#Trump’s extramarital affairs

[rejectingrepublicans]

[lets-steal-an-archive]

As Donald Trump becomes the first US President to be convicted of felony crimes, take a look back at our reporting in the @NewYorker that exposed the first detailed accounts of the AMI "catch and kill" transactions that played a central role in the case:

On the effort to suppress an unproved rumor of a Trump love child:

On the effort to suppress Karen McDougal's affair:

For more detail, check out my subsequent episodes of "The Catch and Kill Podcast" detailing what prosecutors eventually described as a scheme to subvert an election, featuring interviews with the recipients of the payouts:

Dino Sajudin:

Karen McDougal:

[tomorrowusa]

Donald Trump has a gag order placed on him by the judge in his Stormy Daniels hush money trial. So to get around the gag order various Trump lickspittles make pilgrimages to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse to say stuff to the media which Trump himself is not allowed to say. Past Trump mouthpieces have included pseudo-hillbilly fascist Sen. J.D. Vance and House Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson.

Monday's Trump mouthpieces were a quintet of MAGA C-listers: Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA-09), ex-NYC police commissioner Bernie Kerik, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, Trump campaign aide Jason Miller (not related to Stephen Miller), and Kash Patel - a onetime deputy director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

While Trump has been beseeching his followers to show up outside the courthouse to demonstrate support for their Dear Leader, on Monday it was pro-democracy Trump opponents who were there in greater numbers.

A cadre of MAGA loyalists who had gathered to show their support for Donald Trump during his hush-money trial was shouted down by a bevy of cowbell-clanging anti-Trump protesters on Monday when they tried to speak outside of a lower Manhattan courthouse. [ ... ] The group that flanked the twice-impeached ex-president this time around included South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, former New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik, ex-Trump administration official Kash Patel, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller, and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA). All but Patel, meanwhile, were customarily decked out in Trump’s standard red tie and navy suit combo.

Yep, four of the five designated Trump lickspittles were dressed in Trump uniforms. Did he dress them himself over at Trump Tower?

Alan Wilson got an earful when he tried to spew the Trump line.

With boos raining down on Wilson, one demonstrator could be heard shouting “go home you carpetbagging fools.” Another protester who camped out behind the pro-Trump speakers with a large “Bootlickers” sign relentlessly blew a whistle while ringing a cowbell. According to independent reporter Jacqueline Sweet, the man was given a citation by law enforcement for “too much cowbell.” Patel, who is expected to take a senior White House role if Trump returns to power, portrayed the ex-president as a victim of an “unconstitutional weaponization of justice.” It was difficult to hear what he had to say as the crowd chanted: “Kash Patel, Go To Hell!” Kerik was also subjected to targeted insults when he spoke, with protesters calling him a “bald-headed bigot” throughout his comments. According to New York Magazine correspondent Oliva Nuzzi, the Trump-hating crowd also took aim at the speakers for dressing just like the former president, prompting them to call the MAGA group “red tie terrorists.” She added that the demonstrators even got a laugh from Miller, who chuckled when one protester wondered if they had bought their suits at “Dictators R Us.”

To use a favorite Trump word, Monday's Trump mouthpieces were real losers.

Rep. Andrew Clyde's rise to fame in Georgia was as a prominent gun store owner. One wonders how many of his guns make it up to NYC to be used illegally.

Bernie Kerik is a convicted felon for tax fraud who was later pardoned by Trump. He served several years behind bars for his crimes.

Alan Wilson has made false election fraud claims even before the Trump presidency and is a serial litigator for far right causes.

Kash Patel once served as an aide to Devin Nunes – the former House member who unsuccessfully sued a cartoon cow.

Jason Miller admitted to hiring prostitutes and having extramarital affairs with two campaign staffers. Republican family values – just like Trump.

Meidas Touch has a video report on Monday's scene outside the courthouse. (never mind the plant commercial in the middle).

If you're anywhere near NYC, visit the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse area on a day that the hush money trial is in session. There's a lunch break starting roughly at 11:30 AM and court is recessed for the day in the afternoon before the building closes at 5:00 PM. Bring your own cow bell and sign.

Court is in session this week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Next Monday court is closed for Memorial Day but should be in session on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. The case may go to the jury sometime late next week.

The Manhattan courthouse is at 100 Centre Street; take the 4, 5, or 6 subway trains to the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station and walk about four blocks north. The crowds and the Trump bootlickers seem to be directly across the street from the courthouse at Collect Pond Park.

EDIT: If Trump toadies had a bad day outside the courtroom, the one and only defense witness for Trump seems to have had an even worse one in court.

[vomitdodger]

1. Haley’s vote was 70% non GOP. Orchestrated for months this way as another way to interfere with elections. Doubt this? They took Biden off the ballet for the dem primary. Useful idiots and commies went with it.

2. Were a constitutional republic not democracy…so she’s “at least” a useful idiot.

3. MANY people on video saying the exact same. Coincidence? Not a chance.

4. Haley is running as a dem in everything but full disclosure. Financially dem backed. Supports destructive dem policies. A true snake.

5. NH RINO gov Sununu campaigned with her at every stop. A true loser. Even Tucker Carlson who likes EVERYONE can’t stand the guy.

6. All that and Trump still makes history by winning NH primary for a THIRD time.

7. Haley effectively lost the NV primary before it even starts. 90+ pro trump there.

8. SC, her home state, HATES comrade Haley. She will truly be smoked there. The only way ahead is propagating the “vote Haley to hurt trump”. And it still doesn’t work.

9. I guess two extramarital affairs on your deployed husband isn’t a show stopper. And yet she constantly invokes his service.

Fucking snake.

[bestworstcase]

Do you have thoughts you’d like to air on the Raven is actually Ruby’s dad theory? No prob if you’ve answered this before but could you link?

my general feeling on secret-biological-relation theories is that they’re usually something that arises from a misreading of narrative foiling (in that a bona fide narrative connection between two characters is taken to be foreshadowing for a literal material connection between the characters in-universe, rather than parsed as a narrative device that services theme; this also plays a role in why shipping narrative foils is so popular, because it follows from the textual thematic relationship) and in the case of secret parentage in particular, it is also often motivated at least in part by shipping (this is absolutely the case with summer/raven – and summer/qrow for that matter).

with rwby and the question of ruby’s parentage, such as it is, the fundamental issue i find in theories that taiyang isn’t ruby’s biological father, irrespective of Who the proposed alternative is, is that in practice each one boils down to two options:

#1, summer had an extramarital affair with raven that nobody else but the two of them knows about (in which case the only person who could reasonably reveal the truth is summer, because ruby is so much the spitting image of summer but for the fluffier hair she could’ve just as easily gotten from tai as from raven or qrow that no one would question she’s tai’s – especially given that we know now summer is a skilled liar!)

or

#2, everything was aboveboard (whether poly triad or open relationship or summer and tai actually having a platonic partnership or what-have-you), ruby’s true parentage is known to TRQ (and their friends/colleagues may have some general awareness of whatever the real situation was) and… nobody ever told ruby for Some Reason.

now personally i think – if we’re doing a theory in this vein – option #1 is both more interesting and more narratively plausible (because again: 9.10 flashback establishes that summer is a good liar and puts that trait squarely in focus), but the preference among the rosebird conspiracy crowd seems to overwhelmingly be for option #2, so we’ll focus on that one.

