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odinsblog · 4 months

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“Days like today are the whole reason right-wing billionaires have spent years, and billions of dollars, rigging the Supreme Court.”

The linked article from the tweet goes in depth exploring Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and the constitutionality of whether or not it is appropriate to use the Insurrection Clause against Trump. But that analysis completely misses the point: Ginni Thomas was (and still is) herself an integral part of the January 6th Insurrection, and as such, Clarence Thomas should not be allowed to rule on the case. In a just world, Clarence Thomas would recuse himself, or there would be some mechanism to force his recusal.

At any rate, prepare to be disappointed. I listened to the arguments live, and it sure sounds like even the “liberal” justices were in agreement with the conservatives appointed by Trump; that Colorado overstepped its authority — I vehemently disagree with that. In light of Trump’s words + actions leading up to the Insurrection, Colorado absolutely made the right call. Republicans always like to whine about “states rights” until they don’t like what the state wants to do, like protecting a person’s right to choose abortion.

That all said, begrudgingly, I dO understand the “why” behind what I think their decision will be: imagine an America where the so-called “former” Confederate States of the south were routinely removing the Democratic candidates from their state ballots. Not that this Colorado decision will stop them from trying to do so anyway, but that would be total anarchy (and not the good kind).

On the bright side, if Colorado loses this case, as I think they will, there is still enough time left for them to remove Trump from their ballot but this time, proactively use whatever arguments SCOTUS used against them. But admittedly, that’s a long shot.

Bringing it back home though, the ever germane question isn’t if Colorado was right - the relevant question here is if Clarence Thomas should have recused himself. In a more just timeline, he and other biased justices would willingly recuse themselves or be forcibly removed from cases where they have obvious conflicts of interest. Almost every consideration after the question of recusal is irrelevant.

#politics #donald trump #republicans #scotus #ginni thomas #clarence thomas #14th amendment #insurrection #j6 #j6 insurrection #recusal #treason #traitors #tre45on #january 6 #january 6th #colorado

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 months

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Bill Bramhall :: @BillBramhall

* * * *

Terrific economic news for all Americans

February 3, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Friday brought a stunningly good report on increases in jobs, wages, and productivity. The report was so good that a Biden Twitter account released the Fox News commentary on the jobs report as a campaign ad! See @BidenWins, Trump Senior Advisor Larry Kudlow explains how the Biden economy deserves more credit, even from Conservatives. In short,

Inflation-adjusted wages were up 4.5%

the economy added 353,000 new jobs in January (non-farm payroll)

prior two months jobs report revised upward by 126,000

worker productivity rose 2.7%

President Biden also tweeted an important metric for Black workers:

New economic analysis shows that under President Biden, the Black unemployment rate was under 6% for a full year. That's the lowest Black unemployment in history.

The media is no longer able to sustain its negative narrative about the economy, finally admitting that President Biden’s stewardship deserves credit for the good economic news. See Politico, Biden’s economy keeps messing up Trump’s message.

Per Politico,

[W]ith the risk of a recession seeming to recede, even Trump’s close allies acknowledge it’s getting tough to tell voters a bleak story about the economy. And though far from certain, it’s now possible that the nation’s economic health could become an electoral asset for Biden in an unexpected way.

For an overview of the economic reports released on Friday, see CNN, The US economy added 353,000 jobs in January, starting off 2024 with a bang.

In yesterday’s Comment section, a reader (Theressa) posted an informative and fun quiz by the Washington Post Editorial Board, Opinion | Mad at Biden over the economy? Take our quiz. (Accessible to all.) The takeaway: the media narrative about the “Biden economy” is wrong. Check it out.

Let’s not lose sight of the most important point: Joe Biden isn’t trying to achieve outstanding economic metrics just to gain partisan advantage or bragging rights. He is trying to improve the lives of all Americans by increasing employment and wages. He is succeeding. During Biden’s tenure, the economy has created 14.8 million new jobs—which has made a material difference in the lives of tens of millions of Americans.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #Robert B. Hubbell #economic news #jobs #Bidenomics #US Economy #Bill Bramhall

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simply-ivanka · 2 months

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Mainstream Media's "Bloodbath"!

Speaking to an Ohio crowd about predatory Chinese trade practices, Trump said:

Let me tell you something: To China, if you're listening, President Xi — and you and I are friends — but he understands the way I deal. Those big monster car manufacturing plants that you're building in Mexico right now ... you're going to not hire Americans, and you're going to sell the cars to us, no. We're going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you're not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected. Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that's gonna be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But they're not going to sell those cars.

His point is dead simple: Unless Trump is elected to stop it, American carmakers are going to suffer as a result of Chinese practices and Biden's failures.

Yet, as predictably as the sun rising in the east, Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists seized on the word "bloodbath" to pretend that, if Trump loses the November election, he'll incite violence. It's part of a concerted strategy to keep January 6 at the forefront, even though the only real bloodshed that day was that of Ashley Babbitt at the hands of a Capitol Police officer.

"It's clear this guy wants another January 6," tweeted Joe Biden's social media people with a strategically truncated video of Trump's comments.

"He's even predicting a 'bloodbath,'" asserted Nancy Pelosi. "What does that mean? He's going to exact a bloodbath?"

"He was talking about a bloodbath," huffed MSBNC's Joe Scarborough. "Sometimes a bloodbath means a bloodbath."

"Trump Says Some Migrants Are 'Not People' and Predicts a 'Blood Bath' if He Loses," headlined The New York Times.

An NBC News headline blared, "Trump says there will be a 'bloodbath' if he loses the election."

Leftmedia talkingheads fretted over the return of 1930s German fascism and genocide. NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss said, "That's how fascism and totalitarianism and — in Germany's case — the Holocaust came to Germany, which had been a country where there were big institutions of democracy until, as you well know, the early 1930s." (Germany was primarily a monarchy until 1918, but whatever.)

Likewise, Politico's Michael Kruse wrote a lengthy article about how Trump's humor is essentially the same as Adolf Hitler: "Trump is not Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini. But they share a rhetorical style, experts say."

You get the idea.

"The word 'bloodbath' is used in common parlance all the time," noted veteran journalist Brit Hume, "and it doesn't necessarily refer to an actual shedding of blood. It refers to some major upheaval, damage being done, and the rest of it."

And you know something? Before Trump used the word, journalists understood that. They also used the word. A lot.

It's almost like their indignation now is phony.

Leftists and even some on the Right who hate Donald Trump with every fiber of their being really don't like the way Trump says things. Frankly, he is often unnecessarily uncouth, angry, visceral, and so forth. He behaves like, well, a Democrat.

Yet the things he says rightly and intentionally resonate with average Americans who are justifiably outraged at the rigged game Washington has foisted on us. Trump knows exactly what he's saying and why, and it works. He connects.

Trump posted his rebuttal on Truth Social: "The Fake News Media, and their Democrat Partners in the destruction of our Nation, pretended to be shocked at my use of the word BLOODBATH, even though they fully understood that I was simply referring to imports allowed by Crooked Joe Biden, which are killing the automobile industry."

