Law enforcement officials recently foiled what appears to be an assassination attempt that targeted President Donald Trump via a package containing the poison ricin, according to a report. Citing two law enforcement officials, CNN reported the package was addressed to Trump and intercepted by authorities this week.
“Two tests were done to confirm the presence of ricin,” according to the outlet.
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“All mail for the White House is sorted and screened at an offsite facility before reaching the White House.”
The New York Times confirmed, citing a law enforcement official, that an envelope addressed to the White House and containing Ricin was intercepted this week.
“It is unclear when the envelope was intercepted before it reached the White House mail room, but investigators believe that it was sent from Canada, according to the official,” The Times reported.
“Federal investigators are working to track down who sent it and determine whether other envelopes have been sent through the postal system.”
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The FBI’s field office in Washington, D.C., told the Washington Examiner it was investigating a “suspicious letter,” though it did not provide many details.
“The FBI and our U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Postal Inspection Service partners are investigating a suspicious letter received at a U.S. government mail facility,” the FBI’s statement read.
“At this time, there is no known threat to public safety.”
Julio Galligaris sorts through mail-in ballots that have been cast and received at the Miami-Dade Election Department headquarters on October 13, 2010 in Doral, Florida. As America starts to cast ballots for the mid-term elections through early voting and absentee ballots, the Miami-Dade County Elections Department is conducting an examination … Joe Raedle/Getty Images
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that states sending unsolicited mail-in ballots should end the process to prevent a delay in election results.
“The big Unsolicited Ballot States should give it up NOW, before it is too late, and ask people to go to the Polling Booths and, like always before, VOTE,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Otherwise, MAYHEM!!!”
The president clarified, however, that solicited absentee ballots are fine.
California, D.C., Nevada, New Jersey, and Vermont have adopted a system of unsolicited ballots in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington already had existing systems to send registered voters their ballots, without voters needing to request them. All of the states sending unsolicited ballots in 2020 went for failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Only Colorado and Nevada remain battleground states, as Trump lost Nevada by two points and Colorado by five points in 2016.
But Trump warned that the November 3 election results might never be accurate, thanks to an increase of unsolicited ballots.
“Because of the new and unprecedented massive amount of unsolicited ballots which will be sent to ‘voters,’ or wherever, this year, the Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED, which is what some want,” Trump wrote. “Another election disaster yesterday. Stop Ballot Madness!”
Mike Pompeo, Matt Boyle / Courtesy State Department
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Breitbart News exclusively that President Donald Trump’s peace deals in the Middle East are “all connected” and stem from recognizing Iran as the primary threat to stability in the region.
Pompeo’s interview came late Saturday night aboard the U.S. Air Force jet transporting him and the U.S. delegation after he met with the president of the Republic of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, whom he visited here after earlier in the day attending the opening of intra-Afghan peace talks in Doha, Qatar. As the jet touched down in Doha late Friday night the previous evening, the deal being rolled out this week between Bahrain and Israel to normalize relations was announced. Previously, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel announced they were normalizing relations. On Tuesday at the White House, representatives of both Bahrain and UAE are meeting with Trump in addition to Israeli officials including Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
“It’s a great question. They are all connected,” Pompeo told Breitbart News when asked to connect the dots between the Afghan peace talks and these other peace deals being rolled out now. “The president laid down a strategy for how to secure America from instability and threats from the Middle East.”
Pompeo, who is at the White House with Trump and other American officials as part of the historic meetings for the peace deals on Tuesday, said that Trump’s Middle East policy strategy vision began by treating Iran as the main threat in the region.
“It began by recognizing the primary operator for instability, the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo said. “That central decision has begun to drive all of the elements of our foreign policy in the Middle East. Reduce our footprint in Afghanistan, get our young men and women home. Reduce our footprints in Iraq and Syria, be strong in terms of sanctions and place pressure on the regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and then lay out a strategy for Middle East peace which had multiple pieces right?”
Several of the steps that laid the groundwork for these major steps toward Middle East peace, Pompeo told Breitbart News, include recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and several other steps taken in Israel. That, he said, has lit a path forward for Arab countries in the region for a vision for peace.
“Some of this is reality: Recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, acknowledge that the Golan Heights indeed is Israeli territory. We’ve also made clear that the settlements in the West Bank weren’t necessarily unlawful,” Pompeo said. “All of those things come together to place the conditions where frankly countries in the Middle East can see a path forward for how you can take down risk and grow their economies. We think about these deals between Bahrain and the Emirates as security arrangements. That’s true, but the benefits to the economies of those three countries of opening up trade will be enormous.”
Pompeo, who on Saturday in Doha met with leaders of the Afghan government and Taliban delegations at the beginning of intra-Afghan peace talks as the U.S. is as he told Breitbart News on pace for a full withdrawal of all armed forces by next spring, said the U.S. sees Afghanistan and other countries eventually reaching a place where through “economic benefits” to the region they join other Arab nations in push for peace inside their countries and with the West. He said the hope is even Iran will one day come to the table for a real deal, rather than the flawed Iran deal from former President Barack Obama’s and former Vice President Joe Biden’s administration from which Trump withdrew the United States.
“Those economic benefits are the kind of thing that we hope one day is something we can do in Afghanistan,” Pompeo said. “We’ve made progress in Iraq as well by defeating the caliphate. All of those things come together to reduce risk from the Middle East. We hope that the Iranians will come to see that there is a pathway for them as well, but until they do, the pressure campaign will continue.”
Pompeo also said that while Afghan peace is still a ways away, and that Afghanistan becoming a country like UAE or Bahrain is still even further off, there definitely are other countries in the Middle East that are likely to soon join UAE and Bahrain soon.
“Yes there are,” Pompeo said.
Asked if it is a “peace through strength” doctrine, like what former President Ronald Reagan championed, Pompeo said it is—but the focus from Trump is on “economic strength.” He added that the president is unafraid, as he has demonstrated, to use military force however to demonstrate America’s might if needed.
“It’s absolutely the model, with an emphasis on economic strength,” Pompeo said. “The thing that America does best—our creativity, our innovation, our capacity to create opportunities for good all across the world—it’s absolutely peace through strength. We’re very much focused on making sure if there’s a bad actor, if Qassem Soleimani is threatening America, President Trump will never shy away from using military force. But we’re not going to be engaged in countries doing extended policing when they don’t generate safety and security for the American people.”
This is the second piece from Pompeo’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News. More is forthcoming.
Friction among Senate Republicans on the next round of coronavirus relief legislation and a suddenly shaky stock market has eroded President Trump’s leverage in the ongoing standoff with Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was still searching Tuesday afternoon for 51 Republican votes for a half-trillion-dollar economic relief package that he hopes will put pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to soften their demands.
Meanwhile, the stock markets in the past week have suffered their worst one-day drops since the coronavirus first froze the U.S. economy in March. On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 dropped 632 points and 95 points, respectively — more than 2 percent each — while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 465 points, or 4.11 percent.
While the stock markets surged upward through July and August, the start of September has brought a stark shift in sentiment. Coronavirus infections are expected to spike when the fall temperatures drop and there doesn’t appear to be a clear path to getting another federal relief package.
“Trump needs a package just because the stock market has been declining. There is a possibility that COVID infections will increase in the fall and we know the economy is a big variable in how people vote,” said Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
“Republicans want to protect the Senate and protect the presidency and they’re going to need a deal,” he said.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned Congress during testimony in June that “significant uncertainty” remained in the economy and that “support would be well-placed at this time.” The recent big drop in the stock indices is a significant political development because Trump often cites Wall Street to argue that the economy is making a strong recovery.
“The Dow Jones Industrial just closed above 29,000! You are so lucky to have me as your President. With Joe Hiden’ it would crash,” Trump tweeted exuberantly on Sept. 2, just before the markets started tumbling.
Another relief package passed by Congress, especially one as large as what Pelosi and Schumer want, is expected to give another boost to the markets.
“You live by the sword and you die by the sword. If you’re claiming credit when the market is high, you have a problem when the market drops,” West said.
One Republican senator who wants a larger relief bill said the market turmoil “ought to” put pressure on the White House and colleagues to agree to more federal aid. But the lawmaker, who requested anonymity to discuss Trump’s motives, conceded “I’m having trouble mapping out a scenario one way or another.”
Pelosi on Tuesday seized on calls by Fed officials for more fiscal stimulus from Congress as well as divisions among Republicans to press her growing leverage.
“The chairman of the Fed and other Fed leaders around the country have said clearly that we need a stimulus, that we need a boost,”she noted in an interview with Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power.”
At the same time she slammed McConnell’s revised relief bill, which is estimated to cost around a half-trillion dollars, as “pathetic.” She pointed out it is roughly “half of what [Treasury] Secretary [Steven] Mnuchin has proposed.”
“They are not even in agreement. They are in disarray,” she said of Republicans.
The Senate Republican bill needs 60 votes to overcome an anticipated Democratic filibuster and pass. It will fall well short of that threshold, but McConnell is hoping to get at least a simple majority in favor of it so he can argue that Democrats are acting as obstructionists.
He said on the Senate floor Tuesday that he will schedule a vote this week and indicated to reporters in the hallway that it would happen Thursday.
“Republicans are making yet another overture,” McConnell said.
Conservatives such as Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are skeptical about spending hundreds of billions of dollars in more federal aid and are pushing for concessions from the GOP leadership. With all Democrats likely to oppose the Republican bill, McConnell can only afford three defections.
Paul on Tuesday said he would oppose the measure.
“We don’t have any money up here. I’m not for borrowing any more money,” he said.
Johnson on Tuesday afternoon said he would support the bill after McConnell and Mnuchin agreed to repurpose about $350 billion in funding from the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March to new relief measures. He said the revised bill would add only $150 billion to $300 billion to the deficit, though he cautioned the numbers aren’t final yet. Johnson said he worked closely with the GOP leadership and Mnuchin to make changes to the measure to make it more appealing to conservatives but didn’t know if it would get 51 votes.
“We’ll see what all ends up happening. We’ll probably have a discussion. There might be some further arm twisting,” he said.
Hawley, a rising conservative star, is pressing for a fully refundable tax credit for homeschooling expenses such as books, technology and laboratory equipment. His proposal was not in the bill as of Tuesday afternoon and he remains undecided. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) used his leverage with Republican leaders to gain two years of tax credits for individuals and businesses that donate to nonprofit scholarship funds, a proposal designed to help subsidize private school tuition.
There are also questions as to whether more-moderate Republicans in tough reelection races such as Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Cory Gardner (Colo.) will be satisfied with the smaller price tag for the revised package, and the lack of additional federal aid for state and local governments, other than money set aside for schools.
Without the repurposed federal funding offsetting some of its cost, the package would be in the range of $500 billion to $700 billion, according to Senate GOP aides. The Republican bill, which McConnell unveiled Tuesday, would provide $300 a week in federal unemployment assistance, a second round of Paycheck Protection Program loans, $105 billion to help reopen classrooms and $16 billion in more money for COVID-19 testing.
Failure to win a simple majority vote for a largely symbolic bill would be another setback for the White House and Senate Republicans, who declined to put the $1.1 trillion coronavirus relief proposal they drafted in July on the Senate floor because of divisions within their conference. Plans to vote during the first week of August on proposals to extend federal unemployment assistance and to fund a second round of small-business loans were scrapped after disagreements again broke out among Republican senators.
Democrats, however, have stayed unified behind their own proposal, the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act, which the House passed in May, as well as a trimmed-down $2.2 trillion proposal that Pelosi and Schumer offered to White House negotiators in late August.
Pelosi and Schumer on Monday said McConnell’s bill was “headed nowhere” and dismissed it as a “political” gesture.
Former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Zach Fuentes denied to Breitbart News The Atlantic’s account of President Donald Trump’s comments about troops in Europe. Fuentes unequivocally denied The Atlantic’s report last week, a huge blow to the establishment media narrative. Fuentes personally briefed President Trump on the weather situation that led to the trip being canceled. He is also a close personal confidante of former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
“You can put me on record denying that I spoke with The Atlantic,” Fuentes told Breitbart News on Monday. “I don’t know who the sources are. I did not hear POTUS call anyone losers when I told him about the weather. Honestly, do you think General Kelly would have stood by and let ANYONE call fallen Marines losers?”
He specifically also stated that he believes The Atlantic’s sources “are unlikely first hand accounts.”
“They are conflating those people from something the day after,” Fuentes said.
Fuentes also told Breitbart News he is upset that Trump has been speaking negatively about Kelly.
“On a separate note, I am disappointed to see POTUS talk about General Kelly so negatively in the middle of being accused of saying negative things about the military,” Fuentes said. “If anyone understands selfless service, it’s General Kelly.”
The fact that Fuentes—Kelly’s closest ally—is now publicly denying the report from The Atlantic is a monstrous strike against the credibility of the report. Several Trump critics, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, have also denied this happened.
Every person who was allegedly in the room who has spoken up so far has denied the account of what happened. Fuentes’ denial, reported here exclusive on Breitbart News first, deals another strike against The Atlantic’s credibility.
“I also think any President, regardless of political affiliation, deserves to have candid and private conversations with trusted advisors,” Fuentes added in a text to Breitbart News. “If the President decides to talk about it, that is his right, but generally, I don’t think it is my place to divulge private conversations I’ve had with him.”
PORTLAND, OR – AUGUST 1: A protester burns an American flag in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in the early morning on August 1, 2020 in Portland, Oregon. Friday was the second night in a row without police intervention, following weeks of clashes between federal officers and …Nathan Howard/Getty Images
The far-left Washington Post blackmailed the country Thursday with a threat framed as analysis that says only a landslide victory for Joe Biden can save us from violence.
Because the Post piece is both fake news and irresponsible, I’m not going to compound those sins by linking it here. The Post’s tweet advertising the piece (which I also won’t link) sums up the threat perfectly: “The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis,” the tweet reads. “In every scenario except a Biden landslide, our simulation ended catastrophically.”
Only a Biden landslide can save America from a national catastrophe.
In other words…
That’s a nice country you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
The Post’s bald-faced threat is couched in a piece of analysis that does not even attempt to be serious, especially in a country where, as I write this, countless Democrat-run cities are on fire thanks to Black Lives Matter and Antifa, two left-wing terrorists groups who operate as Brownshirts for the Democrat Party and media outlets like the Washington Post — who regularly encourage and protect these domestic terrorists.
Even more ludicrous, the Post’s threat is only made possibly by way of its cherry-picking of “experts.”
They make it all so official-sounding. I’ve emphasized the howlers:
President Trump has broken countless norms and ignored countless laws during his time in office, and while my colleagues and I at the Transition Integrity Project didn’t want to lie awake at night contemplating the ways the American experiment could fail, we realized that identifying the most serious risks to our democracy might be the best way to avert a November disaster. So we built a series of war games, sought out some of the most accomplished Republicans, Democrats, civil servants, media experts, pollsters and strategists around, and asked them to imagine what they’d do in a range of election and transition scenarios.
A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis.
I swear I’m not making that up. I know it sounds like something I’d make up, especially something as hilarious as a “Transition Integrity Project” operating from the same Washington Post hellhole that led the fake news propaganda jihad for the Russia Collusion Hoax coup plotters. But it’s all real. I swear. Look it up if you don’t believe me.
Anyway, the Transition Integrity Project’s war games (can you believe they used the term “war games?”) are staffed only with ringers. The “accomplished Republicans” are all — and I do mean all — bitter, half-witted, Trump haters: Michael Steele. Bill Kristol. Trey Grayson.
On the other side are only Biden loyalists: John Podesta. Donna Brazile. Jennifer Granholm.
Not even one disgruntled Bernie Bro.
Not even one.
So the Transition Integrity Project asked six people who f–king hate Donald Trump something about Donald Trump and the answer is not looking so good for Donald Trump.
Transition Integrity Project?
More like the Transition Rigged Project.
So even though Joe Biden’s supporters are right now — I mean right now as I write this — burning down a whole bunch of Democrat-run cities and Joe Biden has said almost nothing to stop them and PLENTY to encourage them, the Transition Rigged Project talked to six people who fucking hate Donald Trump and came to this bottom line [emphasis added]:
In every exercise, both teams sought to mobilize their supporters to take to the streets. Team Biden repeatedly called for peaceful protests, while Team Trump encouraged provocateurs to incite violence, then used the resulting chaos to justify sending federalized Guard units or active-duty military personnel into American cities to “restore order,” leading to still more violence. (The exercises underscored the tremendous power enjoyed by an incumbent president: Biden can call a news conference, but Trump can call in the 82nd Airborne.)
Yep, the 82nd Airborne, y’all.
Here’s something else the Transition Rigged Project war gamed:
In the “narrow Biden win” scenario, Trump refused to leave office and was ultimately escorted out by the Secret Service — but only after pardoning himself and his family and burning incriminating documents.
Let me tell you what’s happening here…
If Trump wins, the organized left, and you can bet that includes media outlets like the Washington Post, intend to declare war on us. On you and I.
Not political war.
War-war.
That’s what they’re doing now.
That’s what the Democrat Party’s and the media’s Brownshirts in Black Lives Matter and Antifa are doing right now in Kenosha and Rochester and Minneapolis and Portland and will do in any other place where an excuse can be found or manufactured.
The war is a hot war. If Trump wins re-election it’s going to get hotter.
The Washington Post is warning us — not just that there will be a war if Trump loses, but that we will be blamed for the war.
Hey, we warned you if you didn’t pay for protection your store would burn down.
Hey, we warned you if you didn’t vote for Joe Biden your store and your home and your car and your life would burn down.
This is not a drill.
This is a threat.
Take this threat seriously.
Prepare yourself.
Prepare yourself before it’s too late to prepare yourself.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
As Portland, Oregon, enters its fourth month as a war zone, a recent casualty and the suspect who allegedly shot him speak to a broader conflict playing out there in real time. Suspected killer Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, allegedly gunned down 39-year-old Aaron “Jay” Danielson during violent demonstrations in the city just after 9 p.m. Saturday, The Oregonian reported.
Friends remembered the victim as “a proud American and a proud Portlander” who joined supporters of President Donald Trump that day in a car caravan of members of Patriot Prayer, a faith-based pro-First and Second Amendment group. The group has a history of facing off against the violent radicals in antifa, and before the caravan had even left the suburban mall where vehicles decked out in pro-Trump banners and American flags congregated before the rally, demonstrators on both sides clashed, according to NBC News.
The organization and police originally coordinated a route around the city, but a blocked on-ramp dumped the convoy into the downtown area and forced the caravan to split into smaller groups, which put the motorcade into the belly of the beast where Danielson was killed.
Prior to that night, Reinoehl, Danielson’s alleged assailant, was caught with a loaded weapon at another Black Lives Matter protest in Portland and fought with police officers, but charges were never pursued.
“Officers arrested a male at SW Broadway and Main St. who had a loaded firearm on his person,” the Portland Police Bureau tweeted after his arrest July 5.
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“He fought with office[r]s during the arrest.”
It was just weeks before that confrontation with police that Reinoehl published a diatribe laying out exactly what he was willing to do in the name of antifa. Nightly riots continued to plague Portland back then — as they did nationwide — sparked off by the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd in police custody on May 25.
“Every Revolution needs people that are willing and ready to fight,” Reinoehl began in his June 16 Instagram post.
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“There are so many of us protesters that are just protesting without a clue of where that will lead. That’s just the beginning that’s where the fight starts,” he wrote.
“If that’s as far as you can take it thank you for your participation but please stand aside and support the ones that are willing to fight,” Reinoehl continued.
“I am 100% ANTIFA all the way! I am willing to fight for my brothers and sisters! Even if some of them are too ignorant to realize what antifa truly stands for,” he said.
Reinoehl went on to claim that he didn’t “want violence” but that he wouldn’t “run from it either,”citing supposed police brutality against peaceful protesters as justification to respond in kind.
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“We truly have an opportunity right now to fix everything,” he added. “But it will be a fight like no other! It will be a war and like all wars there will be casualties.”
“I was in the army and I hated it. I did not feel like fighting for them would ever be a good cause. Today’s protesters and antifa are my brothers in arms,” Reinoehl said.
“This is a Cause to fight for This truly is fighting for my country! I have children that need to live in a world run by Common Sense and human decency,” he said, likely referring to his 17-year-old son and 11-year old daughter.
His care and concern for his children didn’t seem to be a factor when he was caught street racing at over 100 mph with his son in June, or when he was caught with a handgun, pills and marijuana while his daughter was a passenger in his vehicle shortly before the June 16 post, according to another article in The Oregonian.
“And I will do anything to make sure that happens,” he continued in the Instagram post before warning that missing out on this opportunity to “change the course of humanity” would have them “lost for another hundred years.”
Ironically, the loosely organized movement antifa bills itself as being against fascism, although its tactics of shutting down and using violence against people with which it disagrees gives lie to that claim. In fact, leftist demonstrators rejoiced at the news of Danielson’s death, and judging from the words Reinoehl used months before he allegedly killed Danielson, this is exactly in line with what he believed needed to happen to advance their cause.