ON ITS FACE, i don’t think it’s crazy to speculate that the keeping secrets family might be keeping this secret, given e.g. yang wasn’t told about raven until summer’s disappearance (and may not really have been told so much as discovered, depending upon what “found out” means). why not hide effectively the same information from ruby?well.

for one thing, it then becomes narratively awkward to explain ��yang knows raven is her mom, ruby knows raven is yang’s mom, and raven expressly claims yang as her daughter (and has a bond to her); but neither ruby nor yang know that raven is also ruby’s mom*, raven has evinced exactly zero of her i-don’t-care-she-said-caringly behavior toward ruby, nor used “bet your daddy and uncle didn’t tell you that ruby is also my daughter, did they?” as the mother of all trump cards in her “here’s why you shouldn’t blindly trust whatever you’re told QUESTION EVERYTHING” gambit, and when qrow called raven out for being a deadbeat mom to yang he said sweet fuck all to her about ruby.”

[*we do not do the insistently referring to the non-carrying parent as The Dad thing in this household, thank you.]

if the presumption is that raven being ruby’s parent is not secret-secret—as in, this is known information to TRQ—then it becomes untenable as a surprise twist once you reach v4 and have qrow and raven, in a private conversation, discussing her abandonment of only one of her two daughters. even if raven felt (for some reason) that ruby didn’t really ‘count’ as her daughter, qrow has zero. reason. to let that fly, and no reason at all to uphold a charade when it’s just himself and raven.

rwby is better than butchering his characterization in this one scene for the sake of a dramatic reveal down the line; there are ways you could write qrow’s dialogue there to include both girls while being vague about the specific biological relationship, and then it becomes punchy foreshadowing instead of a retroactive “…why does qrow not give a damn about raven abandoning ruby too?” moment.

and foreshadowing like that is one of rwby’s greatest strengths! they do this sort of dialogue sleight of hand all the time!

but say they did fumble that one moment—it happens, it’s not impossible—well… as a narrative secret this becomes really untenable after v5. even if raven flat out did not consider ruby to be her daughter whatsoever for her own labyrinthine raven branwen reasons, if she is aware of a direct biological relation between herself and yang’s sister of which yang has clearly been kept in the dark, and her goal is to shock yang with information that will break her trust in taiyang and qrow—which it is, that’s exactly why she does the whole shapeshifting song and dance—then why wouldn’t she drop that bomb?

you could not possibly design a more flawless QUESTION EVERYTHING ALSO NEVER TRUST DAD OR UNCLE ABOUT ANYTHING EVER AGAIN kick in the face for yang than “oh by the way, your sister? i’m her mother too. the only reason you know about me is because you went looking; if you hadn’t… well, they would have happily kept you in the dark your whole life, too.”

and if raven didn’t drop that bomb because she has her signature Complicated Feelings about ruby, then shouldn’t we expect to see a glimmer of that in her response to ruby, as opposed to what we plainly get—which is “hm. you sure are summer’s daughter. fireball in the face for you for one thousand years!!!”

in the reverse direction, we have the question of whether such a reveal really serves the narrative, and i don’t think it does.

the general thrust of the “for” argument here is that the revelation of such a frankly pointless lie about something that is only a big deal because the adults conspired to hide it would tie off all the existing threads about team strq being generally dysfunctional in a tidy little bow and highlight it by virtue of that dysfunction being emphatically Not Salem’s Fault. to an extent this is a line of thinking that i find not unreasonable because it is quite clear that team strq’s dysfunction was indeed Not Salem’s Fault – the shadow war was a significant stressor of course, but there is an awful lot of small interpersonal messiness simmering inside that pressure cooker.

HOWEVER,

rwby has spent Nine Whole Volumes meticulously slow-boiling “what happened the night summer rose met salem?” as THE central mystery – that is the question haunting this entire narrative, the missing piece of the puzzle, the answer that must be found and resolved before the story can end. and i promise. I PROMISE. that the answer to this question will not, in any configuration, principally concern the intra-team romantic fuck ups of team strq. LOWER THE FILTER SETTING ON YOUR SHIPPER GOGGLES THAT IS A SIDE DISH OR PERHAPS A GARNISH.

the problem for rosebird parents (and other ruby parentage theories) is that it’s very difficult to fit a reveal like that into the margins of The Most Important Narrative Reveal. (which is: summer joined salem.) narratively you put yourself into a corner where you have to balance exploding ruby and yang’s relationships with all of team strq at once against… resolving the actual central conflict of the story and dealing with the fallout of “OUR MOM JOINED YOU?!” and the end result is going to be either:

the parentage reveal just kind of falls flat and gets skimmed over quickly in a not very satisfying way because everyone has a bigger, unfortunately immortal fish to fry

the parentage reveal turns into a narrative black hole that eats up way too much runtime proportionate to its actual narrative importance and salem is like “…so should i come back when you kids are done yelling at your parents or…?”

neither one is a great idea. again, the optimal time for a ruby parentage reveal was v4/5, with raven’s entry proper into the story. doing this in v10, with everything else that is going to be going on in vacuo as the story enters its final arc, would not go well.

a secondary issue is the impact such a reveal would have on 1. the nascent dad’s chickens come home to roost arc, and 2. resolving matters between raven and yang in vacuo, however that shakes out.

for the first, any kind of “actually tai isn’t the dad” reveal inherently moves the focus of his character arc, from “tai neglected his kids and favored ruby, also why is he still in vale” to, you know, the lying. it dilutes the payoff for all the development with regard to neglect/favoritism by veering off at a wild angle right before the punch. there is a time and a place for narrative velociraptors in the bushes, but swerving like that isn’t it.