"Missing context" is usually the "fact-checker" catch-all, but they're more than happy to let this one go. In fact, The Washington Post even offered "analysis" yesterday that the "broader context" is that "Trump has already warned of 'riots,' 'violence in the streets' and 'death & destruction' if he's wronged."

You want context? Those are things Democrat constituents actually do in America's cities.

"Many MAGA Republicans are saying Trump's 'bloodbath' comment should be put in context," the Biden-Harris HQ X account posted. "So we put it in context."

That context included not only January 6 but the BIG lie about Trump's "very fine people" comment about Charlottesville — the lie that supposedly motivated Biden to run in the first place.

As usual, political analyst David Harsanyi cuts to the chase: "You don't need to be a fan of Donald Trump to concede that this weekend's meltdown over the word 'bloodbath' was cynical and dishonest." Indeed, these contrived frenzies serve a dual purpose — to drive media ratings and to motivate suburban women to vote against the meanie with the red hat.

Yes, Trump was using hyperbole. "Politicians always catastrophize events," Harsanyi observed. Democrats are doing it now to rile up their own base.

On a final note, in case you think we were just throwing shade at Trump for behaving like a Democrat, here's a two-minute compilation of Democrats using violent language to express their contempt for a guy who forces them to look in the mirror.

#trump #ivanka #trump 2024 #america #president trump #repost #america first #americans first #donald trump #democrats

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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Trump seems to have fucked himself over again...

In response to the Hillary Clinton email scandal, Trump himself signed a law back in 2018 over the removal and retention of classified documents. That law increased the penalty for the unauthorized removal/retention of classified documents from one year to FIVE years, turning it into a felony offense.

He had 12 to 15 BOXES.

Imagine going to jail over a law you personally signed off on, enforced by a raid that was authorized by the same FBI director you chose, signed by a judge you appointed, and your own Secret Service agents let them in.

A bill which former President Donald Trump signed into law in 2018 could be used to punish him if he's found to have mishandled classified information after leaving office.

FBI agents on Monday raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida as part on an investigation into whether Trump wrongly kept hold of classified material after he left office.

Bradley P. Moss, a national-security attorney, told Insider that Trump could face five years in prison if he's found guilty under a national security bill which he signed as President.

The bill, which made changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was signed into law by Trump in January 2018.

It upgraded the seriousness of wrongly moving classified material, turning it from a misdemeanor into a felony — and increasing the maximum punishment from one year to five.

Moss noted that it was passed in the wake of Trump's relentless attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign on Hillary Clinton for allegedly mishandling classified information.

But now it is Trump who is under pressure.

"Trump certainly has legal exposure to Section 1924 given it was classified documents from his spaces in the White House that were removed to Mar-Lago," said Moss.

In a tweet Tuesday in the wake of the FBI raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, Jeff Yarbro, an attorney and Democratic State Senator in Tennessee, pointed out it was Trump who had signed the bill now looming over him.

The National Archives and Records Administration in February said that classified material was found among boxes of things that had been taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he left office.

Legal analyst Glenn Kirchner at the time told MSNBC that the former President was facing a potential "five year felony" in a seeming reference to the law Trump had strengthened in 2018.

At the time, the classified-information measures attracted little attention, with the focus of news coverage being the renewal of sweeping surveillance powers in the bill.

According to an analysis by Moss and other analysts at the Just Security blog, it is one of a number of laws Trump might have violated if he's found to have mishandled classified material.

There are some doubts about whether the bill Trump signed into law could be used to prosecute him, said Moss, as it's unclear whether it applies to former Presidents.

Trump has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in relation, saying that he had fully cooperated with requests from the National Archives and characterizing the raid as a politically motivated.

His aide, Kash Patel, told Breitbart that Trump declassified the material before leaving office under the President's broad powers for deciding what should remain secret.

Moss said "efforts by Trump to declassify records before he left office" were another key issue that could impact whether the measures could be used to prosecute Trump.

Trump's office did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Insider.

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foreverlogical · 8 months

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Democrats secured victory in two state-level special elections this week, extending an impressive winning streak that Biden campaign officials cited today as they appealed to supporters to stop panicking about polls.

Why it matters: Down-ballot, low-turnout state elections aren't necessarily a harbinger for national contests. But the trend is unmistakeable: In 30 special elections this year, Democrats have outperformed by an average of 11 points, according to a 538 analysis of each seat's base partisanship score.

The analysis doesn't take into account the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, city elections and ballot referendums where Democrats have also dominated — largely by campaigning on abortion rights.

Driving the news: In Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Democrats defended a one-seat majority in the state House for the fifth time this year, outperforming Biden's 2020 margin in an Allegheny County seat by eight points.

In New Hampshire, a Democrat won by 12 points in a district Trump narrowly carried in 2020, putting the party within one seat of ending the GOP's state government trifecta. The Republican who lost, Jim Guzofski, is an election denier who claimed "prophets" told him Trump won in 2020.

What they're saying: "You can keep talking about polls 14 months out, but this is what I've been looking at all year," tweeted Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina of the trend in special elections.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month

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Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse Substack:

The newsletter starts tonight with enormous gratitude to folks in the courtroom, reporters and lawyers, who are live-blogging and tweeting the first criminal trial of Donald Trump. It’s ridiculous that the former president is on trial and Americans can’t watch, or at least listen to, the trial in real time. I have strong views about the damage done by excluding all but a very few people from access to the courtroom during this most important of trials, so I’m grateful to the people who are sitting in and recording their impressions and the proceedings so we can follow along. If you’re looking for some good follows: Adam Klasfeld, Norm Eisen, Hugo Lowell, the WAPO and NYT updates, and Politico all caught my eye today. Most of my analysis tonight is based on their work, as well as information friends in the courtroom have shared. Many defendants seem to be incapable of focusing on the reality of their situation until they face jury selection and see the people who will sit in judgment on them. That reality began to sink in for Trump today. He showed up looking haggard and with bags under his eyes, appropriate for a man who seemed to spend much of the night and early morning hours tweeting nonsense on Truth Social. He will doubtless continue to lie and bluster, but this is a solemn and serious moment for a defendant, and no matter how much he thinks he is, Trump is not an exception.

The morning started with Judge Merchan denying Trump’s renewed motion to recuse. No surprises here. We discussed the law previously—judges have an obligation to stay on a case when there is no legal obligation to recuse. Judge Merchan previously received an ethics panel opinion that approved his participation in the case, and Trump offered no new reasons for him to recuse. "To say that these claims are attenuated is an understatement," Merchan said. So why are Trump’s lawyers engaging in these sort of tactics? They won’t delay the case, and his lawyers know they’re extremely likely to lose. It’s all about preserving possible issues for appeal. A surprising amount of what goes on at trial on Trump’s side of the courtroom will be about appeal. That started with pre-trial motions and will continue with jury selection and throughout the trial. It’s precisely what you would expect to see in a significant white collar prosecution, and it’s a reminder that much of what Trump’s lawyers do will be the type of legitimate defense work you would expect to see. As a defense lawyer your job is to identify possible reversible error, object to it, and hope you can live to fight another day if your client is convicted.