The fallacy of Black Lives Matter and antifa engaging in “mostly peaceful protests” is exposed in every city street strewn with broken glass and burned-out businesses and evident in the number of police officers killed or injured. These organizations are out for destruction and bloodshed — maybe not to the extent of unhinged folks like Reinoehl, but vandalism and violence are, after all, fruits of the same poisonous sociopathic tree.
There’s no telling whether the people who commit violent crimes were already primed to do so before the opportunity presented itself, or whether they have been pushed from word into deed by the current permissive climate for that sort of action. Either way, a segment of the population has crossed the threshold into criminal behavior because politicians have been unwilling to stop their cities from descending into chaos.
Black Lives Matter and antifa are telling Americans exactly what they’re all about through violence, whether it is against property, police officers or other individuals. State and city leaders need to take heed and restore law and order before their rhetoric is taken to its fatal conclusion again.
Christine earned her bachelor’s degree from Seton Hall University, where she studied communications and Latin. She left her career in the insurance industry to become a freelance writer and stay-at-home mother.
“Too little too late. The left wing militants have been at war in America’s cities for MONTHS and you’re only commenting now because the polling told you to,” Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas tweeted.
“Amazing that after 90 days of silence (and not one mention at the DNC) on the looting and rioting in the #BidenRiots, Biden finally says something after CNN says it’s hurting him in the polls. Weak!”tweeted Donald Trump Jr.
In a Saturday Breitbart piece, commentator John Nolte claimed that “violence raged for 88 days before Joe Biden finally emerged from his Delaware bunker and said it was wrong.”
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Biden’s statements explicitly condemning looting, arson, destruction of property, and violence include a written statement on May 31, a speech on June 2, a speech on July 28, a video on Wednesday, a written statement on Sunday, and a speech on Monday. Biden, however, did not forcefully address daily violence and vandalism that took place in Seattle, Washington, and Portland for much of June and July, instead focusing criticism on federal law enforcement officers for harming “peaceful protesters.” At the end of July, Biden again started to criticize arsonists, looters, and other violent demonstrators explicitly.
The former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee has condemned violence on all sides and called out anarchists but has focused more attention on violence stemming from right-wing groups, white supremacists, and law enforcement than from “anti-fascist” factions.
Below is a timeline of some violent events stemming from protests over police brutality and racism across the country and key Biden statements about the protests and violence.
Monday, May 25, 2020: George Floyd, a black Minneapolis man, dies after being held by his neck under a white police offer’s knee for nearly nine minutes.
Tuesday, May 26, 2020: Biden tweeted a call for an FBI investigation into the officers involved in Floyd’s death.
Protests in Minneapolis began, resulting in clashes between those protesting Floyd’s death and police, including the use of tear gas. Some police vehicles were vandalized.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020: During a virtual town hall event, Biden called for a Department of Justice investigation into Floyd’s death. “George Floyd’s life mattered. It mattered as much as mine. It mattered as much as anyone’s in this country. Or, at least, it should have,”Biden said.
Looting erupted in Minneapolis, with viral images showing a Target near the 3rd Police Precinct being ransacked. An AutoZone near the precinct was set on fire.
Protests and riots began to spread nationwide. By June 1, at least 140 cities across the country had Black Lives Matter protests, and the National Guard was activated in 21 states.
Thursday, May 28, 2020: Biden, in a virtual fundraiser, addressed Floyd and made a passing reference to violence and riots.
“Tonight, the National Guard has been called out of Minneapolis, and I urge the protesters to exercise their rights peacefully and safely. But people all across this country are enraged and rightly so,” Biden said, according to a pool report.
Friday, May 29, 2020: Biden delivered a brief address from his home studio on “the unfolding situation in Minnesota” and Floyd’s death. He revealed that he had spoken to Floyd’s family.
“This is no time for incendiary tweets. It’s no time to encourage violence,” Biden said.
Overnight, protesters in St. Louis, Missouri, blocked off an interstate for almost three hours, set a fire in the road, and broke into an Amazon Prime truck and a FedEx truck. One man died after getting caught in between two FedEx truck trailers, and the truck drove away.
A 21-year-old was killed in Detroit, Michigan, after shots were fired into a crowd of protesters, police said.
Rioters and vandals swarmed CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Saturday, May 30, 2020:Reutersreports that at least 13 Biden campaign staff members posted that they had donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which used donations to pay bail fees for those arrested in the Minneapolis protests.
Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey implored residents to stay home, saying in a tweet, “What started as largely peaceful protests for George Floyd have turned to outright looting and domestic terrorism in our region.”
Overnight in Indianapolis, Indiana, three people were shot, and one was killed amid the riots.
In Chicago, six people were shot, one fatally, amid protests and looting downtown.
Sunday, May 31, 2020: In a written statement sent early in the morning just after midnight, Biden addressed the violence happening across the country. He said that while protesting brutality in the wake of Floyd’s death is “right and necessary” and an “utterly American response,” violence and looting “is not.”
The statement said, in part:
These last few days have laid bare that we are a nation furious at injustice. Every person of conscience can understand the rawness of the trauma people of color experience in this country, from the daily indignities to the extreme violence, like the horrific killing of George Floyd.
Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not.
Later in the day, Biden visited the site of protests that happened in Wilmington, Delaware. “The only way to bear this pain is to turn all that anguish to purpose. And as President, I will help lead this conversation — and more importantly, I will listen, just as I did today visiting the site of last night’s protests in Wilmington,” Biden said in an Instagram caption.
Overnight in Louisville, Kentucky, police “returned fire” into a crowd while trying to clear protesters and killed one man.
Tuesday, June 2, 2020: In a live speech from Philadelphia City Hall, Biden again expressed disapproval of violence:
The country is crying out for leadership. Leadership that can unite us. Leadership that can bring us together. Leadership that can recognize pain and deep grief of communities that have had a knee on their neck for a long.
There’s no place for violence. No place for looting or destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses — many of them built by the very people of color who, for the first time, were beginning to realize their dreams and build wealth for their families.
Nor is it acceptable for our police, sworn to protect and serve all people, to escalate tension, resort to excessive violence. We need to distinguish between legitimate peaceful protest and opportunistic violent destruction.
He also criticized Trump for dispersing a protest crowd outside the White House with crowd control gas before the president walked to St. John’s Church, which had been set on fire amid the protests.
“And [we] have to be vigilant about the violence that’s being done by the incumbent president to our democracy and to the pursuit of justice … When peaceful protesters are dispersed by the order of the president from the doorstep of the people’s house, the White House, using tear gas and flash grenades, in order to stage a photo-op at a noble church, we can be forgiven for believing that the president is more interested in power than in principle. More interested in serving the passions of his base than the needs of the people in his care. For that’s what the presidency is: the duty to care — to care for all of us.”
Tuesday, June 9, 2020: Demonstrators in Seattle declare a portion of the city a police-free “autonomous zone,” known as CHAZ/CHOP.
Saturday, June 20, 2020: A 19-year-old man in the Seattle CHOP area is shot.
Sunday, June 21, 2020: A 17-year-old boy in the Seattle CHOP area is shot.
Tuesday, July 21, 2020: In a written statement, Biden criticized the presence of Department of Homeland Security law enforcement officers in Portland, saying that they attacked “peaceful protesters” without recognizing the violent and destructive protesters.
We have a president who is determined to sow chaos and division. To make matters worse instead of better. We all remember the appalling scenes in front of the White House, when peaceful protestors were gassed to make way for a Trump photo op. Now Homeland Security agents — without a clearly defined mandate or authority — are ranging far from federal property, stripped of badges and insignia and identifying markings, to detain people. They are brutally attacking peaceful protestors, including a U.S. Navy veteran. Of course the U.S. government has the right and duty to protect federal property. The Obama-Biden administration protected federal property across the country without resorting to these egregious tactics — and without trying to stoke the fires of division in this country. We need a president who will bring us together instead of tear us apart, calm instead of inflame, and enforce the law faithfully rather than put his political interests first.
Monday, June 29, 2020: Two teenagers were shot, one fatally, in the Seattle CHOP zone.
Wednesday, July 1, 2020: Police clear the Seattle CHOP area and restore their presence there.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020: Biden, in a speech from Wilmington, Delaware, called for arsonists and anarchists to be prosecuted by local police while criticizing Trump for using federal law enforcement from the Department of Homeland Security in an attempt to quell protests.
And he [Trump] is — horrifyingly, but not surprisingly — intentionally stoking the flames of division and racism in this country.
I’ve said from the outset of the recent protests that there’s no place for violence or destruction of property. Peaceful protesters should be protected, but arsonists and anarchists should be prosecuted, and local law enforcement can do that.
When President Obama and I were in office we protected federal property, and we were able to do it without turning DHS into a private militia.
Wednesday, July 29, 2020: The Department of Homeland Security and Oregon reached a deal to leave Portland.
Thursday, July 30, 2020: Portland police reported that after over two months of protests downtown, there were 125 reported shootings, a spike from a total of 59 shootings during the same time period in 2019.
Monday-Thursday, Aug. 17-20, 2020: Democrats held a virtual national convention in which some speakers praised peaceful protesters, but arson, looting, and property damage are largely ignored.
Sunday, Aug. 23, 2020: Kenosha, Wisconsin, man Jacob Blake is shot seven times in the back by a police officer.
Monday-Thursday, Aug. 24-27, 2020: Republicans held a mostly virtual national convention in which many speakers argued that violence taking place in Democratic-controlled cities will spread if Biden is elected.
Monday, Aug. 24, 2020: Riots and fires in Kenosha destroyed blocks of business.
Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020: Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Trump and law enforcement supporter who came to Kenosha from just over the border in Illinois with the intent of protecting businesses alongside other vigilantes, allegedly shot and killed someone while injuring another in a shooting.
Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020: Speaking to a camera in a video addressing the police shooting of Blake in Kenosha and subsequent protests and riots, Biden condemned violence.
“As I said after George Floyd’s murder, protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary. But burning down communities is not protest. It’s needless violence. Violence that endangers lives, violence that guts businesses, and shutters businesses, that shutters communities. That’s wrong.”
He quoted Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson.
“She looked at the damage done in her community, and she said this: ‘This doesn’t reflect my son or my family.’ So, let’s unite and heal, do justice, end the violence, and end systemic racism in this country now,” Biden said.
Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020: Biden condemned the violence and claimed that right-wing militias supported by white supremacists are the source of much of the problems on the streets.
I have made it clear. There is no place for violence, looting, or burning. None. Zero.
All it does it hurt the communities reeling from injustice – and it destroys the businesses that serve them – many of them run by people of color who for the first time in their lives have begun to build wealth for their family.
But while I have condemned all forms of violence – police violence, lawless violence and violence perpetrated by extreme, right-wing militia groups – like the groups the 17-year-old just arrested in Illinois for murdering two people in Wisconsin is reputed to have been aligned with. Trump doesn’t speak out against these extreme right-wing groups. Instead – as he did about Charlottesville – he embraces them.
If you’re worried about the violence you’re witnessing, you better be worried about the armed militias – often aligned with white supremacists and white nationalists and Neo-Nazis and the KKK – who are often the source of the biggest trouble.
Friday, Aug. 28, 2020: In a joint written statement with his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, on the 57th Anniversary of the March on Washington, Biden condemned violence:
“That is where we are today. The murder and violence toward Black Americans of the 1960s is happening today in broad daylight for the world to witness. A pandemic and economic crisis lays bare the systemic racism that still plagues our way of life. And instead of seeking to heal and unite, too many in our nation seek to inflame and divide. We’re in an ongoing battle for the soul of our nation. We condemn the violence. We cannot afford our cities and the bonds between us to be burned, broken, and scarred any further. We have to root out the racism, hate, and the vengeance.”
Sunday, Aug. 30, 2020: Biden condemned violence in a written statement in response to the killing of an apparent Trump supporter in Portland.
The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable. Shooting in the streets of a great American city is unacceptable. I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right. And I challenge Donald Trump to do the same. It does not matter if you find the political views of your opponents abhorrent, any loss of life is a tragedy. Today there is another family grieving in America, and Jill and I offer our deepest condolences.
We must not become a country at war with ourselves. A country that accepts the killing of fellow Americans who do not agree with you. A country that vows vengeance toward one another. But that is the America that President Trump wants us to be, the America he believes we are.
As a country, we must condemn the incitement of hate and resentment that led to this deadly clash. It is not a peaceful protest when you go out spoiling for a fight. What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters? He is recklessly encouraging violence. He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong – but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is. He may think that war in our streets is good for his reelection chances, but that is not presidential leadership – or even basic human compassion.
The senseless violence of looting and burning and destruction of property. I want to be clear about this: Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness — plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, only destruction. It’s wrong in every way. It divides instead of unites.
Destroying businesses only hurts hardworking families that serve the community. It makes things worse, not better. It is not what Dr. King or John Lewis taught. It must end.
The fires are burning — and we have a president who fans the flames rather than fighting them.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – MAY 27: A fire burns inside of an Auto Zone store near the Third Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Businesses near the Third Police Precinct were looted and damaged today as the area has become the site of an ongoing protest after the police killing of George Floyd. Four Minneapolis police officers have been fired after a video taken by a bystander was posted on social media showing Floyd’s neck being pinned to the ground by an officer as he repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe”. Floyd was later pronounced dead while in police custody after being transported to Hennepin County Medical Center. / Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Six Democrat mayors in the swing-state of Minnesota formally endorsed President Donald Trump for a second term on Friday while taking shots at Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden. The letter mainly highlighted economic issues as being the primary driver for the Democrat mayors’ endorsement, but it also noted that the party has gone “so far to the left” that they no longer “recognize” it, and that the party “left” them.
“Today, we write to formally endorse President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for four more years,” the letter said. It was signed by Virginia Mayor Larry Cuffe, Chisholm Mayor John Champa, Ely Mayor Chuck Novak, Two Harbors Mayor Chris Swanson, Eveleth Mayor Robert Vlaisavljevich, and Babbitt Mayor Andrea Zupancich.
“Like many in our region, we have voted for Democrats over many decades,” the letter said. “We have watched as our constituents’ jobs left not only the Iron Range, but our country. By putting tariffs on our products and supporting bad trade deals, politicians like Joe Biden did nothing to help the working class. We lost thousands of jobs, and generations of young people have left the Iron Range in order to provide for their families with good paying jobs elsewhere. Today, we don’t recognize the Democratic Party. It has been moved so far to the left it can no longer claim to be advocates of the working class. The hard-working Minnesotans that built their lives and supported their families here on the Range have been abandoned by radical Democrats. We didn’t choose to leave the Democratic Party, the party left us.”
“Yet, four years ago, something wonderful happened. Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States, and he stood up to China, implemented tax cuts and fought for the working class,” the letter continued. “Now, four years later, the Iron Range is roaring back to life and for the first time in a very long time, locals are hopeful because of this President’s policies and willingness to fight for us.”
“Lifelong politicians like Joe Biden are out of touch with the working class, out of touch with what the country needs, and out of touch with those of us here on the Iron Range and in small towns like ours across our nation,” the letter concluded. “In this election, there is a lot at stake, but the biggest risk is our jobs, our economy, and our way of life. President Trump delivered the best economy in our nation’s history, and President Trump will deliver for us again. He will continue to fight for every American regardless of party affiliation and continue to stand up for the working class.”
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President Donald Trump was getting a post-convention bounce among one critical piece of America’s electorate even before the Republican convention was through.
A new Hill-HarrisX poll that ended after the first two nights of the Republican National Convention found that Trump’s support among black voters rose by 9 percentage points, according to The Hill. The survey showed that 24 percent of black voters believe Trump is doing a good job. That was up from a level of 15 percent in a survey taken Aug. 8-11. The poll, which was taken from Aug. 22 through Aug. 25, has a margin of error of 1.83 percentage points.
The new poll also found that Trump’s support among Hispanic Americans rose from 30 percent in the earlier poll to 32 percent last week. It wasn’t the only good news for Trump related to election polls. According to USA Today, a Morning Consult poll released Saturday also showed Trump gaining ground post-convention.
Marc. A. Thiessen, a columnist for The Washington Post, wrote last week that Trump had launched “a concerted appeal to African American voters” that Thiessen dubbed “an outstanding start.”
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Thiessen noted the indictment of Democrats delivered by Kim Klacik, a minority female Republican running for Congress in Maryland’s Seventh District, in which she said, “The Democrats have controlled my city, Charm City, for over 50 years, and they have run this beautiful place into the ground.”
“Abandoned buildings, liquor stores on every corner, drug addicts and guns on the street — that is now the norm in many neighborhoods … Sadly, this same cycle of decay exists in many of America’s Democrat-run cities. And yet, the Democrats still assume that black people will vote for them, no matter how much they let us down and take us for granted,” she said.
Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones, a black Democrat, noted that “the Democratic Party does not want black people to leave the mental plantation they’ve had us on for decades,” Thiessen noted. Trump created “the most inclusive economy ever, with record low unemployment for African Americans,” Jones said, according to Thiessen.
Thiessen wrote that black voters are well within Trump’s grasp.
“Why would Republicans expend this much time and effort on the first night of their convention trying to win over the Democrats’ most loyal voting bloc? For one thing, Biden’s African American support is soft compared with Hillary Clinton’s: In recent live polls, he leads among Black voters by an average of 67 percentage points, well below Clinton’s 81-point margin in the 2016 exit polls,” he wrote.
Thiessen wrote that Trump “has an outstanding record to which he can point.”
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He also cited what her called “powerful” comments from former NFL star Herschel Walker that were delivered at the convention.
“I take it as a personal insult that people would think I would have a 37-year friendship with a racist,” Walker said. “.… Growing up in the Deep South, I have seen racism up close. I know what it is. And it isn’t Donald Trump.”
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson also defended Trump.
“President Trump does not dabble in identity politics. He wants everyone to succeed and believes in the adage, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’ Many on the other side love to incite division by claiming that President Trump is a racist. They could not be more wrong,” Carson said, according to Axios.
“What is racist is the fact that African-Americans have the highest abortion rate. President Trump is the most pro-life president in our country’s history. He will continue to fight for those who cannot yet speak,” Carson said.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Jill Biden and husband former vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wear facemasks as they watch fireworks outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, at the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, held virtually amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, on August 20, 2020. (Photo by Olivier DOULIERY / AFP) …
Former Vice President Joe Biden lost support after the Democrat National Convention according to a new poll from Rasmussen.
Biden is now at 46 percent support in the national survey of likely voters conducted by Rasmussen. A week ago, the same poll showed Biden at 48 percent.
President Donald Trump’s support increased from 44% last week to 45% in the latest poll.
Rasmussen noted that Biden’s latest showing was his lowest level of support in any of their surveys in 2020.
The survey of 2,500 Likely Voters was conducted during the Democrat convention on August 19-20 and after the convention on August 23-25. The margin of error is +/- 2 percentage points.
Other national polls show Biden still leading Trump. A CNBC/Change Research Poll showed Biden leading by eight points and an Economist/YouGov poll showed Biden leading by nine points.
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 09: Billy Porter attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 09, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
Cinderella star Billy Porter said that the United States of America “is in the mess we’re in because of whiteness.” Porter made his remarks in an interview with Vanity Fair promoting social justice messages from U.S. Congressmen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the founders of Black Lives Matter.
“The reason why our country is in the mess we’re in is simply because of whiteness. White supremacy. White people choke-holding power and sucking the life out of humanity,” said Billy Porter in a recent Vanity Fairportfolio interview. The Little Show of Horrors actor made his remarks in response to being asked “what is one specific fact, news story, or aspect that you feel has not received enough attention?”
Porter also went on to attack President Donald Trump, saying “Orangina 45, that cancer that is in our White House, has been handed the power, without consequence, to have his hate metastasize all over the people.”
“Why are we not talking about figuring out how to remove this monster from the highest office in the land right now! ‘Cause we might not be alive come November. And this is not hyperbole,”added the American Horror Story actor.
The Pose star, who is the first openly gay black man to win the Emmy for lead actor in a drama series, was recently featured at the Democrat National Convention (DNC), in which he ended the first night of the event by singing a bizarre rendition of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”
“The public lynching of George Floyd galvanized the people all over the world to rise up,” Porter told Vanity Fair. “It’s a wonder to see young people of all colors leading the charge.”
“And… white folks are mad now, so maybe something might get done,” he added.
Cuban-American businessman Máximo Álvarez, who came to the U.S. alone as a child under Operation Peter Pan, warned the audience at the Republican National Convention (RNC) Monday that the promises and mob violence characterizing the modern left remind him of the nation he fled.
“I’m speaking to you today because I’ve seen people like this before. I’ve seen movements like this before. I’ve seen ideas like this before and I’m here to tell you, we cannot let them take over our country,” Álvarez asserted, referring both to Democrat Party presidential nominee Joe Biden and to the socialist faction of the party that largely supported rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The businessman – founder of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors in Florida – specifically cited the “defund the police” movement and calls for universal health care and other socialist policies as “echoes” of the vows Fidel Castro made before seizing power in Cuba.