and for the second… there is no way to do a reveal that raven is secretly also ruby’s mom, at the point in the narrative where yang is meeting raven again after their confrontation now that raven is committed to trying, without drop-kicking yang and yang’s finding-her-mother storyline off the stage. sorry. you can’t do this without making it all about ruby and how ruby feels and how raven feels about ruby and summer and how yang feels about ruby having the same moms. like lol they are not going to do that, in the same way they’re not going to suddenly drop ruby’s summer rose identity disturbance storyline in favor of going “aaaaactually yang is raven’s and summer’s baby so let’s focus on how yang feels about learning summer is her biological mother for real.”

tertiary problem with the rosebird parents theory, and this isn’t a narrative issue but rather to do with the “explaining how two women made a baby” exercises, wearily taps the sign. Intersex Conditions Do Not Work That Way.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Aaron Rupar and Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

By Stephen Robinson

Donald Trump has downplayed the $130,000 hush payment made on his behalf to adult film performer Stormy Daniels as a “simple private transaction.” In reality, it may have changed the course of US history. Trump, of course, is now on trial in New York for charges related to the October 2016 payoff, including falsifying business records with an intent to unlawfully influence an election. Arguably, the New York indictment is the least headline-grabbing of the four he faces, in part because the hush money scheme pales in comparison with stealing classified documents, inciting an insurrection, or trying to overturn an election. Politically, however, it can’t be overstated just how large a role the Daniels payment played in helping Trump squeak his way into the White House. Instead of getting lost in the legal weeds, it’s important to take a step back and examine the context surrounding the payoff and why it was an existential matter for Trump in the weeks leading up to his victory in November 2016.

Why Trump desperately needed to hush Daniels

About a month out from election day 2016, the Trump campaign was on the ropes. The infamous Access Hollywood tape that showed Trump boasting about groping women in September 2005 was the ultimate October surprise. In the wake of its release on October 7, a number of prominent Republicans withdrew their support, and swing state voters were abandoning him in droves. Days before the tape’s release, Trump had a narrow one-point lead in Wisconsin among likely voters. The first polling conducted after the poll’s release showed Hillary Clinton ahead by six points, and by October 10, her lead had grown to 19 points.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake wrote on October 11 that “the 2016 electoral map is rapidly slipping away from Donald Trump.” Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were all “lean Democrat,” and Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina were tossups. Cillizza and Blake estimated that “if the election were held today, Hillary Clinton would win 341 electoral votes to Donald Trump's 197.” Unfortunately for us all, the election wasn’t held on October 11, and less than a month later, Trump would sweep all six of those states. This improbable comeback is usually linked to FBI Director James Comey’s October 28 letter that publicly announced the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into Clinton’s private email server use. The emails were only tangentially related to the FBI’s investigation into Anthony Weiner’s illicit text messages to a 15-year-old North Carolina girl, but this added an extra salacious element to the story, which soon appeared on the front page of the New York Times and dominated the news cycle.

Behind the scenes of the Daniels payoff

The Daniels affair wasn’t the only extramarital tryst Trump was trying to keep under wraps in the months before the 2016 election. In June 2016, a month before the Republican National Convention, Karen McDougal, an actress and former Playboy model, tried to sell her story about an alleged affair she had with Trump from 2006 to April 2007. (Trump married Melania in 2005 and their son Barron was born in March 2006.) The National Enquirer secured the rights to McDougal’s account for $150,000 but had no intention of publishing the story. National Enquirer publisher David Pecker confirmed last week during his testimony in Trump’s criminal trial that this “catch and kill” tactic was specifically done to benefit Trump’s campaign, bolstering federal prosecutors’ case that the McDougal deal was meant "to suppress [her] story so as to prevent it from influencing the election."

But with Trump’s campaign on the ropes in the wake of the Access Hollywood bombshell, Daniels became an urgent concern. She told National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard on October 8 that she was willing to go on the record about her alleged affair. This was the day after the Access Hollywood tape’s release, so the timing of a new scandal about Trump having an affair with an adult film actress might have been fatal to his political hopes. Trump was spinning the Access Hollywood recording as merely “locker room talk” — not something he’d actually do in real life — but Daniels, like McDougal, claimed that Trump cheated on his wife who’d given birth to their son just a few months earlier. This revelation that Trump was cheating not only on his wife but on his mistress with an adult film actress would have solidified Trump’s sleazeball image with the undecided voters he needed to swing his way.

[...] Republicans and right-wing media have spent the past three years whining that suppression of the New York Post’s “blockbuster Hunter Biden laptop story” cost Trump the 2020 election. The utterly shameless Rep. Elise Stefanik claimed at a House select subcommittee hearing last year that “according to polling, of the people who were made aware of the Hunter Biden laptop story, 53 percent would have changed their vote, including 61 percent of Democrats. This is the definition of election meddling … it’s collusion, it’s corruption, and it’s unconstitutional.” It’s also a blatant lie, as PolitiFact gave Stefanik’s statement a “false” rating.

In the immediate aftermath of the release of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Donald Trump infamously was caught bragging about sexual assault, Stormy Daniels sought to tell her story to the National Enquirer… only for them to kill it from being publicized.

Had that fact been publicized before the voters in 2016, it would have been a fatal blow to the Trump campaign. Alas, that didn’t happen, and Trump won in 2016.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bully Pulp stevebrodner.substack.com

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 12, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 13, 2024

Today, Trump backed out of another debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. He tried to spin his fear as a sign of strength, claiming that “Polls clearly show that I won the Debate,” and so there was no reason to debate again, but boy, is that going to be a hard sell. 

First of all, as journalist Ahmed Baba points out, “This man has never, in his life, denied a stage with millions of viewers…. Trump’s post-debate internal polls must be brutal.” Second, he hardly looks dominant as TikTok is overflowing with memes making fun of his “They’re eating the dogs” moment and as Vice President Harris made fun of his “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act to a packed 17,000-seat stadium in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote: “Impotent Trump was too intimidated to even look Kamala’s direction at the debate and now he wusses out of the rematch. Cannot recall a more dramatic demonstration of beta weakness in a campaign setting.” Harris posted on social media that “we owe it to the voters to have another debate,” and reiterated that sentiment to her cheering supporters in Greensboro.

In a speech to about 550 people in Tucson, Arizona, Trump insisted he had scored a “monumental victory” in the debate, referred to Minnesota governor Tim Walz as the vice president, slurred his words, and appeared to be having trouble reading off the teleprompters. CNN tonight compared one of Trump’s 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton to his performance on Tuesday, and the difference was stark.

Psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman wrote in The Atlantic today that Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline. His tangents and inability to get to a point suggest “a fundamental problem with an underlying cognitive process.” “If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness,” he wrote.

Trump continues to try to dominate the political debate by refusing to back off any of his assertions, doubling down on the lies about immigrants eating pets and teachers giving students sex change operations. He called Harris a “Marxist communist fascist socialist,” clearly just stringing words together.

Meanwhile, he is giving off vibes of desperation. This afternoon he announced he would launch his crypto platform “World Liberty Financial” on X Spaces on September 16, hardly the sign of a presidential candidate convinced he’s about to regain his position as the leader of the free world.  

It has been notable for a while that Trump’s wife, Melania, is nowhere to be seen, and Trump has begun to cling to provocateur Laura Loomer, who has vowed utter loyalty to Trump and is evidently quite happy to be seen with him. This is a problem for the Republican Party because of her history of conspiracy theories and open racism. As Joe Perticone and Marc Caputo of The Bulwark note, Loomer has referred to Vice President Harris as a “drug using prostitute,” for example, and suggested she has not given birth to children because “she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.”  

Loomer’s extremism has made other Trump supporters urge him to keep her at a distance, sparking an embarrassing public fight. Two of those trying to get Trump to isolate Loomer are Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Their chilliness prompted Loomer to fight back on social media, questioning Graham’s sexual identity and calling attention to Greene’s extramarital affair and comparing her to a “hooker.” 

The public fight between Loomer and Trump’s more restrained supporters—and who would have thought Greene would fall in the “more restrained” category?—illustrates something Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo today. 

Marshall noted that the Republicans are essentially running two campaigns for president in 2024. One is run by Trump himself, and it is based on Trump’s personal grievances and stories from his rallies that have little relationship to reality. In 2016, Trump blew up the American political scene with his idiosyncrasies, and his unique style led him to the White House. But 2024 is a different moment. The campaign is faltering as Trump appears increasingly unhinged, afraid to be on a stage with Harris, and seemingly unable to distinguish fact from fiction. 

The other campaign is being run by Trump’s campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who quietly recognize that Trump is in decline and are trying to run a much more traditional campaign. Like Lindsey Graham when he drew Loomer’s wrath, they keep urging Trump to talk about the economy and to dial back the craziness to avoid driving off voters interested in stability. While they are unable to contain Trump, they are trying to win the election by hammering away at swing state voters with ads attacking Harris and trying to make her look radical. 

If Trump were to win under these circumstances, it seems likely that he would not be the driving force in his own administration. The power of the office would then be wielded by Vice President J.D. Vance, a reality we should confront in the few weeks left before the election. Vance is a religious extremist, of course, whose recent willingness to smear Haitian immigrants with a lie so long as it might enhance the Republicans’ chance of winning was despicable.  

Aside from the Christian nationalism and the lies, Vance recently said he sees American history as “a constant war between Northern Yankees and Southern Bourbons, where whichever side the hillbillies are on, wins.” The Northern Yankees in the late nineteenth century stood for protecting the right of all men to equality before the law, while the Southern Bourbons—probably named originally for Bourbon County, Kentucky, before the name came to represent those who supported the idea of royalty—wanted to get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment that protected Black rights, and the Fifteenth Amendment that established the right of Black men to vote. 

Vance said today’s “Northern Yankees” are what he calls “hyper-woke, coastal elites”: the ones trying to protect equal rights. “The Southern Bourbons are sort of the same old-school Southern folks that have been around and influential in this country for 200 years,” Vance said. Or, as people understood it in the late nineteenth century, they were former Confederates who opposed Black rights. “And it’s like the hillbillies have really started to migrate towards the Southern Bourbons instead of the Northern woke people,” he concluded, in an evident hope that they would control the American future. 

Extremist Republicans used to hide that sentiment. Now the man who could become the acting president is openly embracing it. 

At the same time MAGA leaders are trying to turn out their base, they are also working to make it harder for Democrats to vote. Yesterday, the Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court decided to permit Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to have his name taken off the ballot in that state, although, as Mark Joseph Stern reported in Slate, he did not ask to be removed until four days after he withdrew from the race, which was five days after the deadline for withdrawing. 

By the time he withdrew, county election boards were already printing ballots, and the court’s decision will require nearly three million ballots to be destroyed and new ones designed and printed. According to North Carolina’s state election director, this will take 18 to 23 days and will cut into early voting. North Carolina law requires state officials to mail ballots to Americans living abroad and to service members by September 6, the day that early voting was supposed to start.  

As Stern points out, Trump and Harris are effectively tied in North Carolina, and early voters there skew Democratic. 

Last night, musician Taylor Swift won seven awards at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, mostly for awards surrounding her song “Fortnight.” In her acceptance speech for “Video of the Year,” she said: “[T]he fact that this is a fan-voted award and you voted for this, I appreciate it so much. And if you are over 18, please register to vote for something else that’s very important coming up, the 2024 presidential election,” Swift said, although she could hardly be heard over the roar from the crowd at her call for them to vote.  

Pollster Tom Bonier has been following registration numbers and said that there has been a massive increase in voter registrations after Swift’s endorsement of Harris. “This intensity and enthusiasm is really unprecedented at this point. It’s even bigger than what we saw after the Dobbs decision in 2022.”

Today, Republicans in North Carolina sued to overturn the decision of the state election board that students and employees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can use state-approved digital IDs as identification for voting. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[wedthrice]

i love cersei as a character point blank but i also. i also love her for the glimpses of margaery's 'mask' slipping that their interactions give us, and the development of marg's character that we get from these same interactions

like, when margaery and her ladies are imprisoned by the seven on the trumped up charges of extramarital affairs and fornication and whatever other nonsense accusations cersei bandies about, we see that marg does understand the situation she's in –– of course she does, she's not stupid. for all the very valid criticisms levied at mace, namely at the way he pimps his teenage daughter out to every baratheon king he can get his hands on, it's made crystal clear to us that marg's political education and savviness was not stifled the same way that cersei's was. she adapts her persona and her attitude to the situation, to the circumstance, to the present company. she's able to read a room and its inhabitants and reflect what they want back at them. but when she catches on to the fact that the 'innocent maiden act' is a fruitless endeavour with cersei, she drops it entirely, and she stops trying.

