt antisemitism into his Fox News show, to better advance the white nationalist agenda.
Media Matters has an audio snippet from the podcast; we'll embed it but you needn't feel obliged to listen.
Duke said that he likes Carlson, and is "thankful for many of the things that he says. I also disagree with him on a number of points, but I think overall, he's the only voice that gets out some of the information at all."
Mr. Duke is an optimist, you see, and he's grateful to see Tucker Carlson burning a cross in the darkness.
Duke, who ran successfully for a seat in the Louisiana state House in 1989 and then came disturbingly close to winning a race for governor in 1991, is an old hand at converting full-on KKK ideology into a somewhat more sanitized version and selling it in the Republican Party. And of course he's a shameless self-promoter, but even so, when he says Carlson is presenting the same message as white supremacists, he's not wrong.
Duke explained that because Carlson's on national TV, he can push white supremacist ideology, but "can't really say it" openly:
“He himself is reluctant to use the word ‘white’ unless he quotes other people saying ‘white.’ You can talk about – we can talk about a ‘demographic war.’ But he can't really say it like we can,” Duke said of Carlson. “He can't say there is a war on white people, and there is – there is a war against the white race.”
So instead, American racists have to settle for Carlson and most of the GOP talking about immigration as a literal "invasion," which would justify all sorts of action, possibly including sending troops to the border to shoot undocumented migrants, although there again, few say it publicly unless they're Donald Trump.
Duke was a little disappointed, however, that Tucker has so far held back from a central tenet of "great replacement" rhetoric, which blames demographic change on a shadowy conspiracy by international Jewry. Apparently Republicans' occasional invocations of George Soros as the puppetmaster behind all Democratic policy don't do it for Duke. As Media Matters 'splains, Duke himself carefully hedged his antisemitism, not saying "Jews" but instead just jabbing an elbow into his listeners' ribs. We bet they got his meaning!
Duke also bemoaned that Carlson never spells out what Duke claimed is the common thread between “people he mentions like” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the heads of social media giants, and the “neocons that bring us into these terrible wars” (for Duke, a virulent antisemite who was in the middle of an anti-Jewish rant, the key commonality is obviously that they are all Jews).
Considering that the Minnesota Republican Party had to be pressured to apologize for screening a video depicting George Soros as an evil puppetmaster (hurr hurr, he was pulling the strings of two Jewish Democrats, GET IT?), we don't think Duke needs to worry too much about the message getting across. The video was part of a campaign presentation for GOP secretary of state candidate Kim Crockett at the state convention earlier this month.
Video screenshot
Crockett, her team, and everyone involved with the state convention were simply astonished to learn that the imagery of Soros as a puppetmaster controlling Jewish politicians might be considered antisemitic, according to the apology:
“We understand that the use of imagery depicting Mr. Soros as a puppet-master at our state convention raised concerns that the imagery perpetuated an antisemitic trope,” state GOP chairman David Hann said Thursday in a statement, noting that the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas had contacted them after the video screened.
“We wish to assure the JCRC and our friends in the broader Jewish community that the image was not intended to invoke hostility toward the Jewish people,” Hann said. “It should not have happened, we apologize, and are committed to working with the JCRC to educate our staff and candidates on antisemitism.”
Hann said he'd talked to Crockett, and he'd concluded that the image wasn't intended to be antisemitic, and that "neither Ms. Crockett nor her creative team were aware that the depiction of a puppet-master invokes an old but persistent antisemitic trope."
The horrible thing, of course, is that the denials aren't entirely implausible, even if the imagery remains inexcusable. The far Right has so successfully integrated its messaging with the "mainstream" GOP that it's almost academic whether the makers of the video knew they were parroting antisemitic imagery. It's firmly embedded in how the GOP communicates now.
After all, great patriot Ben Garrison did it, and he got invited — then disinvited — to the Trump White House! Notice the very subtle "Rothschilds" hand controlling Soros in turn, which Garrison insisted was also not antisemitic, because "international banking" and 'Federal Reserve." He has Jewish friends, you know.
So golly, David Duke, it sure looks like your wish is coming true even if Tucker Carlson isn't yet reading passages verbatim from The Turner Diaries — or if he fails to cite the source when he inevitably starts.
[Media Matters / Forward / Times of Israel]
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Judge Boxwine Doesn't Know Why Y'all So 'Triggered' By Seeing One Little Gun
And some more Fox News hot takes from coverage of America's weekly high-casualty mass shooting!