“Those false promises — spread the wealth, defund the police, trust a socialist state more than your family and your community — they don’t sound radical to my ears. They sound familiar,” he continued. “When Fidel Castro was asked if he was a communist, he said he was a Roman Catholic. He knew he had to hide the truth. But the country I was born in is gone, totally destroyed.”
“When I watch the news in Seattle and Chicago and Portland, when I see history being rewritten, when I hear the promises—I hear echoes of a former life I never wanted to hear again. I see shadows I thought I had outrun,” Álvarez continued. “I heard the promises of Fidel Castro. And I can never forget all those who grew up around me, who looked like me, who suffered and starved and died because they believed those empty promises. They swallowed the communist poison pill.”
Álvarez was one of over 14,000 children whose parents sent them to America alone under “Operation Peter Pan,” in which America agreed to take the children in cases where the communist regime would not allow families to escape together. While many families later reunited after sending their children to freedom first, thousands of other children never saw their parents again.
“I know all about the past — I’ll never forget my own. My family has fled totalitarianism and communism. And more than once. First, my dad from Spain, then from Cuba,” Álvarez relayed. “But my family is done running away. By the grace of God, I have lived the American dream — the greatest blessing I’ve ever had. My dad, who only had a sixth-grade education told me, ‘don’t lose this place. You’ll never be as lucky as me.’”
“I’m speaking to you today because my family is done abandoning what we rightfully earned. There is no place to hide,” he insisted.
The businessman then praised President Donald Trump for his work in combatting leftist ideals.
“I’m speaking to you today because President Trump may not always be politically correct … our president is just another family man,” Álvarez warned. “President Trump is fighting the forces of anarchy and communism. And I know he will continue to do just that. And what about his opponent? I have no doubt they will hand the country over to those dangerous forces.”
“I choose President Trump because I choose America. I choose freedom,” he concluded.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated– $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Employees at Arcaro and Genell Takeaway Kitchen got a surprise treat when the sitting president, who also happens to be a lifelong New Yorker and therefore knows good pizza, stopped by their establishment to pick up a pie. President Donald Trump was in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, on Thursday to deliver a campaign speech at Mariotti Building Products when he made the detour to the nearby establishment, the Bucks County Courier Times reported.
A Facebook post with a video taken from the vantage point behind the counter showed Trump being met by applause and interacting with employees.
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“So the pizza’s good, I hear, huh?” the president said.
“Sausage, I want that one,” he said enthusiastically, pointing to one of the pizza boxes prepared to go back with him on Air Force One.
Trump signed autographs and asked about the plexiglass partition in front of the counter installed during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Do you look forward to the day it comes down?” he asked.
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“Yes,” one worker replied.
“Me too. We’re getting there,” the president said.
Trump turned to the waiting media and explained why he chose the place.
“They supposedly have the best pizza. We’ll let you know about it in a half-hour,” he said as he held out the open box with the previously claimed sausage pie for media photographs.
According to Arcaro and Genell’s website, the Old Forge pizza tradition began with the coal miners who “would climb out of the earth at night and go to the local taverns for some down time” where they first enjoyed the rectangular pizzas their daughters and wives prepared using homemade dough topped with spices and tomatoes grown in their home gardens.
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The pizzeria boasts that the Italian specialty has made the borough “The Pizza Capital of the World,” and surely Trump’s visit will do much to encourage that moniker. Located about 10 miles from Scranton, Old Forge is practically in native son Joe Biden’s backyard in the battleground state, leading Trump to tease about the Democratic presidential nominee’s hometown claims at his stump speech earlier that day.
“But this Scranton stuff. That’s why I figured I’d come here and explain to you one thing,” Trump said to the crowd in the lumberyard at the building company.
“But I think you people know it better than I do: He left. He abandoned Pennsylvania. He abandoned Scranton.”
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“He was here for a short period of time and he didn’t even know it,” Trump said referring to the fact that Biden left the commonwealth when he was just a child.
“And today it’s amazing, it goes around in a circle. He still doesn’t know it,” the president quipped about the Democratic presidential nominee’s repeated memory lapses.
“But he spent the last half-century in Washington selling out our country and ripping off our jobs and letting other countries steal our jobs, Mexico, China, all of them stealing our jobs,” Trump continued.
“He’s been there for 47 years, and now he’s going to come in and make a change,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
In the 2016 presidential election, Trump did very well in Lackawanna County, where Scranton and Old Forge are located, even though it previously tipped majority Democratic for former President Barack Obama both times he ran, the New York Times reported. When Trump won Pennsylvania that year, he became the first Republican candidate to turn the state red in a presidential election since 1988. He did very well in Northeastern Pennsylvania because of his appeal to the hardworking common man, and according to a recent poll, still leads heavily over Biden, 68 percent to 21 percent, in that region.
With Trump so popular in that area, one could say that when he stopped for pizza near Biden’s hometown, he was preparing to eat Joe’s lunch — both literally and figuratively.
Christine earned her bachelor’s degree from Seton Hall University, where she studied communications and Latin. She left her career in the insurance industry to become a freelance writer and stay-at-home mother.
Saturday on MSNBC, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) called for “unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.”
Pressley said, “Donald Trump knows that his failings are on the ballot, that we have lost hundreds of thousands of American lives that were preventable and that’s just the most egregious of his criminal negligence and sluggish response and science denies and his failures of leadership. He knows those failures are on the ballot, that the occupant of the White House is on the way to being a temporary one. As Dan Rather reminds us, cheaters are going to cheat. So the only way that he thinks he can be even remotely successful is to suppress and to undermine our democracy, beginning with the United States Postal Service, which is a war on them and the livelihood of those essential workers and their families and those who rely upon the critical services that the postal service provides. We have to continue to hold this administration accountable. At every turn, they have sought to obstruct, stonewall, and evade justice and accountability. I do think that DeJoy should resign and be subpoenaed to come before the Oversight Committee.”
She continued, “I’m looking to the public. You know, this is as much about public outcry, and organizing, and mobilizing, and applying pressure so that this GOP-led Senate and these governors that continue to carry water for this administration, putting the American people in harm’s way, turning a deaf ear to the needs of our families and our communities, hold them accountable. Make the phone calls, send the emails, show up.”
She added, “There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives, and unfortunately, there’s plenty to go around.”
The votes are in: Both Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Donald Trump support in-person voting this fall. With the 2020 presidential election rapidly approaching in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been much debate about whether it will be safe to gather in person at polling locations. That debate should now be over. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said safe in-person voting is possible, as long as proper precautions are taken.
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Fauci spoke with ABC News Correspondent Deborah Roberts for “Stopping Pandemics,” an exclusive National Geographic event that aired on Wednesday. During the interview, Roberts asked Fauci if it would be safe for people to go out and vote in person this November.
“I think if carefully done, according to the guidelines, there’s no reason that I can see why that not be the case,” Fauci said.
“For example, when you look at going to a grocery store now in many regions and counties and cities that are doing it correctly, they have ‘X’s every six or more feet. And it says, Don’t leave this spot until the person in front of you left their spot. And you can do that, if you go and wear a mask, if you observe the physical distancing, and don’t have a crowded situation, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that.”
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Fauci did provide a caveat that people who are high-risk should take advantage of mail-in or other vote-from-home options, options that have been available for years.
“I mean, obviously if you’re a person who is compromised physically or otherwise, you don’t want to take the chance,” he said.
“There’s the situation of mail-in voting that has been done for years in many places. So there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to vote in person or otherwise.”
For months we’ve been told that we should listen to the “experts” and the “science” on coronavirus. Now that the nation’s top expert and the president agree that in-person voting is safe, the debate should be over.
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Unfortunately, that seems unlikely.
The left has been pushing for universal mail-in voting for months — almost since the beginning of the pandemic. Trump has been pushing back just as long, arguing that mail-in voting presents a greater opportunity for fraud and would place a heavy burden on the already struggling United States Postal Service. The Postal Service has already sent letters to 46 states warning it cannot guarantee all mail-in ballots for the November election will be delivered early enough to be counted.
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There is a legitimate debate to be had about alternative voting methods. Even without the fear of a pandemic, issues like hours-long lines and lack of transportation discourage potential voters. Some states already utilize robust mail-in voting systems. For example, Colorado sends mail-in ballots to every registered voter and reports very little fraud in the process, according to KCNC-TV. However, Colorado’s system was implemented over time and with great consideration.
Additionally, it was first fully implemented during the 2014 midterm elections, not made mere months before a hotly contested presidential election. In fact, there are already plenty of examples of mail-in ballot issues this year alone and test runs of mail-in processes aren’t looking particularly promising.
Moreover, election rules and regulations are generally made at the state and local levels.
A nationwide mail-in voting mandate would overstep the bounds of federalism, taking control out of the hands of state and local governments and putting it in federal hands.
The president just wants a fair election. Now, Fauci agrees with him that there is no reason in-person voting should not go ahead as scheduled. Everyone should be happy about this, as established voting procedures are likely more secure than hastily implemented pandemic procedures.
Unfortunately, the left hates to see Trump proven right, so the push for mail-in voting this fall is likely to continue.
In this April 21, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump poses for a portrait in the Oval Office in Washington after an interview with The Associated Press. Andrew Harnik /
President Donald Trump provided Breitbart News during an exclusive Oval Office interview with a six-page document detailing several of his administration’s accomplishments. The document, which is up to date as of early August and provided by the president to Breitbart News during his Oval Office interview on Monday, goes through what the president said was “page after page” of accomplishments.
“This is for you,” President Trump told Breitbart News as he handed the six-page document across the Resolute Desk. “I just had this done. These are the accomplishments. It’s page after page of stuff look—nobody’s done.”
The document contains just one subjective shot at his opponents in the establishment media, echoing the president’s claim that he has boosted television ratings and subscription sales and website traffic for the media. “Saved the NY Times, saved the Washington Post, and saved Cable TV,” reads the first item at the top of the first page.
In that vein, during his interview with Breitbart News, the president took some shots at establishment media outlets like CNN and MSNBC, which he called MSDNC.
“I think CNN is election interference because, you know, they are just an organ pipeline for the DNC. Look at what they do. Same with MSDNC,” Trump said. “Look, MSDNC is an absolute vehicle to get the word out. They should actually pay campaign contributions on what they’re doing. This is about a campaign contribution. I’ve never seen anything like it. MSDNC, CNN, the networks, everything—and yet, here we are. Look. Do you notice, it’s oval? It’s not round. But when you think about it, it’s hard to believe because the press is corrupt a hundred percent. If you look at it, the press is corrupt. Much of it, not all of it, but I would say most of it.”
Trump said that even Fox News has slipped from its former glory.
“Even Fox is not the same. Let’s not kid ourselves,” Trump said. “Fox is a big difference from what it was.”
Then, he made a comment in line with the document, noting that he believes the establishment media will struggle when the day comes he is no longer president, because whoever replaces him—whether it be Democrat Joe Biden next year, or somebody four years from now—will be boring.
“Someday when I’m not here, they’re all gone,” Trump said. “Because nobody is going to write. They’re not going to write about sleepy Joe Biden.”
While the document does have that one gratuitous shot at the media on the top of the first page, the content on the rest of the six pages of material lists several real demonstrable and actual accomplishments of the Trump administration—including during the coronavirus pandemic. This six-page document that the president handed to Breitbart News serves as perhaps the most substantive compilation the president and his team have put together detailing what they have done to help the American people through the worst of the pandemic, as well as several other successes the president has had throughout his administration.
The first major bullet point on the first page is titled: “The Great American Comeback is already underway.” It cites how the Trump administration added 1.8 million jobs in July,“exceeding expectations for the third straight month.” It also notes that Trump oversaw the addition of nine million jobs since May, “surpassing market expectations by a total of 12 million new jobs.”
“Over the last three months, we added over four million leisure and hospitality jobs; 1.47 million retail jobs; 1.17 million education and healthcare jobs; 743,000 service jobs; 623,000 manufacturing jobs; and 639,000 construction jobs,”the document continues.
It notes that half of the new jobs created are full-time, and that wages have increased by 4.8 percent year-over-year. The document cites the rapidly dropping unemployment percentage during the pandemic, now back down as of July to 10.2 percent, and noted that African American and Hispanic job creation has boomed during the past three months, rising by one million and 2.3 million respectively in those communities. Overall, job gains since April, the document from the president says, have recovered 42 percent of jobs lost to the pandemic already with 80 percent of small businesses reopened and retail sales spiking in May and June with a record-setting 18.2 percent increase in May and 7.5 percent increase in June.
The document cites several other economic successes of the Trump administration during the pandemic and then shifts into the next section, which details efforts the president made during the pandemic to provide economic relief to get the country through the worst of times. Walking through the over $3 trillion in relief that the president provided to American workers and businesses, the document says the Trump administration saved “many tens of millions of jobs” through signing the $2 trillion CARES Act, which sent direct cash payments to 80 million American workers, and approved $670 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which has processed more than five million loans to small businesses and, according to the document, “saved 50 million American jobs.” The document also cites Trump’s recent executive actions to provide a payroll tax holiday through the end of the year, an extra $400 per week in unemployment benefits to those who need it, to help stop evictions, and to defer student loan payments.
Then it shifts into public health actions the president has taken to “vanquish COVID-19,” which the document says is “the greatest national mobilization since WWII.” It cites the Trump administration’s travel restrictions on China, Europe, and Iran, as well as the administration developing the “most advanced testing system on earth” that has already conducted 65 million coronavirus tests—and notes that despite the United States being just five percent of the world’s population, this country, thanks to the Trump administration, has conducted 25 percent of the world’s coronavirus tests so far. The document cites “Operation Warp Speed,” which has moved three vaccine candidates into Phase Three trials already–a “record time” for vaccine production–and the recently announced $1 billion deal with Johnson & Johnson to “manufacture and distribute 100 million doses” of vaccine when approved.
The document notes that the Trump administration has “reduced mortality by 85% since April through the use of therapies such as Remdesivir, dexamethasone, and antibody treatments.” It notes that the Trump administration has “secured over 4.1 million doses of Remdesivir, enough to treat over 650,000 patients,” and has “treated 86,000 Americans with convalescent plasma” which can “reduce mortality by 50%.” It notes too that more than 230 more clinical trials are underway for more potential emerging treatments.
As for personal protective equipment, the document the president gave to Breitbart News noted that the administration has coordinated with private sector partners to deliver more than 196 million N95 respirator masks, 815 million surgical masks, 20 billion gloves, 34 million face shields, and 354 million gowns. The document says the administration has “replenished the long-neglected National Stockpile by tripling the number of N95 masks on hand to over 45 million,” tripled the number of gowns available to 15 million, and quadrupled the number of ventilators to 75,000. It also says the administration, using the Defense Production Act, “awarded contracts for 200,000 ventilators” to be produced, and that no American who has needed a ventilator to fight the coronavirus has been denied one anywhere in the country.
The document also cites various actions the president has taken on prescription drug prices, as well as on law and order. Specifically on that front, it notes that since the president launched Operation LeGend to send federal officers to a number of U.S. cities including Chicago, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Memphis, Kansas City, and St. Louis, the government has already made 156 arrests, and cites the president’s successes in Portland, Oregon.
The document continues by citing the president’s successes on trade, rebuilding the U.S. military, tax cuts, regulation rollbacks, energy production, confirmation of federal judges, immigration and border security, caring for veterans, healthcare, battling the opioid crisis, fighting human trafficking, and other fronts.
The president also provided Breitbart News with, in addition the six-page document, a notecard on official White House card stock detailing the president’s successes when it comes to appointing and then confirming with the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate federal and appellate court judges and Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That document noted that Trump has so far gotten two U.S. Supreme Court justices confirmed in his first term, as well as 53 appellate court judges and 143 U.S. district court and trade court judges. In total, that’s 232 judges in his first term. By comparison, former President Barack Obama got just 200 total judges confirmed in his first term—and Trump says he will do far more than the 232 he’s at now.
“We’re at 232 judges. We’ll be at 300 judges by the end of the year,” Trump told Breitbart News during the Oval Office interview. “That’s amazing isn’t it?”
Months after Democratic Party voters chose Joe Biden to be their nominee to be president, Biden’s chose the person who — let’s face some facts here — will end up being who America really votes on.
It’s widely suspected, probably not incorrectly, that his role as a political marathon runner who’s now mentally on mile 76 is to get the Democrats past the line and pass the baton to his running mate as he collapses. That baton will be passed, as widely suspected, to California Sen. Kamala Harris, the woman who vaulted to the top tier of the Democratic field by destroying Biden’s racial record during one of last year’s debates before her own downward trajectory was set into place when she was herself destroyed by Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in another viral moment, this time over criminal justice reform.
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However, there were other reasons why voters didn’t go for Harris, including the fact that her campaign machinery was broken from the moment it was assembled and that, when non-Biden Democrats were busy tasting flavors of the week, it didn’t help to be one of the first they tasted.
On Dec. 3, she announced she was dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president, citing a lack of funds.
On Tuesday, she was chosen by Biden for a position not all that materially different than what she was running for.
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“Back when Kamala was Attorney General, she worked closely with Beau,”Biden tweeted. “I watched as they took on the big banks, lifted up working people, and protected women and kids from abuse. I was proud then, and I’m proud now to have her as my partner in this campaign.”
In her own tweet, Harris said that Biden “can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us. And as president, he’ll build an America that lives up to our ideals.”
In its headline, The New York Times called the decision “a Choice at Once Safe and Energizing.” Of course it did.
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The Trump campaign, however, had a different take on it.
In an ad released moments after Harris received the nod and posted by President Donald Trump to Twitter, the Trump campaign pointed out that she definitely isn’t “safe,” at least not in the establishment sense.
Her voting record, according to GovTrack.us, shows that she’s the fourth-most liberal senator in the current Congress by voting record;only Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, respectively, are more liberal.
In terms of policies, she co-sponsored the Green New Deal in the Senate and supports a “Medicare for All”plan. While the Green New Deal has a cow’s flatus in hell’s chance of becoming law in a potential Biden administration, at least as the legislation is currently constituted, “Medicare for All” is very much on the table. Biden has been against the program — and while Biden’s Obamacare expansion is another ill-considered way to deal with our health care woes, it clearly beats de facto nationalized health care.
In calling Harris a safe choice, The Times wrote that she, like Biden, is “a thoroughly establishment-friendly figure” who has “hewed closely to [her] party’s mainstream for years.” If that’s true, it tells us quite a bit about the current Democratic Party.
The ad, meanwhile, also alludes to one of the great contradictions of the Harris pick. The assumption is that — given Harris’ race and her full-throated attack on Biden in one of the debates last year — she’ll be able to wallpaper over Biden’s racial problems. Or perhaps she’ll draw attention to them.
The presumptive Democratic nominee’s strange remarks regarding the homogeneity of the African-American voting bloc or his famous contention that if you’re myelinated and don’t know whether or not to vote for him then “you ain’t black” may seem like they would be meliorated by Harris joining the ticket.
The opposite could happen, though — not only could his past mistakes receive more attention, but any racial solecisms in the future are going to receive more scrutiny.
But the ad’s most devastating point is that the campaign now becomes about Kamala Harris — a candidate so thoroughly rejected by Democrats that she left the race before a single primary vote was counted.
Biden has referred to himself as a “transition candidate.” His appeal isn’t that he represents a bridge back to a different incarnation of the Democratic Party, one with a foot in reality. It’s that he’s not Donald Trump and looks moderate enough to act as a Trojan horse. It’s almost as if the real candidate is Harris — and even rank-and-file Democrats seem to know it.
In a Rasmussen survey released on Monday, 49 percent of Democrats said they thought it was likely Biden’s vice president would become president within four years. More worrying, 57 percent of unaffiliated voters and 73 percent of Republicans thought it was likely. While the survey of 1,000 likely voters was taken between Aug. 6-9, before Harris was announced as the nominee, that wouldn’t change Biden’s ability to make it through four years. In other words, not only does Biden’s campaign have to explain away their candidate’s gaffes, they also have to sell their shadow candidate — Kamala Harris.
For the left, she’s a former prosecutor. In 2020, that alone is enough of a red flag, no matter who you prosecuted. For the rest of the political spectrum, she’s simply too far to the left.
It’s clear the GOP and Trump campaign were ready for this — and they have more than enough ammunition to convince America that Kamala Harris is neither “safe”nor “energizing.”
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal for four years.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated– $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.
Commentary By Michael Flynn | Published August 5, 2020 at 11:17am
We are witnessing a vicious assault by enemies of all that is good, and our president is having to act in ways unprecedented in decades, maybe centuries. The biblical nature of good versus evil cannot be discounted as we examine what is happening on the streets of America.
It’s Marxism in the form of antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement versus our very capable and very underappreciated law enforcement professionals, the vast majority of whom are fighting to provide us safe and secure homes, streets and communities.
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When the destiny of the United States is at stake, and it is, the very future of the entire world is threatened. As Christians, shouldn’t we act? We recognize that divine Providence is the ultimate judge of our destiny. Achieving our destiny as a freedom-loving nation, Providence compels us to do our part in our communities.