"How else will you prove your innocence?" Cersei gave Margaery's hand a reassuring squeeze. "It is your right to decide the manner of the trial, to be sure. You are the queen. The knights of the Kingsguard are sworn to defend you." / Margaery understood at once. "A trial by battle? Loras is hurt, though, elsewise he . . ." / "He has six brothers." / Margaery stared at her, then pulled her hand away. "Is that a jape? Boros is a craven, Meryn is old and slow, your brother is maimed, the other two are off in Dorne, and Osmund is a bloody Kettleblack. Loras has two brothers, not six. If there's to be a trial by battle, I want Garlan as my champion."

like!!! i really think margaery was a little offended at how idiotic and naive cersei seems to think she is, and so she stops playing nice and innocent, and what we finally get to see is a little glimpse of the real margaery – a sixteen year old girl who is perceptive and quick and bitchy in the teenage girl way, and who no longer wants to waste what time she may have left trying to get a delusional narcissist to like her.

[darkmaga-retard]

Guest post by Cristina Laila

President Trump held a massive MAGA rally in Atlanta, Georgia on Saturday.

Trump took the stage to thunderous applause at the Georgia State University Convocation Center.

WATCH:

Trump invited a woman named Michaelah Montgomery to speak at the Atlanta rally on Saturday night.

WATCH:

Montgomery ended Kamala Harris’s career with one question about Willie Brown.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown admitted in 2020 to an extramarital affair with Kamala Harris.

Brown also admitted to giving Harris her first official state job.

In a short article in the San Francisco Chronicle Brown admitted to the extra-marital affair and to appointing Harris to two state commissions.

“Aside from her record as a prosecutor, why don’t we ask Mrs. Willie Brown if Kamala Harris cares about black families,” Montgomery said.

OUCH!

[misfitwashere]

September 12, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 13, 2024

Today, Trump backed out of another debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. He tried to spin his fear as a sign of strength, claiming that “Polls clearly show that I won the Debate,” and so there was no reason to debate again, but boy, is that going to be a hard sell. 

First of all, as journalist Ahmed Baba points out, “This man has never, in his life, denied a stage with millions of viewers…. Trump’s post-debate internal polls must be brutal.” Second, he hardly looks dominant as TikTok is overflowing with memes making fun of his “They’re eating the dogs” moment and as Vice President Harris made fun of his “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act to a packed 17,000-seat stadium in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote: “Impotent Trump was too intimidated to even look Kamala’s direction at the debate and now he wusses out of the rematch. Cannot recall a more dramatic demonstration of beta weakness in a campaign setting.” Harris posted on social media that “we owe it to the voters to have another debate,” and reiterated that sentiment to her cheering supporters in Greensboro.

In a speech to about 550 people in Tucson, Arizona, Trump insisted he had scored a “monumental victory” in the debate, referred to Minnesota governor Tim Walz as the vice president, slurred his words, and appeared to be having trouble reading off the teleprompters. CNN tonight compared one of Trump’s 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton to his performance on Tuesday, and the difference was stark.

Psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman wrote in The Atlantic today that Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline. His tangents and inability to get to a point suggest “a fundamental problem with an underlying cognitive process.” “If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness,” he wrote.

Trump continues to try to dominate the political debate by refusing to back off any of his assertions, doubling down on the lies about immigrants eating pets and teachers giving students sex change operations. He called Harris a “Marxist communist fascist socialist,” clearly just stringing words together.

Meanwhile, he is giving off vibes of desperation. This afternoon he announced he would launch his crypto platform “World Liberty Financial” on X Spaces on September 16, hardly the sign of a presidential candidate convinced he’s about to regain his position as the leader of the free world.  

It has been notable for a while that Trump’s wife, Melania, is nowhere to be seen, and Trump has begun to cling to provocateur Laura Loomer, who has vowed utter loyalty to Trump and is evidently quite happy to be seen with him. This is a problem for the Republican Party because of her history of conspiracy theories and open racism. As Joe Perticone and Marc Caputo of The Bulwark note, Loomer has referred to Vice President Harris as a “drug using prostitute,” for example, and suggested she has not given birth to children because “she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.”  

Loomer’s extremism has made other Trump supporters urge him to keep her at a distance, sparking an embarrassing public fight. Two of those trying to get Trump to isolate Loomer are Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Their chilliness prompted Loomer to fight back on social media, questioning Graham’s sexual identity and calling attention to Greene’s extramarital affair and comparing her to a “hooker.” 

The public fight between Loomer and Trump’s more restrained supporters—and who would have thought Greene would fall in the “more restrained” category?—illustrates something Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo today. 

Marshall noted that the Republicans are essentially running two campaigns for president in 2024. One is run by Trump himself, and it is based on Trump’s personal grievances and stories from his rallies that have little relationship to reality. In 2016, Trump blew up the American political scene with his idiosyncrasies, and his unique style led him to the White House. But 2024 is a different moment. The campaign is faltering as Trump appears increasingly unhinged, afraid to be on a stage with Harris, and seemingly unable to distinguish fact from fiction. 

The other campaign is being run by Trump’s campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who quietly recognize that Trump is in decline and are trying to run a much more traditional campaign. Like Lindsey Graham when he drew Loomer’s wrath, they keep urging Trump to talk about the economy and to dial back the craziness to avoid driving off voters interested in stability. While they are unable to contain Trump, they are trying to win the election by hammering away at swing state voters with ads attacking Harris and trying to make her look radical. 

If Trump were to win under these circumstances, it seems likely that he would not be the driving force in his own administration. The power of the office would then be wielded by Vice President J.D. Vance, a reality we should confront in the few weeks left before the election. Vance is a religious extremist, of course, whose recent willingness to smear Haitian immigrants with a lie so long as it might enhance the Republicans’ chance of winning was despicable.  

Aside from the Christian nationalism and the lies, Vance recently said he sees American history as “a constant war between Northern Yankees and Southern Bourbons, where whichever side the hillbillies are on, wins.” The Northern Yankees in the late nineteenth century stood for protecting the right of all men to equality before the law, while the Southern Bourbons—probably named originally for Bourbon County, Kentucky, before the name came to represent those who supported the idea of royalty—wanted to get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment that protected Black rights, and the Fifteenth Amendment that established the right of Black men to vote. 

Vance said today’s “Northern Yankees” are what he calls “hyper-woke, coastal elites”: the ones trying to protect equal rights. “The Southern Bourbons are sort of the same old-school Southern folks that have been around and influential in this country for 200 years,” Vance said. Or, as people understood it in the late nineteenth century, they were former Confederates who opposed Black rights. “And it’s like the hillbillies have really started to migrate towards the Southern Bourbons instead of the Northern woke people,” he concluded, in an evident hope that they would control the American future. 