Judge Merchan took up a number of pre-trial motions, many about admissibility of evidence, before jury selection began late in the day. (This, by the way, isn’t unusual ahead of jury selection in many jurisdictions. Although it’s common in state systems, there are federal courts, like those in Alabama, where this goes on too. It’s important to understand that the practices vary from place to place, and sometimes even from judge to judge in the same courthouse.) There is a general rule that prosecutors can introduce evidence that is sui generis, part of the story of the crime and necessary to explain context to the jury. So the Judge ruled, for instance, that the prosecution can introduce evidence of the National Enquirer’s involvement in “catch and kill.” The prosecution wants to show the jury positive headlines from the National Enquirer in 2016 that were run past Trump for approval before publication, calling them the “concrete manifestation” of the scheme to suppress bad stories about candidate Trump and push negative stories about his opponents. The Judge decided the evidence was “inextricably intertwined” with the facts of the case.

[...]

Calendar notes: The trial will take place every day except Wednesdays, which the Judge has reserved for other matters, including the veterans and mental health courts he oversees. He also announced he would not hold trial on days that conflict with any jurors’ religious observances.

Trump must be in court every day of trial. The Judge advised him—and this is the rule for all criminal defendants—“If you do not show up there will be an arrest.” No wiggle room there. But there is still some wiggle room, or at least a week’s grace period, before the Judge will hold a hearing and decide whether Trump violated the gag order by posting about witnesses on social media. Judge Merchan set a show-cause hearing at prosecutors’ request, but didn’t schedule it until Wednesday, April 24. At a show-cause hearing, the burden is on Trump to convince the Judge he shouldn’t be held in contempt. As we discussed last night, the Judge has the difficult job of holding Trump accountable without making a martyr of him. It’s a tough balance to strike. But this decision feels lenient, although there are some possible explanations. Perhaps the Judge is giving Trump enough rope to hang himself with—but he’s already had plenty. There is a legitimate concern that doing this on the eve of trial, when it would be sure to receive widespread publicity, could result in prejudice to the jury, perhaps to the point of reversible error. It might make sense to hold off until the jury is selected and sworn in, and the Judge instructs them to avoid reading or discussing any news from external sources. We’ll see if the timing on that plays out and if this is just a measure of care from the Judge. But we are at the point where, whether it’s the gag order or misconduct in the courtroom, Judge Merchan is going to have to figure out how to hold Trump accountable for his behavior if he doesn’t want to play ringmaster to a circus instead of judge for a trial. I don’t say this critically of the Judge in any way. He has a difficult job here, and so far, he’s shown that he’s up to managing Trump.

[...] When jury selection finally got underway, more than half of the prospective jurors in the first panel of 96 people were excused after they told the Judge they could not be fair and impartial. That suggests 45 or so were willing to at least consider it, which seems like a pretty good start. Seriously. We’re talking about the trial of Donald Trump, so it’s unsurprising lots of jurors might have strong feelings they can’t overcome. The whole idea of this proceeding is to weed them out.

The Judge got underway with 18 potential jurors in the box. One was excused, presumably for cause, before the end of the day. The Judge will pick up there tomorrow morning. After a full day of voir dire, we will have a better sense of how much time it’s going to take to get a jury. New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman and others reported from inside of the courtroom that Trump was nodding off during the proceedings this morning. If he can’t keep his eyes open when his own liberty is at stake, why would Americans have confidence he’s capable of paying attention when our country’s interests require sound presidential leadership? Trump was also observed with his eyes closed this afternoon as jury selection was just getting underway. That’s hardly the way to make a good impression on jurors. And yet, in such an important matter, Trump lacks simple good judgment. If Joe Biden fell asleep in a courtroom or anywhere else, it would be a front page story for the rest of the week. This should be too.

Joyce Vance writes in her Civil Discourse Substack about the opening day of the first criminal trial for Donald Trump in New York v. Trump.

Trump must be in the courtroom every day the case is in session in court, and yesterday, he was spotted nodding off with his eyes closed.

#Donald Trump #Donald Trump Trial #People of New York v. Trump #Joyce Vance #National Enquirer #Catch and Kill #Stormy Daniels/Donald Trump Affair #Juan Manuel Merchan #Trump Indictment

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zombiebastian · 19 days

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Introduction

My name is Sebastian and this blog will mainly be about my artworks (although I occasionally will probably post things like character headcanons or random character analysis essays) I draw a lot of stuff but mainly fanart of my favourite shows, characters and video games such as:

Beavis and Butthead

Jojos Bizarre Adventure

Resident Evil

Gorillaz

Sonic The Hedgehog

South Park (I don't draw much fanart of South Park but this may change later)

Alice Madness Returns

Attack On Titan

Black Butler

Helluva Boss

Hazbin Hotel

Death Note

Saw (I don't draw much fanart of Saw either but again this may change)

What else am I gonna be doing? Well I really like Halloween and I may draw some halloween themed stuff even when its not October, I'm the type of guy who suddenly gets into the Christmas and Halloween spirit when its not that time of year yet, I especially like zombies and vampires

Rules about comissions

If you want to commission an artwork from me that's totally okay as long as my asks are open, but here are the rules

I will not draw anything too explicit like hardcore s3xual activities, I will draw things that are risqué like characters in revealing clothing or suggestive flirting, but if it involves nudity, intercourse or anything like that then I will not do so, if you're not sure about something you'd like to commission just ask in your... Well ask

I will draw gore but it will be mainly cartoony, and I'm a bit iffy when it comes to stuff involving torture, when I draw gore I mainly do zombie or Frankenstein's monster type creatures and not people being tortured or murdered

You don't need to pay me, I'm not interested in money this is all just for fun

I do draw ships, even most of the ones I don't agree with. However if the ship is illegal (sibling x sibling, adult x child, stuff like that) I'm not comfortable drawing it, I'm not big on the whole "anti-proship" thing (yeah its gross but at the end of the day I don't get too pissy about fictional characters, when I see proship content I just ignore it) but still I don't really want to draw that stuff

DNI

I think most DNI lists are a bit stupid because unless you block people it doesn't really stop anyone from interacting with you, for example if you put "DNI racists" I understand not wanting those types of people interacting with you but its not gonna magically stop a racist person from associating with your posts, if you see someone saying something racist or something you think is discriminatory just block them, in fact if you put DNI in your bio they'll probably want to interact even more just to troll you

However, I'm using this as a time to talk about something I do not want to see on my blog, politics, talk about it on your blog if you want, even if I didn't want you to talk about politics at all its not like I could stop you, but don't come onto my blog spewing political crap in my comments or asks

I do not care what your political views are if you're a leftist or a conservative or whatever, I hate all of it when I'm just trying to have fun on here. So please, no going on about how much you hate Trump, how society isn't fair to certain groups of people, the latest controversial JK Rowling tweet or whats going on in Palestine and Israel, I'll worry about all that when I'm not in a mood to draw stuff and have fun