It encourages us in this battle against the forces of evil to face our fears head-on. No enemy on earth is stronger than the united forces of God-fearing, freedom-loving people. We can no longer pretend that these dark forces are going to go away by mere prayer alone. Prayers matter, but action is required.
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This action is needed at the local, state and federal levels. Action is also required in the economic, media, clerical and ecclesiastical realms.
Decide how you can act within your abilities. Stand up and state your beliefs. Be proud of who you are and what you stand for. And face, head-on, those community “leaders” who are willing to allow dark forces to go beyond peaceful protests and destroy and violate your safety and security.
Do you think Christians in America need to stand up and act?
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Churches and houses of worship must return to normal. We invite everyone of goodwill to not shirk their responsibilities and instead act in a fraternal fashion. If for no other reason or with no other ability, act in a spirit of charity. We cannot disrespect or disregard natural law along with our own religious liberties and freedoms.
I am witnessing elderly people lose their connection to all that is good in their lives: connections to their faith, their families and their individual freedoms, especially the simple act of attending church, something they’ve been doing for decades. Let us not be intimidated or fear those who cry out that we are in the minority; we are not. Good is always more powerful and will prevail over evil.
However, evil will succeed for a time when good people are divided from each other and their personal lives — children away from their teachers, preachers from their congregations, customers from their local businesses. America will never give in to evil. Americans work together to solve problems.
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We do not and should not ever allow anarchy and the evil forces behind it to operate on any street in our nation. No one should have to fear for their very life because some dark, disturbed force is challenged by the very essence of what America stands for.
We are “one nation under God” and it is our individual liberties that make us strong, not liberties given to our government. Our government has no liberty unless and until “we the people” say so.
God bless America and let’s stand by everything that was and is good in our lives, in our communities and in our country. Otherwise, America as the true North Star for humanity will cease to exist as we know it.
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with U.S. tech workers, before signing an Executive Order on hiring American workers, in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, Aug. 3, 2020, in Washington.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday which curbs the H-1B outsourcing of jobs at government agencies, including the government-controlled Tennessee Valley Authority.
“We believe jobs must be offered to American workers first,” Trump told attendees at a signing event in the White House.
Staffing companies have used the H-1B program to fill roughly 18,000 jobs in government agencies with foreign contract-workers.
A White House statement said:
President Trump is signing an Executive Order to create a policy where Federal agencies will focus on United States labor in lucrative Federal contracts. It would be unfair for Federal employers to replace perfectly qualified Americans with workers from other countries. The Executive Order will require all Federal agencies to complete an internal audit and assess whether they are in compliance with the requirement that only United States citizens and nationals are appointed to the competitive service.
The Department of Labor will also finalize guidance to prevent H-1B employers from moving H-1B workers to other employers’ job sites to displace American workers.
“Outsourcing hundreds of workers is especially detrimental in the middle of a pandemic, which has already cost millions of Americans their jobs,” the statement said. “President Trump’s actions will help combat employers’ misuse of H-1B visas, which were never intended to replace qualified American workers with low-cost foreign labor.”
The top management at the TVA has been trying to outsource 200 jobs to three companies that import many H-1B workers: Paris-based Capgemini, Canada-based CGI, and Accenture, a former U.S. company that relocated to Ireland.
Many polls show that American voters want to welcome immigrants — but strongly prefer that companies hire Americans before asking to import foreign contract workers.
Trump signed the E.O. after learning about the outsourcing from an online ad paid funded by U.S. Tech Workers. Trump initially dismissed the advertisement:
The invitees included Sara Blackwell, founder of Protect US Workers, and Kevin Lynn, the founder, U.S. Tech Workers. The invite list included several TVA workers: Gay Henson, President of the TVA’s Engineering Association, plus Chuck Charnawskas, Jonathan Hicks, David Littlejohn, Linda McDonald, Renae McKenzie, Wendy Turner, and Stacy Whetzell.
“This is a really significant date for U.S. tech workers,” said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, a grassroots group of U.S. college-graduate professionals. U.S. graduates know “what decades of outsourcing and offshoring of these valuable jobs have done to themselves personally and collectively, to the country,” he said, adding:
“We’ve been very much involved for the last three years to protect and preserve tech worker jobs here in the U.S. and in particular, fighting outsourcing schemes. So this is a great opportunity for us, it’s really a culmination of a lot of hard work … [We’re] really, really overjoyed as of this time that the president of the United States has chosen to act on behalf of American workers.”
Fortune 500 companies and their networks of U.S. and Indian-owned subcontractors and sub-subcontractor have used the H-1B program to outsource millions of college-graduate jobs over the last 20 years.
Currently, Fortune 500 companies keep at least 1.3 million foreign contract-workers in jobs needed by U.S. graduates, including at least 600,000 H-1B workers. This personnel policy is not an “abuse” of the law because the law was carefully drafted to help companies sideline American workers.
Some of the contract workers are hired by prestigious firms at U.S. wages. But many visa workers are employed by subcontractors at below-market wages, and many are hired as gig-worker for minimal wages. For example, the universities help get “Practical Training” work permits for 500,000 foreign graduates each year. These workers do not have to be paid minimum wages, and they are widely used by Fortune 500 subcontractors.
Many executives prefer hiring contract workers because they are compliant and quiet compared to U.S. professionals who can argue with executives and switch jobs. Many of the contract workers are imported for about a year, so they can learn how to do the job from an office in India.
Many foreign workers accept low wages for work in the United States because the U.S. work is preferable to work in India, China, or elsewhere. Also, U.S. employers keep their foreign workers on the job by dangling the promise of green cards and citizenship. For example, at least 300,000 Indian visa workers are working while they wait for promised green cards.
In his 2017 inauguration address, Trump promised a policy of “Buy American and hire American.” Trump said in March 2016, “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.” On June 22, Trump announced a temporary halt to the H-1B inflow and directed his deputies to rewrite regulations on the Fortune 500’s use of foreign contract-workers.
The Nordic country defeated COVID-19 without seeming to break a sweat — fever-induced or otherwise. They effectively showed that Fauci & Co. were completely wrong about a shutdown being necessary to save civilization as we know it.
While that accomplishment should be lauded and their efforts duplicated around the world, the media has instead chosen to blast the Nordic state and paint a dismal picture that simply doesn’t exist. A few examples (among many, many others) are below:
CBS News declared: “Sweden becomes an example of how not to handle COVID-19.”
Taking a stab at prognostication, Newsweek said: “Sweden COVID-19 Deaths Linked to Failure to Lockdown as Country Prepares for Second Wave.”
Always eager to bravely embrace the status quo, The New York Times ran a piece headlined: “Sweden Tries Out a New Status: Pariah State.”
Finally, Business Insider reported: “Sweden’s coronavirus death toll is now approaching zero, but experts are warning others not to hail it as a success.”
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It’s all awfully prickly from a leftist media that used to adore Sweden’s welfare state. The reason for the barbed headlines is simple — Sweden dealt with COVID-19 in its own way.
The country didn’t truckle to the tyranny of over-educated, under-experienced experts. It didn’t implement authoritarian policies designed as much to break spirits as to break the pandemic. And it didn’t turn its voters into quasi-prisoners. In other words, Sweden responded more or less the way the rest of the developed world has responded to contagious diseases until 2020, which just happens to also be President Donald Trump’s re-election year.
What were Sweden’s results?
Well, first let’s consider American results brought to us courtesy of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, the establishment media, government officials around the country and legions of panic-prone and morally superior “Karens.” All around the country, the U.S. tried just about every imaginable combination of mask, lockdown, quarantine, curfew and closures orders — up to and including literally refusing entry across some state lines to certain fellow Americans.
The results were, well, not what anyone wanted. As of Saturday, the U.S. coronavirus death rate was 3.35 new deaths per million per day (based on a seven-day rolling average), which ranks as the 11th worst rating on the planet,according to Our World in Data.
And remember, thanks in large part to the Andrew Cuomo nursing home/death camp model of virus containment, New York state accounts for more than a fifthof all U.S. COVID-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data. So we’re probably getting dragged down a little in the ratings by the disproportionate number of deaths in that state.
What else has America’s scattershot, but mostly heavy-handed, response yielded? If you read The Wall Street Journal, you will learn it led to anywhere between 30 million and 40 million lost jobs.(Some of those workers have no doubt been rehired as parts of the economy reopen, but millions more haven’t. And economists don’t really know how many of those job losses are permanent.)
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So we destroyed constitutional rights, shed a few dozen million jobs and watched tens of thousands of people die. Oh, and we turned Americans against each other, all the way from the state to family levels.
But at least gross domestic product didn’t take it too hard, right? Not exactly. Commerce Department numbers released Thursday revealed that the U.S. economy shrank by a record 32.9 percent last quarter in what Bloomberg called the “sharpest downturn since at least the 1940s.”
So what about those rebellious Swedes? The ones who refused to play ball with all-knowing scientists and a ridiculously tunnel-visioned medical establishment?
While much of the rest of the developed world drowned themselves in hand sanitizer, locked ankle monitors onto their citizens and bought super cute masks on Etsy, the stalwart Swedes pressed on. They lived their lives. They didn’t mandate masks. They didn’t turn into NKVD-aspiring Karens, eager to publicly shame or quietly narc on neighbors, friends and family who dared bare an uncovered nostril.
Sweden defied the (dare we say) scientific consensus and has performed exceedingly well compared to the U.S. As of Saturday, Sweden had registered 0.65 deaths per million per day, based on a seven-day rolling average. Trading Economics projects a second-quarter GDP change of -4.2 percent (and a third-quarter growth of 2.4 percent). Depending on your preferred method of calculation, we could casually say that’s 7.8 times better than what the U.S. saw last quarter.
As of June 18, Statista forecast a 2.6 percent drop in Sweden’s employment rate for 2020. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, meanwhile, reported unemployment in the U.S. shot up 11.2 percentage points from 3.5 percent in February to 14.7 percent in April, before dropping a bit to 13.3 percent in May and 11.7 percent in June as parts of the economy reopened.
Now we’re not going to be like the dogmatic pro-mask Stasi here. There are lots of factors that impact the difference between U.S. and Swedish outcomes. We can’t say with 100 percent certainty that Sweden’s refusal to lock down saved their economy or is responsible for the miraculously low death rate. But it would also be foolish to say that the decision didn’t play some role in the different outcome.
We can all learn two significant lessons from how COVID-19 responses have played out in the U.S. versus Sweden.
First, it is clear that the expert class in America whom the left appeals to at every turn (aren’t you sick of hearing “scientists say” or “experts find”?) is worth substantially less than we pay them.
We’ve spent literally trillions of dollars as a result of this virus and have only managed to buy our own personal hell.
Second, Sweden succeeded using an approach that left people free. The response they got from the U.S. media complex, however, wasn’t celebration and an urge toward duplication. It was derision and aspersion.
That betrays what lays at the heart of everything COVID-19-related.
In America, COVID-19 has never been first and foremost a virus to fight. It has instead been a tool that the left, anti-Trumpers and the establishment could use to mercilessly kick Americans in our collective groin. With COVID-19, the left finally found a chink in Trump’s armor. The left knew exploiting it was vital, and they knew that Americans would have to suffer if they wanted to succeed.
As America continues to languish economically even as deaths drop, remember to thank the left for that. And when you walk into that voting booth on Tuesday, Nov. 3, remember to pay the left back for the hell they’ve just put us through — pay them back by voting for Donald J. Trump.
Josh Manning is deputy managing editor, assignment, at The Western Journal. He holds a masters in public policy from Harvard University and has a background in higher education.
Over 30 people were shot, with ten killed, over the weekend as violence continues to surge in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) New York City. One of the fatal shooting victims was a 16-year-old boy who sustained a bullet wound to the head “in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn” on Sunday, Fox 5 reported. The 16-year-old was one of seven people who were shot and killed on Sunday alone.
De Blasio reacted to the 16-year-old’s death saying, “This is heartbreaking. His life was just beginning. Sending my thoughts and prayers to the families of these boys. No parent should ever have to bury a child,” NBC 4 New York reported.
A “Stop the Violence” march occurred in Brooklyn the day before the seven fatalies occurred.
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea spoke with NY1 on Monday morning and acknowledged that all the anti-violence efforts have fallen short of actually curtailing it at this point.
“When we have a day with 15 shootings in New York City, that’s not a success. There’s no other way to put that. There are still some challenges throughout New York City with repeat gun offenders, with the gang situation, with large groups on the street and how to tackle them in terms of alcohol and things of that nature,” he said.
Breitbart News reported that a one-year-old was shot to death while sitting in a stroller in de Blasio’s NYC earlier this month. In June, Breitbart News reported a video of a father fatally shot while walking his six-year-old daughter across the street in the city.
WARNING: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE
On July 14, 2020, Breitbart News reported that de Blasio blamed NYC’s surging violence on guns.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
Fifty-nine people were shot, three fatally, over the weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago. Late Sunday night NBC 5 reported at least 49 people had been shot, two fatally. By Monday morning the Chicago Sun-Timesreported nearly 60 shot with three fatalities.
NBC 5 noted that weekend shootings began Friday with a non-fatal incident just after 5 pm, when two individuals were shot while standing in a gas station parking lot “in the 800 block of West 59th Street.” Less than 30 minutes later a 19-year-old was shot and left in serious condition while sitting on a porch on West Cullerton. The violence continued from there. The Sun-Times reports the weekend’s last shooting–a fatal one–occurred just before 1:30 a.m. Monday morning.
On Tuesday, Mayor Lightfoot acknowledged President Trump would be sending in federal agents to help curtail the gun violence that has surged in Chicago throughout this year. But the Chicago Tribunereported Lightfoot made clear she will be ready to use the courts to stop the use of federal agents if she believes the Trump administration overreaches.
Lightfoot said, “I don’t put anything past this administration, which is why we will continue to be diligent and why we will continue to be ready. If we need to stop them and use the courts to do so, we are ready to do that.”
When Trump spoke out against the violence ravaging Democrat-controlled cities in June, Lightfoot reacted by stating she does not “need leadership lessons” from the president.
On July 16, 2020, Breitbart News reported Lightfoot responded to Trump’s idea of the federal government stepping in by calling for more gun control. Two of the central controls she demanded were universal background checks and an “assault weapons”ban. She did not mention the Chicago-area already has an “assault weapons” ban, thanks to a Cook County prohibition.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
Soros Fund Management Chairman George Soros attends a meeting with finance and development ministers, international partners and the presidents of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea about the ongoing efforts to recover from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa during the World Bank- International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings April 17, 2015 …/Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Left-wing billionaire George Soros is set to double his 2016 election spending in an effort to remove President Donald Trump from the White House, according to public records. The Washington Free Beacon, which was the first outlet to report Soros’s 2020 spending, stated that Soros has poured money “into the coffers of the Democracy PAC, a super PAC that passes money to other liberal PACs working to defeat Trump and congressional Republicans.”
According to public records, the PAC has received $40 million, double the $20 million it received in 2016 throughout the presidential election.
While Democrats across the country sanctimoniously rail against the influence of dark money in politics, their party’s largest donors are bankrolling a massive web of liberal organizations to get them elected. George Soros’s unprecedented spending further highlights just how dependent Democrats are on contributions from billionaires, despite their hypocritical rhetoric.
Directly, Soros has put $5.5 million into his Super PAC. Fund for Policy Reform, a nonprofit in Soros’s Open Society Foundations network that is reported to have in the bank $750 million on its latest tax forms, also gave $35 million. In doing so, Soros’s name is kept from appearing amongst those that give millions to political committees.
Democracy PAC, known for making large donations to far-left candidates, has given more than $25 million to other PACs, including a $7 million to the Senate Majority PAC, which has close ties to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). It also gave $5 million to Priorities USA Action, a large outside PAC which supports Joe Biden, and $2.5 million to the left-wing Win Justice coalition.
Many of the groups that receive money from Soros are top spenders backing massive anti-Trump campaigns. Priorities USA is the biggest outside spender this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, having spent more than $28 million. Its efforts include anti-Trump advertisements focused on criticizing the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
In addition to his overwhelming PAC donations. Soros has also given $2 million to committees directly without going through his PACs. Those donations include $500,000 to the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, a committee to raise funds between the Democratic National Committee, all 50 state Democratic parties, and the D.C. Democratic committee.
Soros has also given thousands to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) victory fund, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Similar to Soros, former presidential hopeful Tom Steyer has also poured into the 2020 election and is ranked among the highest of donors.
If you’re Joe Biden and you’re going to argue President Donald Trump hasn’t helped small businesses, and you’re going to do this in a campaign advertisement that highlights the owner of a small business, it helps if your people choose a small business that didn’t receive help from the federal government headed by Donald Trump.
If you have to pick someone who got assistance from a program signed into law by the president, it also helps to pick an individual who kept this information private. If conservatives discovered this information a month or two down the line, long after the message conveyed by the advertisement was absorbed into the body politic, the effect of the discovery is near zero. If you can find the information out via a quick Google search, well, that’s problematic.
I think this would go without saying, but apparently this reminder wasn’t relayed to the crack team currently being employed by the former vice president. His new ad features the owner of an eyewear shop in Philadelphia who got a forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loan.
Not only that, she gave an interview about it to BillyPenn, a Philadelphia-area news outlet, thus leaving a short trail of breadcrumbs for anyone willing to put in five minutes to discover it for themselves.
This is the advertisement, released by the Biden campaign on Wednesday:
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“Small businesses are the backbone of communities across our nation, and we need to do so much more to help them,” read the copy on Joe Biden’s official Twitter account. “Donald Trump may have forgotten about them — but I never will.”
In the ad, owner Tiffany Easley — who wears a mask in what looks like an empty shop, showily proving an empty point — talks about her business woes at NV My Eyewear in Philadelphia.
“I always wanted to build something from the ground up. I saved, put in the hours, and put off vacations,” Easley says in the video.
“I opened NV My Eyewear three and a half years ago, and just as we were adding locations and employees, this pandemic brought everything to a halt. I had to permanently close one location and furlough my employees, and it’s my staff. They’re my family. It’s just heartbreaking.
“But what’s worse is that this president seemed to make everything else worse. Donald Trump and his administration left the American people behind,” she continued.
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“The people that he is supposed to protect and serve. Small businesses, they need a partner in the White House, and that’s why I’m with Joe. I know he’ll help small businesses like mine get back on our feet. I spent my life building this business from the ground up. I want a president that’s going to build this country back better than before.”
The advantage of the video is that, save from the anecdotal evidence and information already known to every viewer, the ad is entirely fact-free. It doesn’t mention what Trump could have done better or how Biden will do so. Simply put, the ad’s fuzzy argument goes, Biden’s better, vote him.
Thus, the fact that the ad never mentions that Easley benefited a good deal from a bill signed by Trump doesn’t necessarily make it false, just wildly misleading:
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In an April interview with BillyPenn, Easley said she’d “lost at least 95% of my revenue for March, and I guess it’s gonna be the same thing for April.”
However, she was able to stay in business thanks to the PPP, one of President Trump’s signature COVID-19 relief packages.
“The reason she’s able to be optimistic about the future? For one, Easley is a woman of faith, she said. Also, she was able to score emergency financial relief from two different sources,” BillyPenn reported.
“NV My Eyewear is one of the businesses that got a payout from the first phase of the federal Paycheck Protection Program. Easley was awarded a loan of $27,000, which will be forgiven if she uses it to rehire staff, as she’s planning to do.”
The other aid came in the form of a $5,000 grant from a Philadelphia COVID-19 relief fund.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Trump campaign has called the ad “dishonest.” The Biden campaign and Easley didn’t respond to requests for comment, the Free Beacon reported.
One muffed ad doesn’t a spoilt message make, although the case of NV My Eyewear speaks to a larger issue in Biden’s messaging that presented itself when, in the early days of response to the novel coronavirus, he was asked what he would have done differently from the president.
The suite of changes he originally presented were materially identical to what Trump had done. Oh, but he’d have gone further. How? Don’t ask for details, because that’s not Biden’s forte. That this isn’t remembered more acidly is proof of the kinds of the passes a mediocre establishment Democrat will receive both from his own party and the media.
Biden’s small business proposals, such as they are, are likely to get the same kid-gloves treatment.
What’s his messaging here — that he wasn’t president when the coronavirus hit? That he would have given out more money in PPP money? He would have spent more money than the trillions that had already been spent?
The ad makes none of that clear.
Biden has called for student loan forgiveness, according to Forbes, and a stimulus package “a hell of a lot bigger” than the $2 trillion in the CARES Act, according to Politico.
These would have to be paid for, at least in part, through tax increases.
Those words aren’t featured in the ad, and for good reason: If you want one weird trick to get voters to recoil from Biden just as COVID-19 lockdowns have led to record unemployment, it’s telling them they need to pay more taxes.
Another weird trick to get investors spooked: Tell them that the American people will have less money to spend as we attempt the greatest economic turnaround in history.
Interestingly, Easley has appeared in one other interview recently. In a June 15 Philadelphia Inquirer story, she talked about the looting and rioting going on in a business corridor that served the black community in Philadelphia. Easley told the newspaper residents in the neighborhood discouraged rioters from destroying NV My Eyewear as they had with so many other small businesses on historic 52nd Street in the City of Brotherly Love.