Extremist Republicans used to hide that sentiment. Now the man who could become the acting president is openly embracing it. 

At the same time MAGA leaders are trying to turn out their base, they are also working to make it harder for Democrats to vote. Yesterday, the Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court decided to permit Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to have his name taken off the ballot in that state, although, as Mark Joseph Stern reported in Slate, he did not ask to be removed until four days after he withdrew from the race, which was five days after the deadline for withdrawing. 

By the time he withdrew, county election boards were already printing ballots, and the court’s decision will require nearly three million ballots to be destroyed and new ones designed and printed. According to North Carolina’s state election director, this will take 18 to 23 days and will cut into early voting. North Carolina law requires state officials to mail ballots to Americans living abroad and to service members by September 6, the day that early voting was supposed to start.  

As Stern points out, Trump and Harris are effectively tied in North Carolina, and early voters there skew Democratic. 

Last night, musician Taylor Swift won seven awards at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, mostly for awards surrounding her song “Fortnight.” In her acceptance speech for “Video of the Year,” she said: “[T]he fact that this is a fan-voted award and you voted for this, I appreciate it so much. And if you are over 18, please register to vote for something else that’s very important coming up, the 2024 presidential election,” Swift said, although she could hardly be heard over the roar from the crowd at her call for them to vote.  

Pollster Tom Bonier has been following registration numbers and said that there has been a massive increase in voter registrations after Swift’s endorsement of Harris. “This intensity and enthusiasm is really unprecedented at this point. It’s even bigger than what we saw after the Dobbs decision in 2022.”

Today, Republicans in North Carolina sued to overturn the decision of the state election board that students and employees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can use state-approved digital IDs as identification for voting. 

—

[antidrumpfs]

Fox “News” - The biggest single factor in creating the Trump Error

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year “A thorough and damning exploration of the incestuous relationship between Trump and his favorite channel.” —The New York Times “A Rosetta Stone for stuff about this presidency that doesn’t otherwise make sense to normal humans.” —Rachel Maddow, MSNBC “Stelter’s critique goes beyond salacious tidbits about extramarital affairs (though there are plenty of those) to expose a collusion that threatens the pillars of our democracy.” —The Washington Post The urgent and untold story of the collusion between Fox News and Donald Trump from the New York Times bestselling author of Top of the Morning.

"A deep, dispiriting dive into the nefarious intersection of politics, conspiracy, lies, and money as served up by Donald Trump and Fox News." —Kirkus (starred review)

"Stelter's account gives a sense that […] there's no one really in control — that Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham and the “Fox & Friends” morning team can essentially do what they want." —Associated Press

"[Stelter] chronicles the symbiotic relationship between [Trump] and Rupert Murdoch’s most famous product …Hoax is amply documented." —The Guardian

.................................................................................................................

Highly recommended book. If you want to understand how we got an utterly corrupt buffoon installed as president, and why more than a third of the country still supports him, this book is a must read. - antidrumpfs

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Meanwhile back at the ranch…the most corrupt person in the world is facing another legal challenge.

[beardedmrbean]

LOS ANGELES — Stormy Daniels must pay nearly $122,000 of Donald Trump's legal fees that were racked up in connection with the porn actor's failed defamation lawsuit, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The decision in California came at about the same time that Trump became the only ex-president to be charged with a crime. Trump pleaded not guilty in a New York City courtroom to a 34-count felony indictment accusing him of falsifying business records in a scheme to hush up allegations of extramarital affairs with Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal that broke during his first White House run.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and was paid $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement days before the 2016 presidential election.

She sued him for defamation after he dismissed her claims of being threatened to keep quiet about the tryst as a "total con job." A judge threw out the case in 2018.

On Tuesday, a commissioner for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump's attorneys "reasonably spent" more than 183 hours on an appeal of the case but denied a request for another $5,150 in other fees because it wasn't itemized.

In all, Daniels has been ordered to pay more than $600,000 in Trump's legal fees, tweeted Harmeet Dillon, one of his attorneys in the case.

That includes some $300,000 in attorney's fees that Daniels previously was ordered to pay.

After a federal appeals court upheld that award last year, Daniels stated: "I will go to jail before I pay a penny."

Messages seeking comment from her attorney, Oklahoma lawyer Clark Brewster, weren't immediately returned after hours Tuesday.

[veale2006-blog]

The Truth About Martin Luther King, Jr. AKA Michael King

YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" ALWAYS SEEK THE TRUTH NO MATTER WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES MAY BE!!! LONG READ BUT WORTH IT!

January 16, 2023 In November of 2017, President Trump instructed the National Archives to release hundreds of previously-sealed documents which pertained to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Included among these documents were two FBI files which, curiously enough, have little to do with the Kennedy assassination but could have great bearing on the current struggles of the Dissident Right. In Part 1 of this series, we covered the May 1967 FBI report entitled “Racial Violence Potential in the United States This Summer.”

Now I will discuss the second document, “Martin Luther King, Jr., an Analysis,” which was dated March 12, 1968, just three weeks before King’s assassination.

It always hurts to see one’s icons destroyed. Those icons are really what link a person to a greater humanity and whatever lies beyond it. It’s as if through an icon a person can channel an identity which signifies something much greater than himself. Icons can pull people into their orbits and inspire love and awe. People derive meaning and self-worth through them. Icons can also compete. Different groups may share an icon, or their incompatible icons may prevent them from coexisting. But in all cases, serious espionage prostrate themselves before their icons. It’s sort of like kissing the ring of a mafia boss. It’s done for protection. If you’re going to get to me, first you have to get through him.

In releasing the FBI’s 20-page analysis of Martin Luther King. The information in it is quite damning, and it hits King’s legacy from several directions. If people on the Right take up where this document left off by internalizing the document and by going on the offensive with it against the Left, King’s potency as an icon will be greatly reduced. It sort of reminds me of how Sean Hannity would often mention Chappaquiddick whenever the topic of Ted Kennedy came up on his show. It was his way of shaming his opponents for supporting an icon that was not only all too human, but at times even less than that.

For students of the Civil Rights Movement, the FBI’s analysis may not reveal very much new information about King (although there is some). King’s heyday is still well within living memory, and contemporaneous knowledge and rumor surrounding the man has had a way of trickling up to the present day, especially within conservative and rightist circles. The major knocks against him are that he plagiarized his doctoral thesis in systematic theology at Boston University in the mid-1950s, that he frequently engaged in extramarital sex, and that he was closely linked to the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). The FBI file addresses these last two issues, in some cases down to niggling detail, and leads one to conclude that Martin Luther King was little more than a sex addict and a shill for the Communist Party.