About me

Well I don't really want to talk about anything too personal here like my romantic or sexual preferences, but here are some things I am alright talking about

I have autism, but I don't think this makes me special or anything like that, yes autism does make me quite different from most people but that is okay and I wouldn't be the person who I am today without it. I'm also not one to list my mental illnesses and disabilities but I'm just putting autism here in case another autistic person is reading and wants to know they're not alone

I have a lot of interests but you already know that

My favourite colour is green

My favourite YouTubers are DanTDM, Stampylonghead, Markiplier, Kub scoutz, LaurenZside, SML (Super Mario Logan), Memeulous, Saberspark, Phantomstrider, Superhorrorbro, Penguinz0 and Tuv

I'm a guy, but you've probably figured that out as well because Sebastian is a more masculine name

Ever since I read it when I was 11, my favourite book is Holes by Louis Sachar

Some of my other favourite music artists (apart from Gorillaz) are 6arelyhuman, Lady Gaga, Tuv (ik he is one of my favourite YouTubers but he does music too), Michael Jackson, Alan Walker (mainly because of nostalgia), Melanie Martinez and The Living Tombstone

I also like songs/soundtrack from movies/musicals like The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Little Mermaid, Labyrinth, Anastasia, The Lion King, Mulan, Tangled, Aladdin, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Heathers and Little Shop Of Horrors

Despite many of my favourite movies being Disney movies, I hate modern Disney with their stupid remakes and dumb modern movies, heck they couldn't even get their 100th anniversary right, what kind of universe are we living in where a Disney movie is beaten by an Adam Sandler film?!

My favourite Beavis and Butthead character is Butthead

My favourite Jojos Bizzare Adventure character is Dio Brando

My favourite Resident Evil character is Leon S Kennedy

My favourite Gorillaz band member is Murdoc Niccals

My favourite Sonic The Hedgehog character is Shadow

My favourite South Park character is either Kenny McCormick or Eric Cartman

My favourite Alice Madness Returns character is Alice Liddell

My favourite Black Butler character is Sebastian Michaelis (guess why, lmao)

My favourite Helluva Boss character is Stolas

My favourite Hazbin Hotel character is Angel Dust

My favourite Death Note character is L

My favourite Saw character is Adam Stanheight (aka very fucking confused)

Anyways

Thanks for reading my weird introduction, I appreciate it and even if you don't want to commission anything or stick around thats totally fine, I wish you well mate

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collapsedsquid · 2 years

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However, there is also a deep mystery to the Trump presidency. This mystery becomes apparent whenever its major scandals are even trivially examined. RussiaGate and most of the other scandals of the administration were not hoaxes. However, ultimate understanding of them will likely remain elusive. Why? Consider the following description of Arnold “Big Bankroll” Rothstein, one of the key figures behind the fixing of the 1919 World Series:

Yet most of the book’s new claims and speculations about the fixing of the World Series are not well documented, unlike the rest of the biography, which includes over 60 pages of endnotes and a bibliography. This is not to criticize Pietrusza for dereliction of duty. The point, rather, is that some of the truth is beyond us, lost forever in the shadows of the past. We will never know, for example, to what extent Abe Attell, a colorful, duplicitous small-time gambler and former prizefighter known as “the Little Champ,” worked on his own to fix the Series and to what extent he was working for Rothstein. The fact that Rothstein “spent a lot of time and money shielding Attell from prosecution” does not prove that he was buying Attell’s silence about Rothstein’s own involvement in the fix, whatever it was. There could have been other reasons. Rothstein’s intentions were almost always self-interested but were rarely transparent.

The broad parameters of the administration’s scandals reveal them to be far more Thomas Pynchon than Robert Ludlum thriller, a collection of strange semi-related but never quite intersecting schemes that never cohere into anything resembling a master plan. Due to their ambiguous, sub-rosa nature and their population by Rothstein-like and Attell-like figures, investigating them and summarizing them is inherently difficult if not impossible. After all, if we still cannot tell the full story of something like the 1919 World Series fixing even a century later, what hope do we have of bringing to light far messier, bizarre, and perverse political scandals?

[...]

The strangest aspect about the Trump presidency therefore precisely lies in its combination of publicity and opacity. Trump lacks even minimal self-restraint, rarely if ever leaving a crude opinion unvocalized (or untweeted). His motives are almost comically faithless and malign. Yet there is always something uncertain or mysterious about the circumstances in which Trumpian phenomena plays out. Despite the way in which, at surface level, no such mystery ought to exist!

Trump has been in the public eye for decades. He is not a eloquent Shakespeare villain, he is a vulgar and cruel would-be dictator. And yet, if it was so easy to explain, predict, and control his behavior, American politics from 2015-2020 would look much, much different. Trump’s tweeting, by nature, forces the analyst to theorize about observed inputs and outputs without understanding about his inner workings or the underlying reliability of any singular interpretation of his behavior.

Like many similar historical figures, Trump’s intentions are clearly self-interested in theory but never so transparent as to make them trivial to interpret in practice. Thus, inner understanding of how Trump behaves is remarkably elusive in spite of his crude and instinctual behavior. And this precise lack of inner understanding seems to generate paralysis by analysis.

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xipiti · 2 years

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The Department of Homeland Security launched a failed operation that ensnared hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. protesters in what new documents show was as a sweeping, power-hungry effort before the 2020 election to bolster President Donald Trump’s spurious claims about a “terrorist organization” he accused his Democratic rivals of supporting.

An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

The report describes the attempts of top intelligence officials to connect protesters to a fabricated anti-fascist terrorist plot in hopes of boosting Trump’s reelection odds, raising concerns about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars’ worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to create organizational charts that could be used to establish links between the arrested protesters; an effort that would seemingly legitimize President Trump’s erroneous tweets about “Antifa,” an organization DHS tried but failed to prove shared a central source of funding.

“Did not find any evidence that assertion was true”

The DHS report offers a full accounting of the intelligence activities happening behind the scenes of officers’ protest containment; “twisted efforts,” Wyden said, of Trump administration officials promoting “baseless conspiracy theories” to manufacture of a domestic terrorist threat for the president’s “political gain.” The report describes the dossiers generated by DHS as having detailed the past whereabouts and the “friends and followers of the subjects, as well as their interests” — up to and including “First Amendment speech activity.” Intelligence analysts had internally raised concerns about the decision to accuse anyone caught in the streets by default of being an “anarchist extremist” specifically because “sufficient facts” were never found “to support such a characterization.”

One field operations analyst told interviewers that the charts were hastily “thrown together,” adding they “didn’t even know why some of the people were arrested.” In some cases, it was unclear whether the arrests were made by police or by one of the several federal agencies on the ground. The analysts were never provided arrest affidavits or paperwork, a witness told investigators, adding that they “just worked off the assumption that everyone on the list was arrested.” Lawyers who reviewed 43 of the dossiers found it “concerning,” the report says, that 13 of them stemmed from “nonviolent crimes.” These included trespassing, though it was unclear to analysts and investigators whether the cases had “any relationship to federal property,” the report says.