“I probably would have been devastated if my business was one of the properties,”she said. “I thank God that people remember me.”
If only there were a political party that believed in standing up against the rioters instead of saying that it was just property damage and it was time to defund our police.
If only there were a president who wanted to restore law and order so business owners like Easley’s wouldn’t have to worry about savage mobs destroying their livelihood.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal for four years.
It’s probably a good question, before we go forward on a wider cultural discussion that involves unanimous consent for the three-word construct “black lives matter,” what those words really mean. The phrase itself, unless your views on race and culture are rebarbative, is axiomatic and has been since it was coined over a half-decade ago. You could plug almost any group into the blank space in “_______ lives matter” and you’d be right. This isn’t what it means.
The general conclusion we’ve reached over the gut-wrenching past few weeks, ever since the events leading up to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody was available to watch by anyone with a cell phone, is that it means something nebulous-ish involving the force of the state being brought to bear on people of color in an inappropriate manner. The problem is that “nebulous-ish” part. The group Black Lives Matter was never quite just an official organization, it also wasn’t just a hashtag. This means that while it currently has one foot in mainstream acceptance, another foot remains in its roots as an organization on the far-ish reaches of the left.
If you wanted evidence of this residual hard-leftist slant, you need have looked no further than Patrisse Cullors’ appearance on CNN on Friday. Cullors was one of the founders of the movement back in 2013 and has remained one of its most prominent voices, which means she’s in demand again. On Friday, she appeared on CNN to discuss the movement and what its goals were. You may not be surprised at one of them:
During the interview on “The Lead,” Jake Tapper and his perma-scrunched face asked Cullors just what is it she wanted to do — at least when it came to the election.
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“I’ve heard a lot of criticism of former Vice President Joe Biden from civil rights activists,”Tapper said.
“The election, obviously, will be a choice. How do you think Biden matches up compared to President Trump when it comes to these issues that are important to you?”
The Lead CNN
✔@TheLeadCNN
President “Trump not only needs to not be in office in November but he should resign now,” says co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Patrisse Cullors. “Trump needs to be out of office. He is not fit for office.”
“Trump not only needs to not be in office in November, but he should resign now,” Cullors said.
“Trump needs to be out of office. He is not fit for office. And so what we are going to push for is a move to get Trump out. While we’re also going to continue to push and pressure Vice President Joe Biden around his policies and relationship to policing and criminalization. That’s going to be important. But our goal is to get Trump out.”
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In other words, at a basic level, this isn’t really about black lives — at least not for Cullors. After all, if Cullors’ belief is that all black people are in danger from a bigoted law enforcement structure, the obvious choice would be to work not only with white allies but also black individuals who make common cause with Trump on enough issues to vote for him.
And even though the possibility that Trump has support among black voters, polling from as recently as June 5 shows the incumbent president with black support that should give Democrats nightmares.
Rasmussen Reports
✔@Rasmussen_Poll
Reader Tip: Coming Later
Our Daily Presidential Tracking poll today shows Black Likely Voter approval of the job @realDonaldTrump is now over 40%.
Of course, Democrats won’t buy that number. And the mainstream media won’t be trying to sell it. But the point is, Rasmussen is a respectable polling organization. If Trump is running at 40 percent black voter support — or even half that number — he’s getting more support in that segment of the electorate than leftists believe.
And if that Rasmussen number is anywhere near correct, the woman who is accepted as speaking for Black Lives Matter is ignoring a substantial number of actual black lives in the United States. But building unity in the black community, or even reaching out to black Trump supporters, is not what this wing of Black Lives Matter is about. It’s about beating Donald Trump.
Now, the thing with Black Lives Matter is that Cullors does not — in fact, cannot — speak for the entire movement. That’s a weakness, both when it comes to organization and leadership, but it’s a strength when it comes to nailing down the protean nature of the organization. Black Lives Matter is more than just a slogan, but the great thing for its principals is that it’s like a slogan: It means exactly what you want it to mean.
It’s also good to know that at the same time Black Lives Matter is demanding redress for centuries-old issues, it’s ostensibly throwing its weight behind the Democratic Party, which was — in some of our lifetimes — the party of segregation and Jim Crow. (And as a relatively young senator in the 1970s, Biden had no problems buddying up to some of its most segregationist members.)
Cullors ignores this racist history.
And notice how Cullors makes it clear that her group needs to need to “pressure Vice President Joe Biden around his policies and relationship to policing and criminalization.” In other words, they know the former veep’s record around policing in this country
But this is just one voice, you may say. True — and therein lies the advantage.
Black Lives Matter is whatever you think it is, at least when it’s ingratiating itself to the public. Give its members a modicum of power, however, and you’ll see that change posthaste, especially in the run-up to the 2020 election.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal for four years.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is pushing Facebook to strengthen rules regarding election-year misinformation on the platform even as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee distributes misinformation about COVID-19 and President Donald Trump.
Facebook’s inability to police political misinformation and disinformation “corrodes our democracy” and allows the president “to say anything,” Biden wrote in a letter to the Silicon Valley giant Thursday. The former vice president asked his Twitter followers to sign the letter in an attempt to pressure Facebook into acting before the November election.
“Folks, we saw in 2016 what can happen when social media platforms are left unchecked and allow disinformation to run rampant. It puts the very integrity of our elections at risk,” Biden wrote in a tweet Thursday. “We simply cannot let it happen again in 2020.”
Trump’s post was in reference to protests against the death of George Floyd, a black man who died May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, video of the incident showed. Zuckerberg reportedly defended the decision as an adherence to free speech principles.
Since 2016, Facebook has created an independent oversight body, wherein the company’s platform can impartially protect free speech and create an arbitration system. The body is made up of a bipartisan crew of conservative and liberal judges to help determine whether specific comments, posts or links comply with Facebook’s terms of service.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone dismissed Biden’s open letter, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that, “[t]here is an election coming in November and we will protect political speech, even when we strongly disagree with it.” Zuckerberg reportedly defended the decision as adhering to free speech principles.
Biden has misinformed his supporters and voters repeatedly on the campaign trail. Here are seven times the former vice president made false claims about the coronavirus pandemic, Trump, and other election-related issues.
Biden Falsely Says Trump “Owes” China Money
Biden promoted fake news from a Politico report claiming the president “owes” millions of dollars to the Bank of China.
Politico reported in an April 24 article that Trump currently “owes” millions of dollars to the Bank of China and that “the loan is due soon,” before editing the story after determining Trump did not, in fact, owe the Bank of China money.
Biden made the comment after being asked during a CBS interview on April 28 — days after Politico corrected its article – if Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China make the former VP more vulnerable.
“No, I don’t believe so at all,” Biden replied. “My son’s business dealings were not anything where everybody – what he’s talking about. Not even remotely, number one. Nothing to do with me, number two.”
He added: “And talk about business dealings – look at the business dealings the president has with China. He owes, apparently, millions of dollars to the Bank of China.”
Biden Falsely Claims He Found GOP Votes For Obamacare
Biden falsely said at a rally in December 2019 that he found Republican votes to pass the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, while he was vice president.
“We need someone with a proven ability to bring people together and do the hard work of getting legislation passed,”Biden said at a rally in Texas. “I’ve done that before … finding Republican votes for the Recovery Act, Obamacare, helping keep us from falling into a Great Depression.”
The House passed the Senate bill with a 219–212 vote in 2010, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against the bill, which became a flash point that ultimately made passing future bipartisan legislation nearly impossible.
Biden Campaign Falsely Suggests Trump Called Virus A “Hoax”
The vice president falsely suggested that Trump referred to the coronavirus pandemic as a “hoax” during the president’s Feb. 28 campaign rally in South Carolina. The virus originated in China and has reportedly killed 116,000 people in the United States.
Biden tweeted a video in March that misleadinglyspliced together snippets of Trump saying “coronavirus” followed by, “this is their new hoax.” In reality, Trump was referring to Democrats’ political reaction to the virus, calling their criticism of his response a “hoax.”
“The video makes it seem like Trump is calling the disease itself a hoax, which he hasn’t done. The words are Trump’s, but the editing is Biden’s,” PolitiFact noted before rating the claim “false.”
Biden Falsely Said Trump Slashed The CDC’s Budget
Media fact-checkers hit Biden in February after he falsely accused the president of slashing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget.
“We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. … He’s wiped all that out. … He cut the funding for the entire effort,” Biden said at a Feb. 26 debate.
Biden was “wrong to say the agencies have seen their money cut,” the AP noted in its fact check of Biden’s claims. Trump “proposed cuts but Congress ignored him and increased financing instead. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect,” the fact check stated.
Biden Falsely Said Trump Dismissed WHO’s Help
The former vice president was also hit for falsely suggesting Trump rejected the World Health Organization’s attempt to provide the U.S. coronavirus tests.
“The World Health Organization offered the testing kits that they have available and to give it to us now. We refused them. We did not want to buy them,” Biden stated during the March 15 Democratic debate.
Biden Falsely Says Trump Called White Supremacists “Very Fine People”
Biden began his 2020 presidential run on a false claim that Trump called white supremacists “very fine people” after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, three years ago.
“Very fine people?” Biden said in an April 2019 video launching his campaign for president. “With those words, the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it.”
Biden omitted important context to Trump’s comments in which the president noted in comments reacting to the rally that the “fine people” were those who were there to protest the removal of a confederate statue.
Trump went on to say: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”
Biden Falsely Says He Was “Arrested” In South Africa
Biden claimed on the campaign trail in February that he was arrested in the 1970s while trying to visit then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa.
“When I said arrested, I was not able to — I was not able to move. Cops would not let me go with them [the Congressional Black Caucus],” Biden said in a CNN interview that month.
His campaign clarified the false claim on Feb. 25, saying that Biden was “separated from a congressional delegation.”
Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush endorsed President Donald Trump’s re-election on Tuesday. The son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and nephew of former President George W. Bush informed The Dallas Morning News of his intention to vote for Trump in November.
“President Trump is the only thing standing between American and socialism,” Bush said.
He added that “it’s clear” the policies implemented by the Trump administration are working for the country.
“Even in a global pandemic where we have had to take unprecedented measures to protect public health, the economy is already returning,” Bush said.
“It’s clear, America and Texas will continue to be stronger than ever.”
Trump thanked Bush for his endorsement on Twitter, saying that it was a “great honor.”
The younger Bush’s endorsement comes on the heels of a New York Times report saying many top Republican leaders will not be voting for Trump. The Times cited people familiar with the family’s thinking who said George W. Bush won’t support the president’s re-election and Jeb Bush is still unsure how he will vote in November.
Former President Bush’s spokesman, Freddy Ford, told The Texas Tribune that The Times’ report was wrong.
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“This is completely made up,” Ford said. “He is retired from presidential politics and has not indicated how he will vote.”
Trump tweeted an article reporting Ford’s statement but did not make any other comment on it. The president took shots at George P. Bush’s father during the 2016 election, calling him “Low Energy Jeb.”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Low energy Jeb Bush just endorsed a man he truly hates, Lyin’ Ted Cruz. Honestly, I can’t blame Jeb in that I drove him into oblivion!
However, the younger Bush and Trump have supported each other in their political endeavors, and the president has called him the “Bush that got it right.”
“I like him,” Trump said, adding that he is a “friend of my son and he’s a great guy.”
Erin Coates started as an editor for The Western Journal for over two years before becoming a news writer. A University of Oregon graduate, Erin has conducted research in data journalism and contributed to various publications as a writer and editor.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to promote religious freedom for oppressed religious minorities around the world.
“Religious freedom, America’s first freedom, is a moral and national security imperative,” the order read, according to a text posted on the White House website. “Religious freedom for all people worldwide is a foreign policy priority of the United States, and the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom.”
Trump signed the order privately, without any media present.
The president’s action came on the same day he and first lady Melania Trump visited the Saint John Paul II National Shrine, where they laid a wreath at the statue of the former pope, according to Fox News.
EWTN News Nightly
✔@EWTNNewsNightly
President Trump signed an executive order that seeks to promote international religious freedom and stop religious persecution overseas after visiting @JP2Shrine. One of the items in the EO calls for spending millions of dollars to assist programs that advance religious freedom.
Washington Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory lashed out at the visit, which came a day after Trump visited St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House, which had been damaged Sunday by rioters.
“I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree,”Gregory said in a statement.
“Saint Pope John Paul II was an ardent defender of the rights and dignity of human beings. His legacy bears vivid witness to that truth. He certainly would not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter or intimidate them for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace,”Gregory said, repeating an apparently false report that protesters were tear-gassed after scuffling with police so that the president could have a photo opportunity.
“[O]ur Founders understood religious freedom not as a creation of the state, but as a gift of God to every person and a right that is fundamental for the flourishing of our society,” the order read.
“Religious communities and organizations, and other institutions of civil society, are vital partners in United States Government efforts to advance religious freedom around the world. It is the policy of the United States to engage robustly and continually with civil society organizations — including those in foreign countries — to inform United States Government policies, programs, and activities related to international religious freedom.”
The order requires the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to “prioritize international religious freedom in the planning and implementation of United States foreign policy and in the foreign assistance programs of the Department of State and USAID.”
In addition, the order requires than $50 million per year be spent on programs “intended to anticipate, prevent, and respond to attacks against individuals and groups on the basis of their religion, including programs designed to help ensure that such groups can persevere as distinct communities; to promote accountability for the perpetrators of such attacks; to ensure equal rights and legal protections for individuals and groups regardless of belief; to improve the safety and security of houses of worship and public spaces for all faiths; and to protect and preserve the cultural heritages of religious communities.”
“Yet again, President Trump is taking a decisive action to keep his promise to people of faith around the world,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said of the order, according to Fox.
“This executive order fully integrates the president’s vision – a vigorous defense of international religious freedom rights for all – into key aspects of United States foreign policy.”
Trump to sign executive order promoting global religious freedom
President Trump on Tuesday will sign an executive order to promote religious freedom overseas. Trump is scheduled to sign the order after a visit to the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in
The order calls for the State Department to work with nations that have been identified by the Commission on International Religious Freedom as those where religious freedom is either absent or under siege.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Federal riot teams have been dispatched to two U.S. cities as the Trump administration gears up to shut down riots that have taken place across the country. President Donald Trump has also instructed “thousands and thousands” of soldiers and police to quell violence in Washington, D.C.
Attorney General William Barr has ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to send riot teams to Miami and Washington, D.C., according to a senior Justice Department official, NPR reported. The FBI will also deploy its Hostage Rescue Team to assist in controlling riots that have taken place in the streets of Washington, D.C., the senior official said. Protesters on Sunday night lit fires in Lafayette Park across from the White House.
Overall, 88 people were arrested in the Washington, D.C., protests, according to The Washington Post.
Trump said he was sparing no effort to restore order.
“I swore an oath to uphold the laws of our nation and that is exactly what I will do,” Trump said in a Rose Garden speech Monday night.
“I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters,” the president went on.
“A number of state and local governments have failed to take necessary action to safeguard their residents.
“I am taking immediate presidential action to stop the violence and restore security and safety in America.
“I am mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.”
Trump said that he will act if a city cannot control the violence on its own.
“If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” the president said.
Trump also said he was bolstering security in the nation’s capital.
“As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property,” he said.
After his address, Trump walked across the street from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church, which was founded in 1816. The church’s parish house was the target of arson during Sunday night’s riots, The Washington Post reported.
“Greatest country in the world,” Trump said as he inspected the damage, according to a White House media pool report. “And we’re going to keep it safe.”
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
The far-left Politico admitted Tuesday that Democrats are “dreading” the idea of a fast economic boom as America reopens, which explains the anti-science push among many Democrat governors to extend their pointless coronavirus lockdowns.
Thanks to these lockdowns, some 40 million people are unemployed, some 40 million lives have been shattered; lines at food pantries seem to go on forever; countless small businesses are in danger of closing or already have… Nevertheless, what America’s oh-so compassionate Democrats dread most is a quick economic rebound that might undermine their grasping desire to hold on to and obtain power.
“The general election scenario that Democrats are dreading,” the Politico headline reads.
And what is that scenario?
“We are about to see the best economic data we’ve seen in the history of this country,” a former economic adviser to Barack Obama told a bunch of bigwigs from both parties last month.
His name is Jason Furman and Politicosays he “laid out a detailed case for why the months preceding the November election could offer Trump the chance to brag — truthfully — about the most explosive monthly employment numbers and GDP growth ever.”
Furman’s counterintuitive pitch has caused some Democrats, especially Obama alumni, around Washington to panic. “This is my big worry,” said a former Obama White House official who is still close to the former president. Asked about the level of concern among top party officials, he said, “It’s high — high, high, high, high.”
And top policy officials on the Biden campaign are preparing for a fall economic debate that might look very different than the one predicted at the start of the pandemic in March. “They are very much aware of this,” said an informal adviser.
What Furman already sees are signs of what’s known as a “V” recovery, as a opposed to a slower or gradual recovery, or a recovery that takes a while to get back to where we were before these stupid lockdowns began. Furman sees an economy that’s already unleashed.
Consumption and hiring started to tick up “in gross terms, not in net terms,” Furman said, describing the phenomenon as a “partial rebound.”The bounce back “can be very very fast, because people go back to their original job, they get called back from furlough, you put the lights back on in your business. Given how many people were furloughed and how many businesses were closed you can get a big jump out of that. It will look like a V.”
Furman’s argument is not that different from the one made by White House economic advisers and Trump, who have predicted an explosive third quarter, and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who said in late April that “the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again.”
White House officials were thrilled to hear that some of their views have been endorsed by prominent Democrats.
While no one expects the second quarter numbers — the numbers that will tell us the GDP between April 1 and June 30 — to be anything but terrible, if we can come to our senses nationwide and get these absurd lockdowns behind us, the third quarter numbers (that will be released at the end of September) could show real growth. This would be good for the incumbent president, especially since that incumbent president has been predicting a “pent up” desire within the American people to get back to normal.
Good news for America and Americans would, of course, be terrible news for Joe Biden, who is desperate to strangle our economy with record high taxes and an obscene amount of regulations. Biden’s policies would hurt a flourishing economy, but they would kill a post-lockdown recovery in the same way the Obama-Biden economic policies of 2009 killed any hope of a real rebound after the 2008 economic crash. It’s no accident the Obama-Biden administration oversaw the worst “recovery” since the Great Depression.Their taxes, regulations, and constant threats of more kept a boot firmly on the neck of our economy for eight long years.
Plus, no matter how much Biden might crybaby about Trump’s Twitter account, his golf game, and his violation of the establishment’s “precious norms,”the American people tend not to fire a president when the economy is humming — especially if we are coming out of a downturn.
But what does it say about Democrats that with nearly 40 million lives shattered, they “dread” a fast comeback for those 40 million people?
Obviously, that’s a rhetorical question, but it does answer the question as to why — and for no valid scientific or medical reasons, a number of mercenary Democrat governors are desperate to push these pointless lockdowns as far into next month as possible (especially in swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania).
It is all about doing whatever damage they can to those third quarter GDP numbers; even if that means more pain for those who cannot work from home — primarily the working class.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
It’s a number that informed so many of our public policy decisions regarding COVID-19: 3.4 percent.
On March 3, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made a remark during a media briefing that guided how we viewed the threat posed by the novel coronavirus.
“While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease,” Tedros said during the briefing.
“Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected.”
Now, was this based on incomplete information?Of course. At some level, it’s difficult to blame individuals working from a very limited data set.
On the other hand, that limited data set influenced how we approached the disease — and it turns out that, if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s current “best estimate”of the COVID-19 death rate is accurate, it’s 13 times lower than the initial WHO claim.
According to statistics“based on data received by CDC prior to 4/29/2020,” the death rate from COVID-19 could be as low as 0.26 percent.
The numbers are based on the newest of “five COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios that are designed to help inform decisions by modelers and public health officials who utilize mathematical modeling,” the CDC said.
“Each scenario is based on a set of numerical values for biological and epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19. These values — called parameter values — can be used to estimate the possible effects of COVID-19 in U.S. states and localities. The parameter values in each scenario will be updated and augmented over time, as we learn more about the epidemiology of COVID-19.”
Scenario 5 — the operative scenario at the moment, at least given the data that we have — has some interesting data regarding the death rates for the novel coronavirus.
According to the CDC’s data, the symptomatic case fatality percentage is 0.4 percent.
Reading further into the data reveals it’s even lower than that.
Scenario 5 includes data on “[p]ercent of infections that are asymptomatic.”That, according to the CDC, is 35 percent.
So, do the math: It turns out that means the death rate is only 0.26 percent, according to the CDC’s own numbers.
Now, does this mean the death rate is truly 0.26 percent? Of course not.Even now, we’re in the early days in terms of statistics for the novel coronavirus. However, what’s clear is that, when all is said and done, we’re going to be nowhere close to the 3.4 percent originally predicted by the World Health Organization.
This was predicted by plenty of people at the beginning — including President Donald Trump, who was criticized when he said March 4 that 3.4 percent was “really a false number”and the actual death rate would be “under 1 percent.”