The wingnut hot takes on the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting, where 19 beloved children and two of their favorite teachers were gunned down in cold blood, are coming hot and heavy. Why can't wingnuts just be emotionally gutted like the rest of us, and vow that these things shall never again happen in this country? Because that's not what they do.
Here's a new mini-batch, starting with Judge Boxwine AKA Jeanine Boxwine AKA Boxwine Pirro, who doesn't understand why all ye libs are so "triggered" just by seeing a little gun. No, don't worry! This isn't a slurring defense of the school shooters' bad guns! It's a defense of the security guards' good guns!
JESSE WATTERS: About what the FBI profiler said and what Greg mentioned about hardening these softer targets, where is the obstacle to having, politically, to having one single armed security guard in every single public school K-12, in the country? It doesn't seem like that is that huge of a deal. Where would be the pushback on that, judge?
JEANINE PIRRO: The pushback is that people today, many of them are intimidated, they are triggered if there is someone with a gun, they are frightened, that is this new narrative, when you see a gun you should be frightened as opposed to appreciating what they are doing for you.
Irrational libs, being frightened. After all, the good guy with the gun has never turned out to be the bad guy with the gun after all. And the good guys with guns definitely never wait around outside for 40 minutes while the bad guy with the gun is barricaded inside a classroom with his victims. (Look, we don't know exactly what happened there, and there's a lot of speculation. But it doesn't look great, is all we're saying.)
So that happened.
But it was actually one of the earlier reactions to our latest weekly massacre, so perhaps Boxwine can be forgiven for sloshing around like "why errrrrrbody so TRIGGERED," before the reality of the situation set in.
Media Matters watched Fox News all day yesterday, and collected some fresher takes.
For instance, Laura Ingraham says guns don't kill people, pressure cooker bombs kill people, except sure, this time it was a gun, but it could have been a pressure cooker bomb:
LAURA INGRAHAM: Now the Left is focusing on the fact that an 18-year-old with no clear source of income was able to buy expensive guns and 375 rounds of ammo. Of course, he could have just as easily, probably, built a pressure cooker bomb and killed just as many people. So focusing on his methods, it doesn't really end up solving very much.
"No way to prevent this," says only nation where this regularly happens.
STFU, stupid fucking clown person.
Lara Trump seems to think this is happening because there just aren't any Christian fathers anymore, not like her family has, plus also there is internet:
LARA TRUMP: And you look across the board at things like the fact that, you know, we have the dissolution of the family in so many respects. We have fatherless children on the rise in America. We have the loss of religion in so many aspects of our country, where it was a foundation of our country at one time. You can't discount the rise of social media and the role that that has played in things like this.
Just give 'em that old time religion like they do in the Trump family, won't have no guns. Besides, Christians are never terrorists, oh wait.
Meanwhile, Texas GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson — yeah that shitshow — shared that he believes this all happened because of all the rap-a-dee-do-dah and the shoot-em-up video games and yes also the internet.
JoeMyGod has the transcript on that one:
“There’s going to be all kinds of discussions coming up, unfortunately, you know, in the media regarding Second Amendment rights. But I think we really need to ask the question, how could something like this happen?
“When I grew up, things were different. And I just think that kids are exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff nowadays too.
“I look back and I think about the horrible stuff they hear when they listen to rap music, the video games that they watch from a really early age with all of this horrible violence and stuff.
“I just think that they have this access to the internet on a regular basis, which is just, you know, it’s not good for kids.”
The internet is bad for kids and the hippity-hoppity is bad for kids and the video games "that they watch" are bad for kids. Can you believe they let kids just get their hands on any rap musics and internets and video games they want? Why, they can just go down to the store and say, "Hello sir, I'd like some raps and some internets and some violent video games!" And in most states, they just say, "Sure, son!" and sell them the raps and the internets and the violent video games. Any old person can go and get raps and internets and video games. There should be a law!
On other Foxes, Tucker Carlson decided he wanted to talk about violent homeless people, because "this is bigger than a single mass shooting or even two of them in 10 days," and Tucker is just really concerned about the violent homeless people. And we could spend a lot of time talking about that, or smarmy filthy shit person Ted Cruz going on Fox last night and saying the real solution is "door control," and that the problem with schools is just that there are too many dang doors.
But we said this was going to be a "mini-batch" of hot takes, not a great big large huge batch. So this post is over now.
[Media Matters / same / JoeMyGod]
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