The sexual indiscretions harm King’s legacy, of course, but in the near-fifty years since his death, King’s friends and admirers have successfully whitewashed a good deal of it. Have a look at this Wikipedia article, which I believe sticks to the leftist party line on King. In the section entitled “Adultery,” the article’s authors and their various sources refer blandly to King’s “affairs,” “liaisons,” “infidelities,” and (best of all) “incidental couplings.” King colleague and eventual successor at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Ralph Abernathy wrote of King’s “weakness for women,” and claimed he had a “difficult time with temptation.” Another writer describes King’s promiscuity as “a form of anxiety reduction” which caused him a great deal of “painful and at times overwhelming guilt.”

The whitewashing of King’s prodigious sexual appetites goes on to this day. For example, CNN called the document’s frank disclosures of King’s conduct as “insinuations and assertions about King’s personal life” and describes King’s behavior as “extramarital affairs and other sexual improprieties.” CNN then quotes the current director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute who accuses the authors of the document of attempting to “damage Martin Luther King’s reputation.”

So, basically, in the eyes of the Left, Martin Luther King, Jr. is a victim who is as innocent as he could possibly be and still be guilty. Given the Left’s overall tolerance of sexual promiscuity and deviancy, this means he’s not really guilty at all. At least not until the National Archives releases the FBI surveillance tapes and transcripts to the public in 2027.

So what did the FBI disclose? In the report’s final section, entitled “King’s Personal Conduct,” it states that in February 1968, while running a “workshop” on urban leadership in Miami, King hired prostitutes with funds from the Ford Foundation. He then engaged in binge drinking and group sex acts which the FBI describes as “deviating from the normal.” The FBI also relates how King participated in another “drunken sex orgy” in Washington, DC back in 1964. The sex acts were both “natural and unnatural” according to the FBI and were performed “for the entertainment of onlookers.”

In the 1960s, this was the pattern for King, who, according to the FBI, “has continued to carry on his sexual aberrations secretly while holding himself out to public view as a moral leader of religious conviction.”

As for bombshells in the sexual improprieties department, the file reveals that King may have sired a baby girl out of wedlock with the wife of a “prominent Negro dentist in Los Angeles.” He also reportedly had sexual relations with folk singer Joan Baez.

Note how King’s defenders refer to all this as King’s “personal life” or, when forced to, admit his excesses only in the most anodyne terms, such as “affairs.” No, King didn't just have “affairs.” He had sex parties.

Furthermore, the FBI analysis did not infringe upon King’s “personal life” because what King did wasn't merely personal. What one does in the bedroom with one’s spouse or significant other is “personal.” I’ll even grant that what one does during a discreet tryst in a hotel room can also be construed as “personal.” Drunken orgies, on the other hand, especially those involving prostitutes and paid for by grant money, cannot possibly be considered “personal.” No, such behavior is quite public — not to mention hypocritical — when engaged in by a public figure who dedicates his life to holding his nation up to unrealistically high moral standards.

Even more inflammatory about the FBI report — although reported on less since its release — is its assertion that King often acted at the behest of his communist puppet masters. Where the two pages covering King’s sexual misconduct challenge his high moral standing as a Civil Rights Era icon, the ten or so pages covering his communist activities bluntly call into question his intellectual capacities as a leader of men. Unsurprisingly, the name Stanley Levison appears many times in the document. Levison was a Jewish attorney and “shrewd, dedicated communist” who acted for many years as King’s “Assistant Chief” and who also served as a clandestine fund-raiser for the CPUSA. The FBI claims that King often looked to Levison for instruction and approval before acting, and that Levison used King to further the communist agenda (which by the 1960s included linking the so-called “Negro people’s freedom movement” with anti-Vietnam War effort).

Levison gravitated to Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1956. He has been as dedicated in his support of King as he has been in advancing communist goals. He has actively involved himself in fund-raising drives for King, served as his legal counsel in certain matters, suggested speech material for him, discussed with King demonstrations in which King was involved, guided him in regard to acceptance or rejection of various public appearances and speaking commitments, and helped him with matters related to articles and books King has prepared.

According to the FBI, Levison also ghostwrote a chapter in King’s book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?. Most damning, however, is the FBI’s assertion that Levison considered King a “slow thinker” and insisted that he never issue statements without first seeking approval from him (Levison) or his other advisors.

Levison also served as the SCLC’s assistant treasurer in the early 1960s.

Also according to the FBI, Levison and other sources within the CPUSA saw King as a committed Marxist-Leninist who for obvious reasons had to keep this fact under wraps. But his ties to communism, the FBI shows, were quite clear. One of King’s closest advisors, Clarence Jones, married the communist daughter of publisher William H. Norton. Other communist colleagues of King included Hunter Pitts O’Dell, Lawrence Reddick, Bayard Rustin, Cordy Vivian, Randolph Blackwell, and Harry Wachtel.

Wachtel and Rustin in particular acted as behind-the-scenes players who attempted to leverage King’s status as a Nobel Peace Prize winner in order to “inject King into the Vietnam issue” and ultimately conceded victory the Vietcong. But King, who apparently knew little about international politics, was hardly suited for the job.

When a newspaper asked him twelve questions on his position on Vietnam, King forwarded the questions to Levison. Further, after the bombing of North Vietnam in 1966, the media was pressuring King for a response.

He had to check with Levison and Rustin before giving one. As the FBI document shows, these were not isolated incidents. Martin Luther King, Jr. frequently sought counsel and instruction from his advisors before acting, especially his Jewish ones, Wachtel and Levison. Also, in spite of denying any communist ties, his positions and statements rarely wavered far from the official platform of the CPUSA.

The fact that two of King’s most prominent advisors were Jews should come as a surprise to no one. Benjamin Ginsburg, in his indispensable work The Fatal Embrace shows exactly how Jewed-up the Civil Rights Movement really was:

Jewish organizations also worked closely with civil rights groups during the 1960s in their struggles on behalf of voting tights and for the desegregation of public facilities and accommodations. Jewish contributors provided a substantial share of the funding for such civil rights groups as the NAACP and CORE. Jewish attorneys were at the forefront of the legal offensive against the American apartheid system.

Stanley Levinson , a longtime official and fund-raiser for the American Jewish Congress, became Martin Luther King’s chief aide and advisor, having previously served as a major fund-raiser for Bayard Rustin. Harry Wachtel was a major legal advisor and fundraiser for the SCLC. Levison and Wachtel were often called King’s twin Jewish lawyers. Jack Greenberg, head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was the most important single civil rights lawyer in the United States. Jews comprised a large segment — perhaps one-third of the Whites who participated in civil rights marches and protests in the South during the 1960s.