Now, does this mean that the president or any of the others who predicted this are doctors or epidemiologists? No. However, they had a basic understanding of how statistics work. They knew that, in the early days of the virus, with limited testing and limited data, the numbers were going to seem a lot higher than they actually were.
And yet, Tedros wasn’t the only one who thought the death rate for the coronavirus was an order of magnitude higher than current data says it is. In February, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it was 2 percent.
“If you look at the cases that have come to the attention of the medical authorities, in China, and you just do the math — the math is about 2 percent. If you look at certain age groups, certain risk groups, the fatality is much higher,” Fauci told Congress, according to CNBC.
There’s a reason this matters. If there’s a disease that spreads rapidly and has a death rate of 2 or 3 percent, yes, locking down the populace is a reasonable reaction. If we’re talking about something closer to 0.26 percent, putting the world into a new Great Depression seems a bit of an overreaction.
We don’t know the final death rate for the novel coronavirus yet. One thing’s for sure, though — it’s not 3.4 percent or anything close to that. It might not be 13 times lower, but it’s a lot closer to that than anything predicted at the beginning.
That has a lot of implications going forward, including when we start second-guessing what we did to our society and economy in order to arrest the spread of the disease.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal for four years.
The mayor of Baltimore wasn’t holding the president back.
President Donald Trump went ahead Monday with a planned Memorial Day visit to historic Fort McHenry, despite criticism from Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, who said the trip sets a poor example amid the coronavirus crisis.
“Dear Mr. President@realDonaldTrump, please stay home!”Young tweeted Thursday. “The City of Baltimore is currently under a Stay at Home order for the safety of our residents, who have been hit hard by #COVID19.
The White House wasn’t buying it for a second, and Trump was en route to the city late Monday morning.
“The brave men and women who have preserved our freedoms for generations did not stay home and the president will not either as he honors their sacrifice by visiting such a historic landmark in our nation’s history,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement, according to the Baltimore Sun.
Fort McHenry is the scene of the battle during the War of 1812 that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
And while it’s true that Trump has had his own tangles with Democratic leaders of Baltimore (particularly the late Rep. Elijah Cummings), for an American president on Memorial Day, visiting the site that inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner” is as natural as his planned visit earlier Monday to Arlington National Cemetery.
While much of the social media responses to Trump’s planned trip to Charm City included the usual liberal cesspool of abuse (even after three years of the Trump presidency, it only gets more vile), the president had plenty of supporters online.
Clare Lopez@ClareMLopez
Anyone too frightened can stay home but our President will be honoring patriots like himself this Memorial Day who were prepared to give all for our country
Baltimore Mayor Tells Trump To Stay Away And Not Visit Fort McHenry On Memorial Day – The Lid
The POTUS is set to visit Fort McHenry On Memorial Day the site of the War of 1812 battle that inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star Spangled Banner
Americans appreciate your commitment to America. We WANT you to visit the resting place of our fallen heros who sacrificed ALL. Mayor Young needs to worry about fixing his DELAPITATED city! #HonorOurFallenHeros
Trump visits Arlington cemetery, Fort McHenry for Memorial Day as Baltimore mayor criticizes trip
President Trump will mark Memorial Day with appearances at Arlington National Cemetery and Baltimore’s historic Fort McHenry, honoring fallen military members while also sending a clear signal to the…
Fortunately, not all Maryland elected officials have a knee-jerk anti-Trump attitude. Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, was not planning to attend Trump’s visit because he was spending the day with his family and celebrating his 64th birthday, the Sun reported Monday. But last week, according to a Thursday Sun report, Hogan’s spokesman welcomed the president’s presence.
“We are honored that the president and first lady have chosen to spend Memorial Day at Fort McHenry,” Hogan communications director Mike Ricci said, according to the Sun. “Although Marylanders are encouraged not to gather in large numbers this year — now more than ever — it’s important to reflect on the American heroes who sacrificed their lives for our freedom.”
Democrats and the mainstream media might do well to remember that honoring those American heroes is what Memorial Day is supposed to be about. For Trump to do that with a visit to Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of so many of those heroes, followed by a trip to the birthplace of the American national anthem isn’t just appropriate, it’s just about perfect.
And the mayor of Baltimore can’t hold the president back.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden applaud during President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremonies at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2017. (Paul J. Richards / AFP via Getty Images)
Former President Barack Obama directed the conspiracy of top intelligence community aides who sought to take down former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump said Sunday. Trump appeared Sunday on the Fox News show “Sunday Morning Futures.” He was interviewed Wednesday by host Maria Bartiromo.
Much of their conversation centered around the case of Flynn, who had been accused of improperly communicating with a foreign official after his phone calls to a former Russian ambassador during Trump’s transition period were listened to and later leaked. Flynn was forced to step down, and later faced charges after an FBI investigation.
The Justice Department is currently seeking to drop charges against Flynn and have his case dismissed. Flynn was among those “unmasked” by Obama-era officials. Unmasking is the intelligence term used for those instances when American citizens speaking to foreign nationals under surveillance have their identities revealed. It takes an official request to do so.
In recent days, the Trump administration released a list of Obama administration officials who made unmasking requests and who could have learned of Flynn’s identity through them. Due to the presence on that list of former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and comments from the attorney currently representing Flynn, Obama’s name has now become linked to the effort to target Flynn.
Other names on the list include former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey and former White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.
Trump pulled no punches in the interview.
“It was the greatest political crime in the history of our country,” he said.
“If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would have been in jail a long time ago. And I’m talking with 50-year sentences,” the president said. “It is a disgrace, what’s happened. This is the greatest political scam, hoax in the history of our country, and people should be going to jail for this stuff. And, hopefully, a lot of people are going to have to pay.”
He said that “Flynn and others are heroes, heroes, because what’s happened to them — they weren’t after General Flynn. They wanted him to lie about me, make up a story. And with few exceptions, nobody did that,” he said.
“This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people were corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them,” Trump said.
The president fired a shot at Biden.
“I watched Biden yesterday. He could barely speak,” Trump said. “He was on ‘Good Morning America,’ right? And he said he didn’t know anything about it. And now it just gets released. Right after he said that, it gets released that he was one of the unmaskers, meaning he knew everything about it.”
The president said the Obama-era intelligence community “went after these people viciously, all because they wanted to hurt the president of the United States. They figure they’ll either hurt him or they’ll take him out. That would be the ideal.
“Comey is a corrupt person, but let me tell you, Brennan bad. They’re all bad, everyone. Clapper is a not-smart guy, in charge of intelligence. But here’s the thing. It was impossible for it to happen without the man that sits right in that chair in the Oval Office. He knew everything.”
Bartiromo asked Trump whether Obama directed the effort against him.
“Yes, he probably directed them. But if he didn’t direct them, he knew everything. And you will see that,” he said.
Trump noted that communications from FBI agents involved in the hunt for evidence to show his campaign colluded with Russia mentioned that the then-president wanted to see everything.
“They’re not talking about me. I wasn’t president. They’re talking about ‘POTUS wants to see everything.’” Trump said.
He said Brennan was “totally involved.”
“John Brennan was one of the architects, in my opinion. You look at Brennan, you look at Clapper, you look at them all,” the president said.
Trump said the intelligence community did not go rogue.
“But, ultimately, the president knew everything. The president knew everything. President Obama and Vice President Biden, they knew everything,” he said.
The president said the truth has finally emerged.
“If this happened to Obama instead of to a Republican president that’s popular, 96 percent in the Republican Party, but it’s a whole different thing. If this happened to Obama instead of to me, you know what? Everybody would be in jail for years already, for years. It’s a disgraceful thing,” Trump said.
“We caught them in the act, Maria. It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “And every day, we’re seeing more and more information come out. We caught them. And their guys are gone. They were guarding the fort. Comey and all these guys, they were guarding the fort. And once they left, it got easier and easier.
“And now it’s like an avalanche of really bad — call it treason, call it whatever you want, but they tried to take down a duly elected president of the United States.”
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Monday night on Spectrum News 1’s “Inside the Issues,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said President Donald Trump and the lockdown protesters should be ashamed of themselves for pressuring governors to reopen their states.
Waters said, “You know our governors are under great stress. The protests that have been organized, the protests trying to intimidate our governors to open up everything are protests where the people participating in that should be ashamed of themselves. They should not be encouraged in any way. They should not be encouraged from the top leadership of this country to go out and do that.”
She continued, “I know the pressure is on. I know that you’re trying to hold the line. I want you to hold the line. I don’t want to see these establishments opened back up. I want the federal government to join with the cities and the states to support these families in every way that we can. I do want a moratorium on rent evictions. I have a huge bill. I have a $100 billion bill to pay the landlords. We don’t want them to risk their properties, many of them have bought a small number of units, ten units, four units as retirement property. I know that they need to pay their mortgages. I am going to absolutely see to it that they are reimbursed, that they are paid for the moratorium on evictions on their apartments.”
Waters added, “So we’re doing everything that we can give support to our constituents, to our citizens, to the people who work every day, who have families to take care of. So if we do that, this will support our states and our governors and not having to open back up. So that you know the small businesses that are in direct contact with people nail shops, beauty shops, barbershops, flower shops, these are people in touch with folks every day, and they’re risking their lives, and we don’t want them opened up. We are very sympathetic to the pressure that is being put on by the president of the United States and organize efforts of these protesters. We want the governors to hold the line. Be as tough as you can be. Be as thoughtful as you can be. Do everything you can to hold the line. I know that Governor Newsom is doing that. And any small steps that he takes, he is doing it with a lot of support. We are with you, governor. Hold the line. ”
Chip Somodevilla / Getty ImagesSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) speaks during her weekly news conference at the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made it clear she’s going to work very hard to pin the coronavirus pandemic on President Donald Trump. Just don’t ask her to find out where the pandemic actually started.
Pelosi, as you may have heard, has put together a committee to oversee the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. In a “Dear Colleague” letter, she assured everyone this was about ensuring the relief money was spent the way it was supposed to.
“We must make sure that the historic investment of taxpayer dollars made in the CARES Act is being used wisely and efficiently to help those in need, not be exploited by profiteers and price-gougers,” Pelosi wrote in the letter late last month, according to Politico.
However, you can probably tell where this whole thing is headed when you consider that each of the seven members she appointed to the committee were Democrats. The chairman, meanwhile, will be House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat best known as the man who pretty much saved Joe Biden’s campaign by endorsing him before the South Carolina primary in February. No conflict of interest there whatsoever.
Just don’t ask Pelosi to join an investigation of the origins of the novel coronavirus.
According to GOP Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, his attempts to investigate a New York firm that sent money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — potentially the source of the virus, according to some sources — have been stymied by Pelosi and House Democrats. During an appearance on “Breitbart News Saturday” this weekend, Reschenthaler talked about a letter he sent to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper regarding a Pentagon grant that went to EcoHealth Alliance, which has given money to the Wuhan institute on a number of occasions. (It’s unclear whether the Pentagon grant went directly to the Wuhan institute.)
Another grant he talked about involved the National Institutes of Health (in particular the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, run by Dr. Anthony Fauci) giving money to the EcoHealth Alliance — which, in turn, gave some of that money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to research coronaviruses in bats.
Just don’t expect much to come of any of this from Congress.
“We should have an investigative body looking at these grants, but Nancy Pelosi is not going to do that,” Reschenthaler said. “So you have myself and House Republicans. I can tell you I’m going to continue to look into these grants. I’m going to continue to look into the Department of Homeland Security as well to see what grants are going from there to China. I’m also looking at defunding the World Health Organization and we can talk about that as well.
“But the bottom line of the Democrats’ behavior is this: They hate this president so badly that they would rather side with the Chinese Communist Party than defend Americans and defend our spending and spend wisely and just be honest. That is their hatred for President Trump and disdain for President Trump’s supporters.”
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Reschenthaler said he is trying to determine if money from the Pentagon grant went to the Wuhan lab.
“The [Department of Defense] also gave EcoHealth Alliance $6.5 million in a grant, and like you said, that grant was to understand bat-borne zoonotic disease in context with weapons of mass destruction, what I’m trying to find out is whether or not the DOD funding that went to EcoHealth also went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said.
“We know that the NIH funding did, and we also know that all money is fungible, but I want to see if we can trace that money to Wuhan to see how much and to what extent the DOD and American taxpayers actually funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
His ability to investigate these grants has been blocked specifically because the Democrats are in control of the House of Representatives and have no intention of conducting such an investigation. They already have a committee to deal with the coronavirus, after all, and they’re going to investigate pretty much nothing else but Trump.
“It’s imperative that we as House Republicans take back the House in this next election because Nancy Pelosi and the far-left Democrats are thwarting everything we do,” Reschenthaler said. “I do have to say I cringe when the media says ‘Nancy Pelosi and the squad’ because that minimizes how far left this party has gone. It’s just not ‘the squad.’ It’s not just Nancy Pelosi. It’s most of their members.
“Look at the Green New Deal. When that was floated, half of their co-sponsors were on the Green New Deal. Most of these Democrats vote 90 plus percent of the time with [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez],” he continued.
“This party has moved drastically to the left to the point of siding with the CCP over Americans. They don’t want to get to the bottom of these grants and they also don’t want my resolution run on the floor about defunding the World Health Organization or at least getting Dr. Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO] to resign and getting an international organization to investigate how the World Health Organization was either grossly negligent in dealing with the Wuhan virus or how they worked hand-in-glove with the Chinese Communist Party in trying to cover up the virus early on. But that’s the extent of their hatred, again, of this president and his supporters where they will not run these bills and they will not do these investigations because, again, they would rather side with the CCP than do the right thing.”
Unless Republicans take back control of the House in November, the body isn’t going to be doing much when it comes to investigating how much money went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, much less whether the institute was at all responsible for the accidental release of the coronavirus — something that the American intelligence community hasn’t ruled out and that the president and others in the administration say they’ve seen evidence of, according to NBC News.
“But I think whether or not this disease came from a bat through a wet market or it came from a lab, we’ve got to see where it originated and we’ve got to see what we can do to make sure we stop these pandemics in the future,” Reschenthaler said.
“That could be something like encouraging other nations to stop interactions at wet markets, which should be happening anyhow. If it originated in a lab and somehow leaked from the lab, we shouldn’t be funding labs that study virology and weapons of mass destruction in terms of biological weapons. We shouldn’t fund these labs unless they have procedures in place where the disease won’t leak out and kill 60,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands around the world. This is a very responsible thing to do as good stewards of taxpayer money.”
And, as Reschenthaler pointed out, we don’t know how much data on coronaviruses we got from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We know that we certainly didn’t get any investigators inside of China after the coronavirus went worldwide. We still haven’t gotten investigators on the ground in Hubei province — and we won’t. But what we will get is Clyburn’s committee, which features firebrands like Reps. Maxine Waters of California and Nydia Velazquez of New York, among others.
This will certainly be a way for Democrats to go after the Trump administration, at least until the election and possibly beyond. It could even be, as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called it, “another impeachment committee.”
But the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Don’t expect that to be investigated anytime soon — not until the Democrats are out of power in the House.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal for four years.
Eva Hambach / AFP via Getty ImagesVarious rifles are on display at Clark Brothers gun store in Warrenton, Virginia, on Jan. 16, 2020. (Eva Hambach / AFP via Getty Images)
As local and state governments across the country have restricted the liberties of their citizens since the coronavirus began its spread, many Americans have found themselves quietly exercising their rights by buying guns in record numbers. Purchases of firearms continued to break records last month during the nation’s health and economic crises. Gun sales, which reached all-time highs in March, continued their surge in April amid uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus and the government’s response to it.
Americans bought almost 1.8 million guns in April, according to estimates from Small Arms Analytics, which tracks the sales of firearms. While fewer people bought guns in April than they did in March, when 2.5 million firearms were purchased, the number of arms purchased in April was an increase of 71 percent compared to sales estimates for the same timeframe in 2019. Small Arms Analytics noted that more handguns have been sold than rifles or shotguns.
NICS ran more than 3.7 million checks in the month of March.
The news is certainly welcome for the gun industry, but it should be celebrated that so many Americans are exercising their Constitutional rights during such an unprecedented time in the country’s history. Governments across the country have released potentially dangerous criminals back onto the streets as a way to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus in jails and prisons. With the influx of so many possibly dangerous people now among us, people are reminded that they are the first responders to emergent situations, and are taking steps to ensure they can protect themselves and their families.
Far-left politicians, such as former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, have also promised to go after Americans’ firearms if elected in November, which could be contributing to the spike in sales and background checks. But whether the increase in sales is due to fears of government overreach, talk of gun control or a reaction to other factors, the country’s current predicament is evidence of just how essential the Second Amendment is, and Americans are recognizing that.
Last month, the proprietor of a gun store and shooting range in deep blue Southern California described the unprecedented demand for firearms in Orange County. Gregg Bouslog, the proprietor of On-Target Indoor Shooting Range in Laguna Niguel, explained his shock at the influx in gun sales.
“As the owner of an indoor shooting range and gun store here in California these past 14 years we have never experienced such a huge demand for firearms and ammunition — even higher than the famous Obama rush of 2012/2013,” Bouslog told Red State.
Bouslog added he believed a great number of his new customers were first-time gun buyers.
While toilet paper shortages grabbed headlines in the early weeks of the crisis, and others warn of potential meat shortages coming, the one industry having the most difficulty staying ahead of demand is the gun industry. In the last month, I have personally visited multiple gun retailers, multiple times, seeking to purchase ammunition and to browse for firearms. In what is both inspiring and frustrating, I have found the shelves and walls of gun stores in Oklahoma to be mostly barren, as sellers attempt to keep up with demand.
As the firearms industry is considered essential by the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the NRA, gun sellers are mostly open for business, and some are having a difficult time keeping their inventory replenished — and there is something significant to be taken from that. Americans are sending a clear message: Constitutional liberties will not be suspended or surrendered in the face of a national emergency or by government decree, and people are taking measures to protect themselves from all potential threats to their rights.
Johnathan has authored thousands of news articles throughout his career. He has also worked as an editor and producer in radio and television. He is a proud husband and father.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is flanked by President Donald Trump as he speaks during the daily briefing on the coronavirus at the White House on April 22, 2020. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump confirmed Tuesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci will be testifying before the Senate this month but will not appear in front of the Democrat-led House of Representatives.
“The House is a setup. The House is a bunch of Trump haters. They put every Trump hater on the committee. The same old stuff,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.
“They, frankly, want our situation to be unsuccessful, which means death. Which means death. And our situation’s going to be very successful.”
He added that Fauci, the director of the Nationals Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will testify before the Senate, “and he looks forward to doing that.” The president went on to say that Democrats in the House “should be ashamed of themselves.” “They want us to fail so they can win an election, which they’re not going to win,” he said.
Fauci will join Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in testifying before a Senate committee on May 12, NPR reported.
Trump’s comments about the House confirmed reports that the White House had blocked Fauci from appearing before the House Appropriations Committee as part of its investigation into the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Democratic Reps. Nita Lowey of New York, the chairwoman of the committee, and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut condemned the White House’s decision to allow Fauci to testify before the Senate and not the House panel in a Saturday news release.
“The White House’s decision to allow Dr. Fauci to testify in the Republican-controlled Senate but not before the House Appropriations Committee is letting politics overtake public health. There is no distinction between our two co-equal legislative bodies,” they said in a statement.
“The COVID-19 pandemic should not and cannot become a partisan issue — there are too many lives at risk,” the lawmakers said. “We are all Americans first. But the White House’s partisan politics are clearly at play in this decision during our nation’s most challenging public health and economic crisis, and that is both alarming and offensive to the work the American people have elected us to do.”
White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said that allowing Fauci to appear before the committee would be “counter-productive.”
“While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at Congressional hearings,” Deere said in a statement last week, according to The Hill.
“We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time,” he said.
Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Democratic lawmakers should not conduct their “usual fishing expedition” if they hear testimony from Fauci.
“I just hope that the people who are asking the questions are asking intelligent, rational questions that are actually relevant to the American health because we’ve seen what they do before,” Conway told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” Tuesday.
“For example, they say stupid things like, ‘This is a job interview — this is a job interview for a lifetime appointment’ about Brett Kavanaugh. ‘Let’s believe all women’ — or at least those three women, most of whom then retracted or didn’t have corroborating evidence,” she said.
Erin Coates started as an editor for The Western Journal for over two years before becoming a news writer. A University of Oregon graduate, Erin has conducted research in data journalism and contributed to various publications as a writer and editor.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem gives her first State of the State address in Pierre, S.D., Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. / James Nord/AP Photo
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican and the governor of one of just a handful of states that has not issued a statewide lockdown order, told Breitbart News exclusively on Wednesday her state is winning the war against the coronavirus without the extreme and draconian measures some other states have implemented.
Noem said that despite earlier projections of a surge on the hospitals in South Dakota and nationwide, “no, we haven’t” seen such a surge. In fact, South Dakota has—again, without a lockdown—cut that number down by 75 percent of the projections, with much less than a hundred people in the hospital.