A footnote in the report states that “at least one witness” told investigators that dossiers had been requested on people who were “not arrested” but merely accused of threats. Another, citing emails exchanged between top intelligence officials, states dossiers were created “on persons arrested having nothing to do with homeland security or threats to officers.”

Questioned by investigators, the agency’s chief intelligence officer acknowledged fielding requests by Wolf and his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, to create dossiers “against everyone participating in the Portland protest,” regardless of whether they’d been accused of any crime, the report says. That officer, Brian Murphy, then head of the agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), told interviewers that he’d rejected the idea, informing his bosses that he could only “look at people who were arrested,” and adding that it was something his office had done “thousands” of times before.

The DHS report, finalized more than a year ago, includes descriptions of orders handed down to “senior leadership” instructing them to broadly apply the label “violent antifa anarchists inspired” to Portland protesters unless they had intel showing “something different.”

Once the dossiers were received by the agency’s emerging threat center, it became clear that DHS had no real way to tie the protesters to any terrorist activities, neither at home nor abroad. Efforts to drum up evidence to support the administration’s claim that a “larger network was directing or financing” the protesters — a task assigned to another unit, known as the Homeland Identities, Targeting and Exploitation Center, diverted away from its usual work of analyzing national security threats — “did not find any evidence that assertion was true,” the report says.

[story continues at link]

#lying liars who lie #dhs #Portland #magats

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mariacallous · 8 months

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Yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump Jr. posted a graphic video to X (formerly Twitter) that purported to show Hamas fighters murdering Israeli citizens during the attack last Saturday morning. “You don’t negotiate with this,” Trump Jr. wrote. “There’s only one way to handle this.” The son of former US president Donald Trump added that the video had come from a “source within Israel.”

The post was shared widely, and within hours it had amassed over 4 million views.

Then X’s user-generated fact-checking system, Community Notes, appended a message to the tweet, stating: “This is an old video and is not from Israel,” accompanied by a link to the original video. The note suggested that Trump Jr. was contributing to what has been a flood of disinformation on X since Hamas militants attacked Israel on Saturday, supercharged by verified users and accompanied by other conspiracy theories pushed by the company’s owner, Elon Musk.

But WIRED has now verified that the Community Notes system appears to be wrong. According to an independent OSINT analysis published on Wednesday, the video Trump Jr. posted is real. It was recorded during Saturday’s attack and does show Hamas fighters shooting Israelis, the analysis found.

The incident highlights how Community Notes, touted this week by X as one of the crucial ways it was tackling disinformation, is still struggling to function as intended and is, in some instances, adding to the level of disinformation on X rather than correcting it.

The Community Notes system is made up of X users who volunteer to fact-check posts on the site. It is X’s primary fact-checking mechanism since Musk eradicated virtually all full-time Trust and Safety staff and part-time moderators who previously did that work.

The volunteers, who must be approved by X to contribute to Community Notes, suggest notes to add to what they believe are misleading posts. Those notes are only displayed publicly once a sufficient number of volunteers have approved them.

Once approved, notes are regarded as “helpful” and posted publicly. This is how X describes what it sees as a “helpful” note: “Enough contributors from different perspectives agreed that this note is helpful, so it’s being shown as context on the post.”

Earlier this week, X praised the Community Notes team for tackling the misinformation that has flooded the platform in the past week and said new accounts are being enrolled “in real time to propose and rate notes.” On Tuesday, an NBC investigation found the system was not functioning as proposed; of the two Israel-Hamas misinformation claims investigated by the outlet, more than a quarter had notes that remained private as they had not been approved by enough volunteers, while roughly two-thirds had no notes at all.

X replaces the names of users who suggest the notes with aliases, making it impossible to see who submits any particular note. In the case of the note on Trump Jr’s account, the note was submitted by a user pseudonymously identified as “Mellow Sun Swan” four hours after Trump Jr posted the video.

This was the eighth note the user had submitted, according to their profile, but the first to have been approved. The user has in recent days submitted multiple notes on posts related to Iranian links to the conflict.

In the case of the Trump Jr. video, the Community Notes user linked to a video posted on the Iranian social media platform Wisgoon as evidence that the video was from years ago, not this past weekend. In the post, the upload date on the video is in Persian, which, when translated, reads “15 Mehr 1402,” a date in the Persian calendar. This date translates in the Gregorian calendar to October 7, 2023—the date Hamas attacked Israel.

An open source intelligence researcher tells WIRED that they confirmed the video’s veracity by tracking the original video, which was broadcast by a Gaza civilian on a Facebook livestream on Saturday morning. The researcher, who posts anonymously on social media using the handle OSINTtechnical, is frequently cited by news outlets covering conflict zones.

Soon after the Trump Jr. note was published, an account associated with the far right that has advocated for banning the Anti-Defamation League tried to back up the claim about the video being fake, sharing a screenshot that showed the results of a reverse-image search for the thumbnail image of the original video. The results appear to show a series of links to Wisgoon featuring the same image, all of which have dates from seven or eight years ago. However, this is because the recent video was listed in the related videos list of the older videos, not proof that it is an older video.

On Wednesday afternoon, the note on Trump's tweet was updated to link to the tweet from the account linked to the far right.

X replied with an automated response to WIRED’s questions, stating: “Busy now, please check back later.” Trump Jr. did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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THE IDIOTS HAVE NO CLUE :: That’s Another Fine Mess

Back last May, Heather Cox Richardson wrote this:

“This is no longer your mother’s Republican Party, or your grandfather’s…or his grandfather’s.

“Today’s Republican Party is not about equal rights and opportunity, as Lincoln’s party was. It is not about using the government to protect ordinary people, as Theodore Roosevelt’s party was. It is not even about advancing the ability of businesses to do as they deem best, as Ronald Reagan’s party was.

“The modern Republican Party is about using the power of the government to enforce the beliefs of a radical minority on the majority of Americans.”

You can apply this excellent analysis to anything the House Republicans do, but it is particularly relevant to the current drama over the debt ceiling.

One of the oddest things about this year’s version of the debt ceiling drama is that even the crazy people instigating it don’t appear to have much interest in the subject of the national debt or deficit reduction. Marjorie Traitor Green was asked the other day what programs she specifically would like to cut, and replied, “I don’t have a list of those yet.”

That’s probably because the World’s Dumbest Airhead doesn’t actually know anything about what things government does, other than she doesn’t like Social Security and Medicare, but since she’s attempting (so far, unsuccessfully) to appear “responsible,” she knows the Party Line is that “we won’t touch Social Security and Medicare,” and that even the guy on whose ticket she wants to run as Vice President (!) - the World’s Dumbest Moron - has been smart enough to say the party shouldn’t touch those. So, beyond those, she probably doesn’t have a clue.

Even J.D. Vance gave a thumbs-up to Trump’s tweet about not taking after Social Security and Medicare.

Alleged “moderate” (there really are none left in the party, but some get called that because they don’t slaver when they talk) Nancy Mace was asked on Meet The Press what she wants to cut and couldn’t name anything to cut, but specifically ruled out Social Security and Medicare cuts. Demonstrating her lack of knowledge about how the government actually works, the Big Idea she’s pushing is that Congress should mandate some kind of non-specific overall reductions in discretionary spending and then leave it up to the agency heads to decide what to do.