The information presented in “Martin Luther King, Jr., an Analysis” only supports Ginsburg’s points as well as the conviction that Martin Luther King acted often as a tool for the Communist Party.

There is one relatively minor finding in the FBI report which should be mentioned before concluding.

Apparently, on top of being a sex fiend and covert communist, Martin Luther King and his associates at the SCLC were swindling money from the US government. In a short section entitled “A Tax Dodge” the FBI states that The SCLC set up Foundations to serve as tax exempt organizations that would solicit funds for the SCLC. To this end, the American Foundation on Nonviolence of New York City, and the Southern Christian Leadership Foundation of Chicago, Illinois, were established. As money is needed by the SCLC, Harry Wachtel reportedly funnels the money from the American Foundation on Nonviolence to the SCLC.

I have no idea if this was common knowledge beforehand, but it was certainly a new one for me.

As an icon of the Left, Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered today in two major ways: as a paragon of the egalitarian ethos championed by current Western elites, and as proof of the moral superiority of the Left over the Right. Using King, the Left can justify violence against its enemies simply by claiming that King’s nonviolent approach has been proven to fail. Any racial disparities in the years following the Civil Rights Movement can be seen as proof of this. The fact that King was assassinated offers proof as well. Because King failed to reach the Promised Land via nonviolence, the only tactic remaining for the Left is, of course, violence. This is essentially why Martin Luther King will never die in a multiracial society: as a weapon he’s too useful.

By mentioning these two FBI reports in public discourse as often as possible, people on the Right now have a handy weapon of their own. And since these reports have the imprimatur of none other than the President of the United States on them, they cannot be ignored. In the past, bringing up compromising information on King could be dismissed as racist sniping or rumor-mongering. Now, it cannot. Now it must be part of the mainstream. Now it must be used to counter the Leftist control of our nation and culture. For no other reason than because it can.

Check these videos out! Documentary Marxist Lucifer King full movie on MLK Martin Luther King Jr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-B1SpcOkTs

The Truth of Martin Luther King https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM4biT3Na30

Do the research. Connect the dots. Draw your own conclusions. I have drawn mines.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lydia O'Connor at HuffPost:

Donald Trump’s historic hush money trial, which could potentially make the presumptive Republican nominee for president a convicted felon, is winding down. Here’s what to expect in the coming days. Prosecutors and the former president’s defense team will each present their closing arguments on Tuesday. This is each side’s opportunity to summarize what they’ve presented at trial over the last several weeks and their last chance to convince jurors that they’ve proved their case. Expect prosecutors to remind jurors of the testimony from the 20 witnesses they called, all of whom filled in the picture of how, in a scheme arranged by the now-disbarred attorney Michael Cohen just days before the 2016 election, Trump allegedly covered up a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, who said she’d had an extramarital affair with Trump in 2006.

At the heart of the case is a series of monthly checks, invoices and other financial statements from 2017 that, according to prosecutors and Cohen’s testimony, indicate Trump was repaying Cohen for the $130,000 hush money payment he handled. Those documents, which were labeled as payment for Cohen’s legal services, represent the business documents Trump is accused of falsifying. Other highlights from the prosecution included testimony from David Pecker, former CEO of the National Enquirer’s publisher, who said he had an agreement with Trump to publish flattering stories about the then-candidate, to run unflattering articles about his political opponents and to help block the publication of stories that could damage Trump’s reputation.

[...] The 12 jurors could then head into deliberations as early as Wednesday. Before they begin their closed-door discussion, Judge Juan Merchan will give them instructions, which he said will take at least an hour. Reaching a unanimous verdict could take anywhere from minutes to hours to days. Whatever they decide, it will mark the first time a jury has ruled on criminal charges against a U.S. president, past or present. Trump also faces more than 50 charges in three other indictments. Two involve claims of election interference and one relates to classified documents taken from the White House. Trial dates for those cases have not yet been set.

The People of New York v. Trump business records falsification trial’s closing arguments are set to begin on Tuesday, and as soon as this week, jury deliberations will begin and a verdict could come down at anytime… possibly as soon as this week.

[treadmilltreats]

How can you say you're Christian and think it's okay to put others down?

So I know that people will come for me about this one and I don't care. I am not Willy Wonker, I don't sugar coat shit. Because this is a question that I really want to know.

So how can you say you're a Christian and back a man who is a racist? A man who makes fun of people with disabilities, and who puts down and demeans women every chance he gets? A man who is a liar, a cheater, and an adulteress. This is a man who divides the world instead of bringing it together. A man who loves some but not all.

So let me ask you, is this Christian? Is this what Jesus taught us? Come on, let's be real here. Don't just be “Christian” when it suits you. This is not what Jesus came here for. We were taught to love all, to have compassion for all, and to know that no one is better than anyone else. Jesus didn't choose the priests or the higher-ups. No, he chose the bottom of the barrel to teach us to never judge someone.

Yet you support this man who believes none of this, and why? Just because he holds up a bible and says he is “Christian” please, give me a break. Does his actions match his words? No! They do not!

Maybe you didn't read the part of the Bible that says don't believe in false prophets. And if you back him, it's obvious that you haven't read the Bible at all. Come on, come at me, but his actions are anything but Christian.The Bible condemns gossip, backbiters, character assassination, and false statements. He does all of this.

He has been caught on tape attacking Gold Star family members and bragging about grabbing women by their genitals. A jury found him liable for sexually abusing a woman and defaming her. He bragged about extramarital affairs. He lied over and over again. The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day, and this is from Wikipedia!

A true Christian, a person who wanted to repent, would apologize for these actions and make amends to the victims. Yet Trump has never apologized, and he never will because he thinks he's above reproach.

He talks out of both sides of his mouth. He says he believes in God and our military men and women. But the truth is he dodged the draft and referred to military members as “suckers” and “losers.”

Just because he says he's for changing the abortion law and bringing “family values” back to America, you fell for it. What does he know about family values with 3 wives and the fact that he cheated on all of them? All of this does not say Christian man.

So today, my friends, just because he tells you what you want to hear, you must look at his actions. Who he says he is does not line up to what he does. We want peace in our country. We want rights for everyone. We are supposed to love one another. This is what Jesus taught us. We need someone to bring us together. At this point, politics don't matter. A man's character does.

“Be the change you want to see”

@TreadmillTreats

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