According to the state’s Department of Health website, there have been 1,858 cases of coronavirus in South Dakota—937 people have recovered. There have been only 9 deaths, and there are 62 people currently hospitalized. In total, only 111 people were ever hospitalized for coronavirus in South Dakota—far less than ever was expected.
“I think we’ve got maybe 60 people in the hospital right now,” Noem said in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. “We have 2,500 beds set aside for COVID-19 patients, but we only have 63 in. We probably, from all of our projections and studying the science behind the virus, we won’t peak until the middle of June. But we already have done much better than what we had thought would have been hitting our state already.”
“We already have cut our peak projections by 75 percent just putting in place the recommendations I asked people to do, staying at home and they’ve practiced social distancing,” she explained. “They’ve washed their hands and they stayed home if they weren’t feeling well and called their doctors. Just by doing that, we’ve cut the hospitalization rates by 75 percent. So, I’ve just been super proud of what the people in South Dakota have done—they recognized that I wasn’t going to dictate to them, that I valued their freedoms and liberties and that I was going to let them take action on behalf of their families and communities.”
When asked how she made her decision to not issue a closure of businesses in South Dakota and to not issue a statewide stay-at-home order like many other governors did when the crisis was beginning, Noem told Breitbart News that she was focused on providing the best and most scientific response to the coronavirus crisis.
“I looked at our state and our people here and knew they would take on the personal responsibility that would be necessary to protect their families and their communities,” Noem said. “I had a real honest conversation with them and told them what we were facing and that I needed them to make some decisions to follow CDC guidelines and that by doing that we could look at how this virus would impact our state and peak hospitalization rates going forward and do it together.”
“I’m not one who believes in a one-size-fits-all approach, and even in South Dakota I’ve got pretty diverse communities,” she noted. “I’ve got some that are pretty sparse with not many people and then I’ve got some that are big cities as well. So I wanted to leave some flexibility there for local folks to make decisions but also recognizing that when it comes down to it that these guys had to take on the personal responsibility that is necessary to really go after this virus.”
Noem added that when it came to her decision against issuing a lockdown, she factored in her oath to defend the state’s Constitution that she took when she was sworn in as governor and her oath to defend the U.S. Constitution that she took when she was previously sworn in when she was in the U.S. Congress. She was concerned for the civil liberties and freedoms of the people of her state and did not think the facts on the ground warranted a lockdown—something that, again, the statistics have proven to be true.
“It was a decision that I made. The facts on the ground here did not support shelter-in-place,” she said. “We just didn’t have the spread. For me personally, I took an oath to uphold our state Constitution. I took an oath when I was in Congress to uphold the United States Constitution. So I believe in people’s freedoms and liberties and I always balance that with every decision that I make as governor. I get overly concerned with leaders who take too much power in a time of crisis because I think that’s how we directly lose our country someday by leaders overstepping their proper role.”
“So I was balancing all of that perspective and my value system and principles with what I was seeing here in South Dakota and never believed it was appropriate for us to take that kind of action,” Noem explained. “I trust my people. I know that if business owners here are given an opportunity to be innovative, they will protect their customers. They will take actions and change business models to make sure their employees are safe and that they can practice social distancing while still serving their customers. I knew I had to give them an opportunity to survive.”
“What I was going to ask them to do was not going to be something they would have to do just for a week or two,” she explained. “I knew they would have to do it for months, and I didn’t know how they would survive if I shut them down, and for me, it’s always been about whatever I ask you to do today you have to sustain, and I knew that doing that kind of an action was not sustainable. People would not be able to shelter in their homes for six weeks on end, and businesses would not be able to survive and have an economy to be able to put food on the table for folks.”
“All of that was part of my decision-making process, and I decided as well—I knew it was unconventional and it was something that would not be widely embraced across the country–but I knew I had to communicate it and I knew I had to make myself available to South Dakota and tell them why I was making these decisions and make sure we were having real palms-up honest conversations, and I think by and large they’re seeing the wisdom in the action and decisions we’ve made, and they’re grateful for it, but we have a long ways to go though,” Noem said. “We’ve got, that’s the thing, a lot of people want to be done with this now, and I have to keep reminding people we still have not even hit our peak—our numbers are going to continue to get worse, and that reality is something that we’re going to have to deal with for quite some time here.”
Just because there is no stay-at-home order or statewide mandated closure of businesses does not mean South Dakota is just waiting and doing nothing to fight the coronavirus. Noem has undertaken a number of initiatives in South Dakota, including alongside the state’s northern neighbor, North Dakota, the introduction of a cell phone application that helps state health officials with contact tracing of those who test positive for the virus—something she said has been very effective in helping control the spread of the disease.
“The app is called CARE19 and it’s downloadable on both android and iPhones, but what it does is so much of the time of individuals—when somebody tests positive for COVID-19 our Department of Health immediately calls them, asks them to isolate, and then follows up with them and then also does extensive interviews with them to find out about where they had been the previous three or four or five days, where they had been, where they had stopped, so we can identify other individuals that may have been exposed to the virus to let them know and ask them to isolate and slow down the spread,” Noem said. “This app will do all of that in seconds. So, it’s completely voluntary. People can download it on their phone, then turn on location services and then forget about it. Then if they do test positive a week or two weeks down the road they can decide if they want to share that information with us or not and then that will tell us everything about where they were and people that may have been exposed to the virus so they don’t have to try to remember.”
“It literally takes hours of interviews we would have with an individual down to getting all of that same information and having it be much more accurate in seconds,” she explained. “It helps us be much more aggressive in slowing and isolating the spread. The average person we have to contact—if somebody tests positive, we have to call eight or nine people on average that they may have come in contact with and let them know. So even if we only have a hundred cases a day, that’s 800 to 900 phone calls we have to be making to them. Then everybody who tests positive and everybody who has been exposed we call them back the next day and then the next day and so on to make sure they’re still doing okay and that they’re still isolating and all that. By being able to cut down that amount of time it takes to know who may have been exposed, boy it just saves us hundreds of hours and is really helpful. We’re the only—I think North Dakota started it first, I think we started it the next morning, and I think we’re the only two states that are using that kind of technology.”
South Dakota has also, at Noem’s direction, formally launched a statewide, fully-funded, and all-encompassing trial to study the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus.There have been some studies that suggest the drug is promising as a potential treatment, and President Donald Trump has touted it as a hopeful possibility, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized its usage on a compassionate care basis if a doctor decides a patient should use it. But no formal studies yet exist to demonstrate the effectiveness of the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19, so Noem stepped up and rallied all of the state’s major healthcare systems to lead a statewide test of the drug.
“What’s happening here in South Dakota is really unprecedented,” Noem said. “There has never been anything like this that has happened before. There is the state government partnering with all of our major health systems to run a statewide, state-backed-and-funded clinical trial. We have Sanford Health in our state that does a lot of research, and they’re running many other clinical trials, and they came to the table and said they would lead it, and I said the state would support it and help secure the drugs with the White House’s help, the hydroxychloroquine and whatever else we would need, and then the other two health systems, Avera and Monument, were excited to partner as well. So we will literally have a clinical trial now where every person in the state will be allowed to participate in.”
“So it’s the first statewide one. I think we’re the only state where it would have been possible to get all of the healthcare systems to agree to participate in,” she continued. “It really is unprecedented as well to get them all to step up and agree to participate, and then we can include up to 100,000 people so it is much larger than a typical clinical trial would be.”
“Sometimes the accuracy of a clinical trial is in question when it’s a super small sample and you don’t get enough people to participate,” Noem explained. “By this, including this many people getting access to the drug and seeing what the results would be, not only allows us to meet the current need but also allows us to get the background data and research that we can use to be on offense against this virus into the future.”
“So, I think this is kind of what South Dakota does best—we’re much better on offense than we are just sitting back and playing defense, and this is one way where I said let’s not just sit back and access the drug and let people use it that are in ICUs and in healthcare systems that need it to save their lives,” she said. “But let’s use it as an opportunity to build out our capacity for doing research so that in the long run we’re contributing to addressing COVID-19 for years into the future.”
South Dakota is still, Noem added, planning to have fireworks over Mount Rushmore this year—a promise President Trump made when signing a phase one trade deal with China earlier this year.
“They are—we’ll decide what it looks like but there will be fireworks over Mount Rushmore this year. We’re still moving ahead,” Noem said.
Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty ImagesPolice officers strengthen security in the El Carmelo neighborhood of Havana on April 4, 2020, after Cuban authorities announced its isolation as a measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus after the detection of COVID-19 cases. (Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty Images)
The coronavirus pandemic should remind all Americans how fortunate we are that we don’t live in a socialist country.
Most of my family fled to the United States from socialist Cuba; not all of them made it out alive, and some of them are still there. Growing up in California, I heard countless stories from my mom and grandparents of the government oppression that my relatives faced in their daily lives.
As I watch our own government’s efforts to mobilize the population in response to the coronavirus pandemic, I’m grateful that my family’s sacrifices enabled me to live in a country that has such immense respect for individual liberties. Curfews, restrictions on economic activity, scarce food and punitive, overbearing policing practices are a hallmark of both communist and socialist regimes in normal times. Here in the U.S., these things cause a shock to our system even during a crisis when they’re voluntary, precisely because so many of us take our individual liberties for granted.
This shock you feel should serve as a reminder that we’re all united by our great fortune to live in the most free country ever to exist. There is no better time to reflect on and appreciate our freedom as we get a small glimpse into what others living under communism and socialism experience every day.
Counterintuitively, the sight of bare shelves in grocery stores across the country also underscores the superiority of our capitalist system. Americans are shocked by the fact that it has become difficult to obtain certain staples such as toilet paper, but for citizens living under socialist regimes, severe shortages are simply a fact of life — and they don’t even have the option of settling for lasagna instead of spaghetti, because the shortages they endure day in and day out are far more widespread than anything Americans have encountered in recent weeks.
Rationing is common in Cuba for this very reason. The government limits the amount of food and supplies each Cuban is allowed to buy, and enforces those limits brutally.
When my mom’s cousin was dying of cancer in Cuba, the government wouldn’t provide sheets or food for her feeding tube. Our family in Cuba had to scour the black market to get her the appropriate food to be able to feed her through a tube during her last days. This was after the Cuban government missed her brain cancer diagnosis for years due to broken machines and poorly educated doctors. It was only discovered when she had months left to live.
When you hear that “health care is a right,” this is an example of what the health care Cubans have a “right” to looks like.
Innocent Cubans have been killed and jailed over violating rationing rules and for speaking out about their hunger. We don’t have to worry about that here in the United States. The closest thing to rationing that we’ll ever experience are reasonable per-customer limits on high-demand products put in place by the stores themselves.
President Trump may have encouraged Americans to scale back their hoarding of toilet paper, but there’s no way he would ever restrict how much we can buy, because he knows that the free market will restock those shelves far faster than any draconian government intervention could possibly manage.
Since long before the coronavirus crisis, I have been concerned that too many Americans have accepted a whitewashed history of socialism that glosses over the widespread brutality and hardship that characterize socialist governments. It’s no secret that our education system is dominated by the ideological political left, who have made strides in normalizing socialism as a Norwegian fairytale, ignoring the fact Norway is not a socialist country. I’ve seen American teachers with my own two eyes proud to prominently display a celebratory image of Marxist murderer Che Guevara in their classrooms — a distressing sight for those who actually know the brutality of his actions.
It seems that some Americans are so accustomed to freedom that we can’t even imagine the privation and fear that families like mine endured under socialism. It’s easy to think socialism is the answer when the words sound pretty, but when faced with the ugly reality it becomes too late to turn back. Once these ideologies take root in a country, the rot rapidly infects every crevice of the government and suddenly the citizens have no freedom to lawfully change it.
It’s no surprise that Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants living in the United States are overwhelmingly conservative and pro-capitalist. We see the empty shelves in the meat, dairy or toiletry sections at the grocery store caused by this pandemic and are reminded that in our home countries, the everyday reality is much worse.
For people like my mom, it evokes memories of having her last possession, a doll, destroyed and stolen from her by a Cuban government official. That was the one item she was allowed to flee with, but an overwhelming need for control drove the official to make sure my mom wasn’t hiding money inside of the doll.
Similarly, we were bewildered when Democrats praise the government-run health care system in Cuba — the same type of system that is failing so spectacularly to cope with coronavirus outbreaks in countries such as Italy.
When my grandpa visits our family still stuck in Cuba, we all rally together to fill suitcases full of medicine, female hygiene products and other basic health necessities because we know those things aren’t available in a socialist country. Unfortunately, the coronavirus is exposing the deficiencies of socialized medicine in a much more serious way — ventilators aren’t nearly as easy to fit in a suitcase.
As state and local governments across the U.S. ask citizens and business owners to make sacrifices in order to stop the spread of a deadly virus, I’m reminded of my time traveling in China with the recording artist Akon, where our guide was required to obtain special government permits just to enter certain parts of the country. Curfews, internet firewalls, bans of social media like Twitter and shutdowns are a regular part of life in China — and violating them brings severe consequences. Freedom of speech does not exist in China; people live in fear of vocalizing their thoughts. When I’d ask a hard question about living under communism, their eyes told me what they could not vocalize due to their fear of being monitored. Even Chinese citizens are restricted from entering certain districts, based on their status. As an American, that was strange to watch; it felt like we had been transported into the Hunger Games universe. It served as a stark reminder that we have such remarkable freedoms and opportunities in America that we often don’t even realize just how good we have it.
The parallels between our temporary “coronapocalypse” and everyday life under socialism should make us wary of those who try to present socialism as some kind of panacea. It should also make us grateful to have a president who knew communist China wasn’t being honest with us about the severity of the virus that originated there. President Trump’s instincts about communist China led to flights from China being shut down in January, despite the protests of xenophobia from Democrats, a decision we now know saved countless lives.
Most of all these parallels should make us grateful that we have a president committed to ensuring that the United States of America never becomes a socialist country. As I reflect on the difficulty my relatives stuck in Cuba face every day, I’m more grateful than ever to be an American.
Robby Starbuck is a Cuban-American producer and director. Robby was nominated for Best Rock Video and Best Indie Video at the Much Music Video Awards and has won the YouTube Play award, the Kerrang! Video of the Year award and Best Video with a Message at the MTV VMAs.
A Michigan state Democratic lawmaker who was suffering from the coronavirus credited President Donald Trump with saving her life, saying on Monday that his constant touting of hydroxychloroquine is what led her to ask her doctor for the malaria drug.
Rep. Karen Whitsett (Detroit) “said she started taking hydroxychloroquine on March 31, prescribed by her doctor, after both she and her husband sought treatment for a range of symptoms on March 18,” The Detroit Free Press reported. “‘It was less than two hours’ before she started to feel relief, said Whitsett, who had experienced shortness of breath, swollen lymph nodes, and what felt like a sinus infection.”
Whitsett said that she had taken the drug before for a separate medical issue but would not have thought to ask her doctor about it unless Trump had been repeatedly talking about it.
“It has a lot to do with the president … bringing it up,”Whitsett said. “He is the only person who has the power to make it a priority.”
When The Detroit Free Press asked her if she thought that Trump may have saved her life, she responded, “Yes, I do. I do thank him for that.”
Trump sent out a link to the report, writing, “Congratulations to State Representative Karen Whitsett of Michigan. So glad you are getting better!”
Congratulations to State Representative Karen Whitsett of Michigan. So glad you are getting better! https://t.co/v6z46rUDtg
Last week, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an “Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to permit the emergency use of hydroxychloroquine sulfate supplied from the Strategic National Stockpile to treat adults and adolescents who weigh 50 kg or more and are hospitalized with COVID-19 for whom a clinical trial is not available, or participation is not feasible.”
While experts are still waiting on clinical trials and additional testing to officially determine the efficacy of using the drug to treat coronavirus, many doctors have said that it works very well.
Los Angeles based Dr. Anthony Cardillo, CEO of Mend Urgent Care, praised the drug over the weekend during an interview with ABC 7 news anchor Jory Rand.
“What we’re finding clinically with our patients is that it really only works in conjunction with zinc. So the hydroxychloroquine opens the zinc channel, zinc goes into the cell, it then blocks the replication of the cellular machinery,” Cardillo said. “So, it has to be used in conjunction with zinc. We are seeing some clinical responses in that regard. There are people that take it regularly for other disease processes, we have to be cautious and mindful that we don’t prescribe for patients who have COVID that are well. It really should be reserved for people that are really sick, in the hospital, or at home very sick that need that medication, otherwise we’re going to blow through our supply for the patients that take it regularly for other disease processes.”
“Every patient I’ve prescribed it to has been very, very ill and within 8-12 hours they were basically symptom free and so, clinically I am seeing a resolution that mirrors what we saw in the French study and some of the other studies worldwide,” Cardillo continued. “But what I am seeing is that people that are taking it alone, by itself, it’s not having efficacy.”
During an interview on Fox News last week, Dr. Stephen Smith, an infectious disease doctor, said, “It’s a game changer. It’s an absolute game changer. I think this data will go to really support the French data. … I think this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic. I’m very serious.”
Biden said, “We don’t need the kind of talk is president is using. In fact, the president has to stop the belittling of the governors with whom he disagrees, stop making accusations that somehow some New York hospitals are — they all of a sudden they need more masks, we ought to investigate them. Maybe they are going out the back door. What is that all about? That is bizarre, absolutely bizarre. Get the help to where it is needed now. And what they are doing right is they should let Dr. Fauci and the experts run the show, speak more, let them lay out exactly what is happening. Just tell the truth to the American people. They are tough. They can take it. But don’t mislead them.”
He continued, “Let’s do everything in our power to do it. And the social distancing the president gets around to it really late. He talked about social distancing not being required. Then he said it is going to be required, but everybody will be in church on Easter. Now he is acknowledging that’s not going to happen. I mean, let’s just level with the American people.”
He added, “Mr. President, let’s get things done. Let’s put the politics aside. You know we need more of everything. Why are you not insisting it be produced and demanding it using your presidential authority to get it done? Nobody disagrees with that. Get it done. Step up and do your job. Stop campaigning.”
One of the primary critiques of President Donald Trump’s new border wall is that such a barrier would be ineffective at achieving the stated goal of increasing security. Specifically, some critics have ludicrously claimed that barriers at the border won’t stop drug traffickers and illegal aliens from entering the country. They argue that at best it would be little more than a costly hindrance that could be rapidly overcome.
However, three illegal aliens from Mexico learned the hard way that the border wall critics were incredibly wrong in that assessment.
The trio of interlopers attempting to sneak into the country ended up trapped atop a section of the 30-foot-tall fence in the San Diego, California, area on Jan. 5, The Washington Times reported. After U.S. Border Patrol agents spotted the three perched atop the tall wall, and with an assist from the San Diego Fire Department, they were promptly helped down from the precarious position and taken into custody.
According to a news release from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, the three individuals had attempted to use the cover of a dense fog in the area to illegally enter the United States. Unfortunately for them, after reaching the top of the 30-foot steel wall near Otay Mesa, the three intruders found that they were unable to safely descend to the other side of the fence due to the wet and slippery condition of the mist-slicked steel. Making matters worse for them, it also appeared that they had been abandoned and left atop the wall by whoever had initially assisted their attempt to smuggle themselves across the border.
Once safely lowered from the top of the wall, the three individuals — a man and two women — were questioned and discovered to be Mexican nationals who’d illegally entered the country. At that point, they were taken into custody and transported to the nearest Border Patrol station for processing.
“These three were very fortunate to not have fallen from the top of the wall which could have resulted in serious injury or death,” Aaron Heitke, acting Chief Patrol Agent of the San Diego Sector, said in a statement. “These dangers are not important considerations to smugglers, who place an emphasis on profits over safety.”
The Times noted that the three illegals trapped atop the wall were indeed lucky to have not fallen and hurt themselves. Falling off the wall is apparently a fairly regular occurrence that Border Patrol agents must deal with, according to Supervisory Agent Jeffrey Stephenson, who pointed out that injured illegal aliens are immediately given whatever medical attention is necessary as soon as they are discovered.
He explained, “The falls have led to numerous serious injuries including broken legs, broken ankles, skull fractures, brain bleeds, broken scapula, fractured vertebrae, and appendicitis.”
Interestingly, Fox News reported that this incident occurred in an area near San Diego where President Trump’s proposed border wall system has been fully realized. The old 8-foot “landing mat”-style barriers and mesh fences directly on the border had been replaced with 18-foot steel bollards featuring a steel plate at the top, which the three invaders had managed to clear. However, they were stymied by the secondary 30-foot bollard wall that is set back a short distance from the shorter primary wall, creating a sort of corridor between the walls that agents can traverse in their efforts to enforce the border.
The section where the incident occurred was part of a project that started in 2018 to completely replace about 14 miles of the old single barrier that was easily breached with the new double-layered system that has now been proven to be much more difficult to overcome.
It should be obvious to all that, despite what the naysayers may claim, the new border wall system is being built — slowly but surely — and it is rather effective at preventing illegal incursions or, at the very least, slowing down and delaying interlopers until they can be apprehended by agents.