That neither the alleged moderate Mace, or the trying-to-be-serious Greene have any slight understanding of how the government they allegedly are supposed to direct works is all the proof needed that the modern Republican party has no interest in actually governing.

Of course, Republicans will never opt to address their concerns about the deficit with higher taxes. But right now, they seem to have no clue about what to cut. They just want to hold the debt hostage and more than a few of them would like to see the country default. At the same time, there is a faction in the party that sees doing this as poltiical suicide. They just don’t know how to bring themselves to oppose it without setting their constituents on fire.

The truth is that Republicans may say they are trying to hold a negotiation, that mean old Joe Biden won’t participate in, but they don’t actually have a negotiating position.

They’re certain that passing a clean debt limit would mean they’d be yelled at by the real leaders of the party over at Faux Snooze, and their followers would likely fill their in-boxes with death threats, but they really don’t know why they don’t want to do the responsible thing an actual governing party would engage in, other than that nobody wants to surrender.

They also have a vague sense that “bad stuff happening” would be bad for Joe Biden. Those of them who were around 12 years ago believe that the belief a debt ceiling crisis will damage the incumbent president is how they got leverage over Obama.

But now they’re faced with a President who was “in the room” the last time, and who seems to have learned from his failed attempt to do the “responsible Democrat thing” and run up the white flag and then say “let’s negotiate” back then didn’t work, made things worse, and today backed by a public with a deeper understanding of the issue and thus giving more support to the White House to oppose the crazies, on some level even the Marjorie Traitor Goons know they don’t have that leverage.

If they knew anything about how the part of government they are in actually works, they would know that if they want to reduce appropriations for the discretionary budget, there’s an established process for that.

Last December, a bipartisan majority in the House and Senate passed an omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 202, which offered an unusually large increase in nominal spending. Republicans scored a key win in that the defense budget grew faster than non-defense appropriations for the first time since defense/non-defense parity written into the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Looking at the history of that is a good way to demonstrate how the actual process the Republicans don’t seem to understand works:

Back during the 2011 debt ceiling fight, Obama refused to cut Social Security and Medicare unless Republicans would raise taxes. Naturally, Republicans refused to raise taxes, so they settled on a group of discretionary spending cuts. By 2013, when the next attempt to create a debt crisis happened, Republicans felt those cuts were squeezing the Pentagon unfairly, so they agreed to lift the budget caps while maintaining the parity principle. In the FY2023 omnibus, they won an end to parity by agreeing to an unusually large increase in appropriations.

But whatever you think about this whole series of events, we have a process in place for setting discretionary spending levels.

If today’s Republicans want to write appropriations bills that set lower spending levels - Quiverin’ Qevin has set a goal of paring spending back to the levels of FY2022, which would mean some big cuts - and pass them in the House, nothing stops them from doing that. Since it is likely Democrats would not agree to those cuts, there then might be a government shutdown in October and we’d find out who the public sides with.

Or they could pass appropriations bills with the cuts they want but avoid a shutdown by agreeing to a continuing resolution. A continuing resolution (CR) that maintains current spending levels is in fact a cut in real terms, and the longer that CR and any supplemental CRs run, the deeper the cut.

When Republicans held the White House, House and Senate in 2017-18 and didn’t cut discretionary spending, the demonstrated their actual level of commitment to the issue of spending.

The point is, there is a way to fight about discretionary spending if that’s what they want to do. They can even have their dramatic crisis moment in the form of a government shutdown.

There’s no need to do this debt ceiling fight, which will harm their voters as much as it harms Democratic voters

.It’s likely that the real thing they want to do is trash Medicaid. It’s been a Republican dream since then-Speaker Ryan waxed nostalgic about how he had dreamed of doing that since he was in college. This is why they tried to repeal Obamacare, which had put a lot of money into expanding Medicaid; a repeal of the ACA would generate a big cut to Medicaid eligibility. Look at how many Republican-dominated legislatures have refused to take the free money for Medicaid expansion that the ACA offers.

McCarthy was around for all that and he knows killing Medicaid is a loser outside the party, though it is an Article of Faith among Republicans.

In the “negotiations” he wants with Biden, one way to get the appearance of urgent action on the deficit without touching Medicare and Social Security would be go back to cutting Medicaid.

Cutting poor people off from their health insurance would demonstrate a morally outrageous set of priorities, but a desire to do this is an explanation of why Republicans want to risk national bankruptcy. They think agreeing to cut Medicaid as an alternative to debt default and all the terrors that brings would make them look “responsible.”

But they can’t say that in public, because they know without a crisis at hand, they’re back to where they were when McCain turned his thumb down on them in 2017.

When Joe Manchin tried to defuse the crisis by proposing another run at the bipartisan commission exercise that didn’t work back in 2011, his attempt to find an alternative was rejected out of hand by the Freedom Caucus. Even if it was proposed by Manchin, the idea of a bipartisan commission charged with formulating some balanced deficit reduction measures is a good idea, if it includes both spending cuts and revenue increases. However, that equation is politically futile. But proposing such a thing could create a way for a “sane faction” of House Republicans to jettison the Freedom Caucus and deal responsibly with the debt ceiling, with the ability to go back to their districts and tell their voters they are working seriously the the problem of “gub’mint spendin.”

The fact that the Freedom Caucus was so quick to kill the idea when Manchin proposed it is a demonstration that they know this is how they can be sidetracked back to being the noisy minority with no power they should be.

If Biden were to propose such a commission, it would likely get enough public support to give the “sane ones” enough backbone to agree. Yes, it’s “negotiation,” but it is not negotiation on the debt crisis.

At least some faction of House Republicans need to keep in mind that the most recent polls show that they have a national rating of 32% approval to 67% disapproval, and that Quiverin’ Qevin has a national approval of 19%. While the Fweedumb Kawkuss members come from districts that would elect Caligula’s horse before electing a Democrat, the actual “governing majority” of the House Republicans are the 18 members who can look at those numbers and see political extinction next year.

Give them something they can take back home and show they’re serious, something that allows them to do what they know is the responsible thing regarding the debt ceiling, and they might just discover that they do have a backbone hanging there in the office locker.

Who knows? Let those 18 “Biden District Republicans” find out that doing this leads to their own personal political success, and they might find they actually want to create a governing coalition with Democrats that provides them an opportunity to start overturning Trumpism.

And if it doesn’t happen, even the DC Press Corpse might finally see who is and who isn’t serious about governing. (Hope springs infernal)

[TCinLA]

#TCinLa #Debt Crisis #US House of Representatives #Fweedumb Kawkuss #Quiverin Qevin

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47burlm · 11 months

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Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

During his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. The Washington Post's fact-checker tallied the number as 30,573 by January 2021, an average of approximately 21 per day by the end of his presidency. The Toronto Star tallied the number of false claims as 5,276 by June 2019, an average of 6.1 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of his mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive.

By June 2019, after initially resisting, many news organizations began to describe some of his falsehoods as "lies".The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation. Trump campaign CEO and presidency chief strategist Steve Bannon said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."

As part of their attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had won the election. Their effort was characterized by some as an implementation of the big lie propaganda technique.

On June 8, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump on one count of making "false statements and representations", specifically by hiding subpoenaed classified documents from his own attorney who was trying to find and return them to the government.

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Donald Trump made up to $160 million from international business dealings while he was serving as President of the United States, according to an analysis of his tax returns by CREW.

Throughout his time in office, President Trump, his family and his Republican allies repeatedly assured the public that his refusal to divest from his businesses wouldn’t lead to any conflicts of interest. Americans were promised that Trump would donate his salary, which he did, until maybe he didn’t—all while siphoning millions from taxpayers that more than offset his presidential pay. When it came to foreign conflicts of interest, Trump and his company pledged to pause foreign business. They did not.

Trump pulled in the most money from the United Kingdom, where his Aberdeen and Turnberry golf courses in Scotland helped him gross $58 million. Trump’s now-defunct hotel and tower in Vancouver helped him pull in $36.5 million from Canada. Trump brought in more than $24.4 million from Ireland, home to his often-visited Doonbeg golf course, as well as $9.6 million from India, and nearly $9.7 million from Indonesia.

Trump’s presidency was marred by unprecedented conflicts of interest arising from his decision not to divest from the Trump Organization, with his most egregious conflicts involving businesses in foreign countries with interests in US foreign policy.

The full extent to which Trump’s foreign business ties influenced his decision making as President may never be known, but there is plenty of evidence that Trump’s actions in the White House were influenced–if not guided–by his financial interests, subverting the national interests for his own parochial concerns. For example, while campaigning in 2015, Trump bragged to a crowd in Alabama about his longstanding business ties with the Saudis. “They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” he told the crowd. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.” In office, Trump continued to benefit from Saudi business and faced repeated criticism, especially in the wake of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, for his apparent desire to shield Saudi leaders from criticism, going so far as to question US intelligence while parroting allegations from Saudi Arabia that Khashoggi was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Other instances of Trump’s business interests bleeding into his administration’s foreign policy abound. In 2019, Trump stunned the US foreign policy establishment by pulling US troops out of northeast Syria. The decision had no obvious benefits to the US and was a bombshell reversal to allied Kurds, but it was a victory for Turkey, where Trump had done business for years. In China, Trump again shocked even his GOP allies when he pledged to help sanctioned Chinese company ZTE because, as he tweeted, there were “[t]oo many jobs in China lost,” despite warnings from US intelligence officials that the company’s products may be used by the Chinese government to spy on Americans. When Trump’s tax returns were released more than four years later, they showed a Chinese bank account he claimed to have closed in 2015 and, according to CREW’s analysis, more than $7.5 million in income from China. In Argentina, Trump held off on enacting tariffs until after trademarks for his company had been approved.

Trump also used the US foreign policy apparatus to direct business to his properties. For example, Trump’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom reportedly told embassy staff that Trump pushed him to get the British Open to be held at one of his Scottish golf resorts. During a trip to Europe, Trump insisted on staying at his remote Irish resort in Doonbeg, claiming it was “convenient,” while the Trump Organization promoted his visit. Trump also reportedly pressured the Irish prime minister to meet him at Doonbeg, and threatened to move his visit to Scotland instead if he didn’t.

Despite a near constant stream of reporting about corruption involving Trump’s business at home and abroad, Trump and his family have spent years swearing they put a hold on all foreign deals and that the presidency was without conflicts of interest. After his election Trump proclaimed, “The law’s totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Eric and Don Jr. echoed that sentiment. In a June 2017 interview on Good Morning America, Eric proclaimed that he and his father didn’t talk about business at all and that Trump has “zero conflicts of interest.” In October 2019 Eric said on Fox News, “when my father became commander in chief of this country, we got out of all international business.”

The Trumps did not put a hold on foreign business. In fact, they even signed new deals. Barely two weeks after Eric Trump claimed the Trump Organization put foreign business on hold, the Trump Organization trumpeted approval to build “a new ballroom, pool, spa, leisure facilities, 235 additional resort rooms, gate house and much more” at the Doonbeg golf course in Ireland. A local council in Scotland also voted to allow the Trump Organization to expand its Aberdeen golf course by building 550 homes and a second golf course. Eric Trump celebrated this “new phase of development” on Twitter. At the same time, Eric was bashing Hunter Biden on Fox News for “cashing in” while his father was Vice President.

The Trumps took advantage of the presidency to revive dormant old deals as well, revisiting projects in countries like India, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and more during the administration.

The Trumps were openly engaging in multiple international business deals and let the world know that they hoped to continue expanding internationally after Trump left office. According to the Wall Street Journal, Eric Trump predicted that after Trump leaves office, the “Trump Organization will launch a major expansion that will in part focus on luxury hotels abroad.” Don Jr. was even more specific, telling an Indian newspaper, “India is a market that we would be very interested [in] post politics,” along with “other markets.”

It’s no secret that Trump was struggling financially before he announced his run for office. His tax returns show that the presidency was great for his bank account. Congressional Republicans may have halted their inquiry into Trump’s finances, but there is still much to discover about the extent to which he truly abused the presidency for his own personal profit.

#us politics #news #citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington #2023 #donald trump #republicans #conservatives #trump administration #gop #trump taxes #trump tax returns #foreign conflicts of interest #Trump Organization

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beardedmrbean · 2 years

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The Washington Post's "internet culture" journalist Taylor Lorenz is under fire for falsely claiming she had reached out to YouTubers in her story about the explosive Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial.

On Thursday, following the stunning conclusion of Depp's successful defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife, Lorenz alleged the real winners were "content creators" who benefited from the courtroom frenzy with larger followings and spikes in revenue.

"The trial offered a potential glimpse into our future media ecosystem, where content creators serve as the personalities breaking news to an increasing numbers of viewers — and, in turn, define the online narrative around major events. Those creators can also bring in major personal profits in the process," Lorenz told readers. "In this new landscape, every big news event becomes an opportunity to amass followers, money and clout. And the Depp-Heard trial showed how the creator-driven news ecosystem can influence public opinion based on platform incentives."

Her article cites two YouTube personalities, "LegalBytes" host Alyte Mazeika and an anonymous user named ThatUmbrellaGuy. Lorenz alleged that according to Business Insider, Mazeika "earned $5,000 in one week by pivoting the content on her YouTube channel to nonstop trial coverage and analysis." She also claimed that ThatUmbrellaGuy "earned up to $80,000 last month, according to an estimate by social analytics firm Social Blade."

WASHINGTON POST'S TAYLOR LORENZ DOXXES LIBS OF TIKTOK DAYS AFTER DECRYING ONLINE HARASSMENT OF WOMEN

Included in the paragraph was a parenthetical statement reading, "Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy did not respond to requests for comment."

Both Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy refuted the statement, saying Lorenz never reached out to them prior to publication of her story.

"Um. This says I didn't respond to requests to comment? I know I've gotten a lot of emails over the past two months, but I've just double checked for your name, @TaylorLorenz, and I see no email from you," Mazeika called out the Washington Post columnist. "Also, I didn't suddenly pivot. I started covering this before trial began."

KELLYANNE CONWAY TORCHES TAYLOR LORENZ ON ‘THE VIEW’: THIS ‘PETER PAN’ WAS OBSESSED WITH MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER

Mazeika accused Lorenz of mischaracterizing Business Insider's coverage of her, which she too thought was "unfair." She later provided an update claiming Lorenz reached out to her for comment "after the piece was already published and I had to call it out."

"This is so dumb," Mazeika wrote.

Lorenz appeared to acknowledge Mazeika's public complaint, tweeting "Thanks for replying!" and that she "would love to incorporate your comments!"

ThatUmbrellaGuy similarly called out the Post's article.

"The Washington Post LIED and DID NOT contact me before including me in their story on Johnny Depp, despite reporting they did so," the YouTuber tweeted, sharing time stamps of his tweet calling out the article and Lorenz's email to him sent minutes later.

He later continued, "The Washington Post also FLAGRANTLY misrepresented my earnings report and needs to correct it. Social Blade says I made between $4.9k and $79.1k. They ADDED TO the highest estimate, overreporting for dramatic effect."

WAPO'S TAYLOR LORENZ RUNS COVER FOR ‘VICTIM’ NINA JANKOWICZ WHILE REPORTING DHS PUT PAUSE ON DISINFO BOARD

The Washington Post article appeared to have been stealth-edited, removing the claim that Lorenz had reached out to the YouTubers for comment without an editor's note acknowledging the change.

The Washington Post did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment. Fox News also reached out to Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy for comment.

Lorenz has long been criticized for her journalism ethics. In 2020, she repeatedly publicized the 15-year-old daughter of Trump aide Kellyanne Conway for the teen's outspoken TikTok posts and allegedly reached out directly to the minor without her parents' permission.

Conway recently torched Lorenz for obsessing over her daughter, referring to her as "Peter Pan."

In 2021, Lorenz falsely accused business tech entrepeneur Marc Andreessen of "using the r-slur," which she admitted was an error.

In April, she doxxed the identity of popular Twitter personality Libs of TikTok just days after she decried the online harassment of women.

Lorenz was ridiculed for her report last month alleging Nina Jankowicz, who was set to be the executive director of the Biden administration's so-called "Disinformation Governance Board," was the "victim" of "right-wing attacks" as the Department of Homeland Security was putting a pause on the initiative following weeks of intense backlash.

#nunyas news #head of the ministry of truth caught lying again #shocker

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xtruss · 1 year

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Narcissists Elon Musk and Donald Trump

No one comes close to Musk and Trump for sheer in-your-facedness, brazen assertion of power and bullying in order to dominate and force others to submit.

— Robert Reich | November 8, 2022

Friends,

I intended to write today about tomorrow’s election, but every time I began I got sidetracked by two people not on any ballot but who are setting the tenor for much of what we see and hear these days.

Last Friday, Elon Musk fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, including teams devoted to combating election misinformation — and did it so haphazardly and arbitrarily that most had no idea they were fired until their email accounts were shut off.

This was after he fired Twitter’s executives “with cause” to avoid paying them the golden parachutes they’re owed. And after he taunted Twitter and the law firm it worked with in its lawsuit against him, suggesting he would sue all of them.

And after posting an article suggesting Paul Pelosi had been drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute.

It’s been a long ten days since Musk bought Twitter.

But this has been his MO all along.

When the British diver Vernon Unsworth rejected his help rescuing youth football players trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk described him as “pedo guy.” When the Securities and Exchange Commission went after Musk, he tweeted that the “E” in the SEC stands for “Elon’s.” (You can guess what the “S” and “C” stand for.)

During the pandemic, when public health authorities refused him permission to reopen his Tesla factory, he did it anyway. After several mainstream news outlets called him out for his plans to launch a website ranking journalists’ credibility, Musk linked to what he described as an “excellent” analysis published by the NXIVM cult.

Taunting opponents. Stiffing people he owes. Treating employees like dung. Refusing to be bound by the law. Bullying adversaries. Demeaning critics. Craving attention. Refusing to be held accountable. Attracting millions of followers and gaining cult status. Telling lies. Making gobs of money. Impetuous. Unpredictable. Ruthless. Autocratic. Vindictive.

Remind you of anyone?

Musk is not exactly Donald Trump. They’re different generations, possess different skills, occupy different roles in the bizarre firmament of modern America. And Trump is far more dangerous to democracy — so far.

But both represent the emergence of a particularly American personality in the early years of the twenty-first century: the wildly disruptive narcissist. Both wield sledge hammers to protect their fragile egos. Both are utterly lacking in empathy. Both lie, and push baseless conspiracy theories (such as the one cooked up about Paul Pelosi).

And both are indefatigable self-promoters.

Both are billionaires but they are not motivated primarily by money. Nor are they fueled by any larger purpose, principle, or ideology. Their singular goal is to imprint their giant egos on everyone else — to exercise raw power over people. To make others grovel.

Their politics is neither conservative nor liberal. Call it megalomaniacal authoritarian. (It seems likely Musk will give Trump back the giant Twitter megaphone Trump lost when he incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol.)

But why now — why do both achieve such prominence at this particular point in history? And why are so many enthralled with them?

The answer, I think, is that a large segment of the American public projects its needs and fantasies on them. People who are “mad as hell and not going to take it any more” crave strongmen who shake up the system.

People who have been bullied their whole lives want to identify with super bullies who give the finger to the establishment, answerable to no one but their own ravenous egos.

Their arrogance and certitude attract millions of followers, fans, and cultish devotees, along with a fair number of goons and thugs, who want to vicariously feel superior.

But they are not leaders. They are bullies who demean America.

Others aspire to the same status — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who flies undocumented immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blames wildfires on Jewish space lasers. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who refuses to commit to the outcome of the upcoming election and also mocks Paul Pelosi. And the other infamous high-tech zillionaires, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Yet none comes close to Musk and Trump for sheer in-your-facedness, gleeful bombast, and the brazen assertion of power in order to dominate and force others to submit.

Beware. The last time the world gave in to megalomaniacs it did not end well. The robber barons of the Gilded Age — men like William (“the public be damned”) Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller — siphoned off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest of the nation had to go deep into debt to maintain their standard of living and overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced.

When that debt bubble burst in 1929, the world got a Great Depression. And that Depression paved the way for Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, and Adolph Hitler, who created the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed, and the most deaths.

We are much safer when economic and political power is widely diffused. We are better off when people like Musk and Trump cannot gain such untrammeled wealth and influence.

We all do better when fewer Americans feel so helpless and insecure that they’re drawn to reprehensible bullies who parade across the public stage as if possessing admirable qualities.

— Robert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written 18 books, including his most recent, The System: Who Rigged It, and How We Fix It. Currently, his articles are published with permission from Robert Reich.

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