Ben Marquis is a writer who identifies as a constitutional conservative/libertarian. He has covered current events and politics for The Western Journal’s Conservative Tribune since 2014. His focus is on protecting the First and Second Amendments.
President Donald Trump put his foot down on Democrats’ attempts to advance their leftist political agenda by hijacking the coronavirus relief bill and filling it with partisan demands that are not related to the coronavirus crisis. The president made the announcement late on Monday night after Democrats ruined an opportunity to advance a $1.8 trillion stimulus bill on Sunday night.
“Republicans had a deal until Nancy Pelosi rode into town from her extended vacation,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “The Democrats want the Virus to win? They are asking for things that have nothing to do with our great workers or companies. They want Open Borders & Green New Deal. Republicans shouldn’t agree!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Republicans had a deal until Nancy Pelosi rode into town from her extended vacation. The Democrats want the Virus to win? They are asking for things that have nothing to do with our great workers or companies. They want Open Borders & Green New Deal. Republicans shouldn’t agree!
About an hour later, Trump quote retweeted an article from National Review that was titled: “Congressional Democrats Add Last-Minute Ideological Demands to Coronavirus Relief Package”. Trump wrote: “This will never be approved by me, or any other Republican!” The article listed a number of things that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have added to the spending bill.
On Monday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) highlighted some of the spending items that Democrats are seeking that have nothing to do with the coronavirus:
Corporate pay statistics by race and race statistics for all corporate boards at companies receiving assistance.
Bailing out all current debt of postal service
Required early voting
Required same day voter registration
10k bailout for student loans
For companies accepting assistance, 1/3 of board members must be chosen by workers
Provisions on official time for union collective bargaining
Full offset of airline emissions by 2025
Greenhouse gas statistics for individual flights
Retirement plans for community newspaper employees
$15 minimum wage at companies receiving assistance
Permanent paid leave at companies receiving assistance
USA Today noted that Pelosi’s bill calls for nationwide ballot harvesting, a shady practice that is believed to lead to voter fraud:
Perhaps the most troubling sections of the bill are under the rubric ‘‘American Coronavirus/COVID–19 Election Safety and Security”or ‘‘ACCESS” Act. This section would impose requirements on states for early voting, voting by mail, required mailing of absentee ballots to everyone, ballot harvesting (i.e., having third parties deliver absentee ballots), online voter registration, same-day registration and other practices which undermine confidence in the integrity of the ballot. In these days of increasing threats to election security we should be moving rapidly back to in-person paper ballots, but this bill would be a radical step in the wrong direction.
Some of the other absurd things that were included in the bill include $35,000,000 for the JFK Performing Arts Center.
toddstarnes
✔@toddstarnes
Democrats believe #coronavirus can be cured by providing $35 million in funding to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Numerous publications have correctly placed the blame on the Democrats for stalling the process for getting suffering American families the relief that they need to make it financially as companies have been forced to shutdown as a result of the coronavirus, which originated in China.
CNN noted that Democrats were engaging in “political gamesmanship” with the bill,
MSNBC’s @GarrettHaake on Dems' Coronavirus bill: They're looking to include "election security and vote by mail … [things] that are arguably not a current crisis” pic.twitter.com/BcC2YoCqA4
Even MSNBC noted that the Democrats’ bill involves issues “that are arguably not a current crisis.”
MSNBC’s @GarrettHaake on Dems' Coronavirus bill: They're looking to include "election security and vote by mail … [things] that are arguably not a current crisis” pic.twitter.com/BcC2YoCqA4
The New York Times even called out the Democrats in the lead headline on the front page of their newspaper, writing, “Democrats Block Action on $1.8 Trillion Stimulus”
Dan Crenshaw
✔@DanCrenshawTX
US House candidate, TX-2
Democrats torpedoed a bipartisan emergency bill that:
-Provides payroll & rent for small business
-Credit to businesses across America to keep them afloat
– Cash in American’s pockets
– unemployment benefits
They have no good reasons. Just partisanship. Call your reps NOW.
After the George Zimmerman Hoax failed, after it was discovered that a white man had not hunted down and murdered a black teen (Zimmerman is Hispanic and a jury ruled he killed in self-defense), the fake news media moved on to the Hands-Up-Don’t-Shoot Hoax, which was led primarily by far-left CNN and the far-left Washington Post.
The lies and hate spread by the corporate media resulted in multiple nights of rioting in the working class, predominantly black city of Ferguson, Missouri. Then, like a plague of locusts, and apparently under the impression the city doesn’t already have enough problems, CNN moved on to Baltimore.
The reason the media’s coronavirus lies remind me of the CNN Race Riots of 2014 is because This Matters.
What I mean by that is that George Zimmerman, Ferguson, and Baltimore mattered. This was our malevolent media behaving exactly like a Bond villain: pushing a political agenda and looking to juice ratings at the expense of real people. Zimmerman, an innocent man, had his life and reputation ruined. The homes and businesses destroyed by those race riots are homes and businesses owned by everyday Americans, not the wealthy and certainly not CNN chief Jeff Zucker or anti-Trump activist Jake Tapper, whose fancy homes are miles away from the devastation they caused.
You see, as awful as the media have been over the last three years, the Russia Hoax and the Impeachment Hoax were D.C. food fights. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t collateral damage or that innocent people weren’t hurt — like President Trump and his family — but politics is politics. You know the risks going in…
Coronavirus is not a D.C. food fight. Like the CNN Race Riots of 2014, it affects everyday people: we have shut down our economy. The stock market is going insane. People are scared, worried, stressed, and have reason to be. Even if you remove the fear of the virus, no one can escape the fear of the panic, and the media’s blatant lies are only adding to this uncertainty and fear — and are doing so by design.
And for what? To what end..? Well, for the exact same reasons the media ginned up those race riots: a depraved indifference to human life driven by nothing more than a political agenda and the naked greed that comes with ratings and clicks.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s the evidence…
All the media’s coronavirus lies….
Keep in mind, these are not mistakes. Mistakes are random. Mistakes fall both ways. Our fake news media’s “mistakes” fall only one way — in the direction of ginning up panic in our streets and hatred of Trump and his supporters, who have already paid a very heavy price.
As you read this list, no matter what you do, do not call the media the enemy of the people … because that would be wrong.
Trump Told Governors to Get Their Own Goddamned Ventilators!
Now that the media can no longer attack Trump over the coronavirus testing (as you’ll see below), we’ve moved to ventilators. “Ventilators” is the new Katrina, the new metric with which to beat Trump senseless… So naturally, the media are going to lie shamelessly, which is exactly what they are doing, even as I write these words:
At least eight New York Times authors shared a deceptively edited quote Monday from President Donald Trump’s recent call with state governors, creating the false impression that the president is denying federal support for ventilators that are needed in hospitals treating coronavirus patients.
In his message, the president recommended that states procure respirators and ventilators because it would be faster — but added that the federal government “will be backing you.”
The Times journalists omitted the bulk of the president’s statement as they shared the story on social media. The misleading, partial quote was also boosted by a CNN correspondent and became the lead headline at the left-wing Huffington Post.
Despite growing online backlash to this misinformation, the journalists have yet to delete or retract their comments.
Here’s the president’s full quote:
Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves. We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.
He’s telling the governors, Do what you can while we do what we can do. This is excellent advice the liars at the far-left New York Times are deliberately twisting to cause panic, to tell the public the president doesn’t care.
Trump Seeks Monopoly on Coronavirus Vaccine
What better way to increase the world’s hatred of America, everyone’s hatred of Trump, and cause even more illegal aliens to crash into our country (seeking a vaccine) than to spread the fake news the American president is looking to monopolize any potential coronavirus vaccine?
But that is exactly what Reuters, The Guardian, Business Insider, and staffers at the New York Times and MSNBC did.
This lie doesn’t even make sense.
What good would it do America to corner the market on a vaccine? It costs us nothing to share the information so other countries can create their own vaccine. What good does it do the U.S. to sit around and watch everyone else die?
Nationwide Curfew!
Good ol’ Jim Sciutto, one of the most infamous liars in the country, a former Obama official hired by the serial liars at CNN to serial lie.
“New: There are active discussions within the Trump administration to encourage a possible ‘curfew’ across the nation in which non-essential businesses would have to close by a certain time each night,” Sciutto wrote on social media, citing “CNN reporting.”
It’s not true. And unless you’re looking to sow panic, it also makes no sense. What good would a curfew do, most especially a nationwide curfew? Does the virus only strike at night? There are reports Patient Zero ate a bat.
Maybe it was a vampire bat!
Trump Lied About the Google Website
“Google says it’s not publishing a national-scale coronavirus site,” CNN anti-Trump activist Jake Tapper tweeted to his 2.3 million Twitter followers last week.
He linked to a CNN story with the headline, “Google says it’s not publishing a national-scale coronavirus site anytime soon.” This was a story that smeared Trump as a liar for announcing Google will be building a national-scale coronavirus website.
The original and very fake CNN story can be found here.
Here’s the opener:
Google will not be publishing a national-scale website for coronavirus testing anytime soon, contrary to claims made by President Donald Trump during a Friday news conference.
Instead, a health-focused subsidiary owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, intends to launch a small-scale website next week to begin to triage California-based patients. The website will aim to serve a broader population only “over time” — not “very quickly,” as Trump said.
“What we’re building is a triage tool that will live on ProjectBaseline.com, and we plan to pilot it in California next week,” said Carolyn Wang, a spokesperson for the Alphabet subsidiary, Verily.
Here’s the Google Search screencap which captured CNN’s lie:
But now, if you click on that Google link, the CNN story says the exact opposite of what the original story said. Here’s the new headline and opener:
Google will partner with US government to develop a nationwide coronavirus website, company says
Google now says it is working with the government on the creation of a national website containing information about coronavirus symptoms and testing information.
“Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a national website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information,” the company said in a series of tweets Saturday evening.
The company did not give a time frame of when such a website would be up and running.
On Friday after the President said Google was helping to develop a website and it would be available soon, the company declined to say it would be publishing a national-scale website for coronavirus testing anytime soon.
Naturally, there is no editor’s note informing readers the original story was a lie or has been retracted or updated, which is highly unethical.
CNN spread a bald-faced lie to undermine the president, got caught, and did everything in its malevolent power to cover that lie up.
Trump Shut Down the CDC’s Pandemic Department!
Do I even need to point out how virulent and widespread this talking point has been?
No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there.
It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, “dissolved the office” at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness. Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious.
…
It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.
The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected[.]
…
It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.
In other words, it wasn’t dissolved, it was streamlined.
Trump Declared the Coronavirus a Hoax!
This desperate lie, launched by the far-left Politico, was quickly debunked by fact-checkers, including the far-left Washington Post. That’s how big of a lie it is — the Washington Post conceded it was a lie.
Calling the Wuhan Virus the ‘Wuhan Virus’ Is Racist
As has already been exhaustively pointed out, the naming of a virus or disease after a location — including a lily-white location like Lyme, Connecticut — is just how it’s done and has been done forever.
But now it’s racist, even though the very same media declaring it racist is the very same media that first called it the “Chinese Virus” or the “Wuhan Virus,” or some variation thereof.
Here’s a pretty comprehensive list that’s been floating around. There are probably more examples, but this more than makes the point:
“Japan and Thailand Confirm New Cases of Chinese Coronavirus,” The New York Times, 1/15/20
“The CDC and Homeland Security begin screening for Chinese Coronavirus at three major US airports as outbreak spreads in Asia,” CNBC, 1/17/20
“Vaccine for new Chinese coronavirus in the works,” CNN, 1/20/20
“First U.S. case of potentially deadly Chinese coronavirus confirmed in Washington state,” Washington Post, 1/21/20
“Chinese coronavirus outbreak has reached U.S. shores, CDC says,” Los Angeles Times, 1/21/20
“The First Case Of The Chinese Coronavirus Has Hit The US, CDC Reports,” Buzzfeed, 1/21/20
“First case of Chinese coronavirus confirmed in Washington state,” NBC’s Today Show, 1/24/20
“Chinese coronavirus infections, death toll soar as fifth case is confirmed in U.S.,” Washington Post, 1/26/20
“Japan confirms case of new Chinese virus, spread is ‘concerning,’” Reuters, 1/15/20
“How the Chinese virus outbreak impacts Lunar New Year travel,” National Geographic, 1/24/20
“China coronavirus ‘spreads before symptoms show,’” BBC, 1/26/20
“Over a thousand ‘likely’ infected by Wuhan virus in China: Study,” Al Jazeera, 1/18/20
To sum this up, the fake news media floods these words and terms into the American lexicon, and then sanctimoniously turns around and attacks those who repeat them as racist.
Trump Blocked Testing Because Lower Numbers are Good for His Reelection
This lie arrives courtesy of the welfare queens at NPR and a Newsweek staffer’s hysterical amplification that has been retweeted almost a quarter-million times.
And once again, I ask, how does this makes any sense?
In the face of the facts, Trump is doing back-flips to start testing. What’s more, how does not testing benefit his re-election chances? It’s not as if people who test positive won’t eventually become symptomatic.
This is not just a lie (no other media outlet has confirmed it, which means even CNN couldn’t find a lying source that has lied to them so many times before to lie about this one), it’s by far the stupidest lie on this list.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday that the blame for the slow pace of testing for coronavirus in the U.S. does not lie with either President Trump or the CDC.
Fauci told Hugh Hewitt on “The Hugh Hewitt” show that a “technical glitch” resulted in the delay in production of usable tests in the U.S., something Fauci prescribed to random error.
…
“This has nothing to do with anybody’s fault, certainly not the president’s fault.”
11. Trump Silenced Dr. Fauci
This lie spread like wildfire before Fauci himself was given a chance to tell the truth.
We are plagued with a dishonest, unreliable, unserious, dangerous media, driven only by political calculation and naked greed.
The media are so evil and indecent, even a pandemic can’t cure them.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
All along America’s highways, trucks hauling vital relief supplies are cutting through red tape, thanks to President Donald Trump.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Friday announced that a 1938 law regulating the hours of service for truck drivers was being waived on a national basis to battle the coronavirus. The agency said this was first time the rule had ever been waived throughout the country.
“I will never hesitate to take any necessary steps to protect the lives, health, and safety of the American people. I will always put the well-being of America first,” Trump said, according to a White House media pool report.
The rule currently forbids truck drivers from driving more than 11 hours during a 14-hour work period. After that, drivers are required by law to have 10 hours of down time. The waiver, issued by Trump and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, exempts truckers hauling medicine and other supplies necessary to battle theoutbreak of the virus, FMCSA Acting Administrator Jim Mullen said.
“Because of the decisive leadership of President Trump and Secretary Chao, this declaration will help America’s commercial drivers get these critical goods to impacted areas faster and more efficiently. FMCSA is continuing to closely monitor the coronavirus outbreak and stands ready to use its authority to protect the health and safety of the American people,” Mullen said in a statement.
In addition to medicine, the waiver covers haulers carrying food to restock depleted store shelves, sanitation and cleaning supplies, equipment needed to construct temporary housing, or those who are being moved to either provide emergency services or to be removed to quarantine. The waiver requires that after drivers reach their destination, they have at least 10 hours of down time if they’ve been carrying goods, and at least eight hours if they have been transporting people.
Although the decision announced Friday is the first of its kind nationally, the rule has been suspended on a more limited basis during other emergencies, according to Business Insider.
“Waivers of this type are a common response by FMCSA to natural disasters and crises because trucks delivering food, fuel and medicine are a critical part of the response,” America Trucking Associations spokesman Sean McNally said, according Business Insider. “This waiver will help keep loads of medicine, supplies and food moving as the country manages this current pandemic.”
The waiver will be in effect until the national emergency that has been declared ends or April 12, whichever comes first, according to Transportation Topics.
“[T]here’s been a tremendous amount of coordination with states, with cities, and they’re a little smaller form of government, and they have things going well. They’re coordinating with us. And certain, in particular, I think California has been terrific — the relationship. New York has been really good. We’ve had some really good relationships in terms of — especially the hotspots. And we’re focused on those hotspots,” he said.
“We’re all in this together. It’s something that nobody expected. It came out of China, and it’s one of those things that happened. It’s nobody’s fault. We all — we all will solve this problem. We’ll solve it well,” Trump said.
“I think the American people have been incredible in the way they’ve acted,” Trump said. “There’s been — and if you look at companies and sports leagues and all of the things, what they’ve done is — is just something very special, without being told, necessarily. In some cases, perhaps they were told, actually. But for the most part, they want to get it over with.”
Vice President Mike Pence also praised the nation’s response to the crisis.
“[T]he American people are all responding to look after not only their own health but their families and their communities. And one story after another is truly inspiring to the president and to all of us,” he said.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Jack can be reached at jackwritings1@gmail.com.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) on Thursday endorsed Joe Biden for president, a significant boost for the former vice president ahead of next week’s primary in the Wolverine State. Whitmer, whose state’s primary will allocate 125 pledged delegates, cast Biden as an advocate for working families, citing his work on health care, bailing out the auto industry and more during his time in the Obama administration.
“Working families in Michigan need a president who will show up and fight for them, and Joe Biden has proven time and again that he has our backs,” she said in a statement. “Michiganders have grit. We’re tough. We know what it’s like to be overlooked and counted out. And we know that when you get knocked down, you pick yourself up and get back to work. Joe Biden has been right there with us in the tough fights.”
“Joe Biden is the candidate we need to defeat Donald Trump in November. He’s always had our backs. Now, I’m proud to have his,” added Whitmer, who is also being named a national co-chair to Biden’s campaign.
Whitmer said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”that Biden’s commitment to expanding health care was personal to her, noting that the same type of brain tumor killed both her mother and Biden’s son.
“I have commiserated about Joe about this very thing,” she said of her mother’s brain cancer diagnosis. “I know his commitment.”
Biden is set for up for a battle in Michigan next week with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who narrowly took the state’s primary in 2016 over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The Wolverine State is a key contest for both candidates’ claims of support from white working-class voters. The state was one of the key victories, along with others in the Rust Belt, for President Trump in the 2016 general election.
Whitmer, who was endorsed by Biden during her 2018 gubernatorial bid, has steadily gained a national profile after winning the gubernatorial election two years ago and delivering the Democratic Party’s response to President Trump’s State of the Union in February. Her endorsement comes just one day after former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm also threw her support behind the former vice president.
They are just the latest in a slew of establishment Democratic figures falling in line behind Biden after resounding victories in South Carolina and several Super Tuesday states vaulted him back into the front-runner position in the primary.
Though Biden put up underwhelming showings in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, a 30-point win in the Palmetto State and victories in 10 out of 14 Super Tuesday states have revived his campaign, setting him up to have a narrow delegate lead after all of California’s primary votes are tallied.
Sanders, meanwhile, won California, Colorado, Utah and his home state of Vermont on Super Tuesday.
Biden appears set to capitalize on his Super Tuesday resurgence in upcoming primary and caucus states, which consist heavily of demographics that appear to favor the former vice president. Six more states will cast ballots on Tuesday, with Michigan representing the heftiest delegate haul.
President Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate have taken the reliably liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and tilted it to the Right. The 9th Circuit is the largest circuit court, covering many of the West Coast states, including California, Hawaii, and Arizona. The court just received its 10th judge from the Trump administration, effectively changing the court’s liberal makeup into a more ideologically diverse lineup. In just three years, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump joined forces to place more justices to lifetime appointments on the 9th Circuit than President Barack Obama did in his eight years in office.
One judge from the circuit said the rapid influx of Trump appointees had been jarring, telling the Los Angeles Times, “Ten new people at once sends a shock wave through the system.”
Many of Trump’s appointments have been praised by their peers on the 9th Circuit, but others appear to be rattled. For instance, Judge Daniel Collins has been criticized for his “combative” objections to other judges on the circuit.
“Collins has definitely bulldozed his way around here already in a short time,”one judge from the 9th Circuit said. “Either he doesn’t care or doesn’t realize that he has offended half the court already.”
Democratic-appointed judges still hold a slight majority in the circuit, with 16 appointees compared with 13 Republican appointees, but 9th Circuit Judge Milan Smith Jr., an appointee of George W. Bush, said Trump’s judicial picks were about to take over.
“Trump has effectively flipped the circuit,” Smith said. “You will see a sea change in the 9th Circuit on day-to-day decisions.”
Democratic appointees have controlled the 9th Circuit Court since 1978, when federal law changed to add 10 seats to the court, allowing President Jimmy Carter to select every judge to fill the openings. President Ronald Reagan got only three nominations on the circuit, and appointees from President Bill Clinton and Obama built out the rest of the former liberal stronghold.
Because the court was reliably liberal, it was often the go-to court to challenge Trump’s policies, often forcing a review from the Supreme Court. In the early days of Trump’s presidency, the 9th Circuit struck down his “travel ban” from several Muslim-majority countries and deemed many of his immigration policies unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overturned many of the rulings from the 9th Circuit. Still, delays caused by the lower courts can hinder the president’s policies from moving forward when he wants them to begin.
In total, Trump has appointed 51 circuit court judges to lifetime appointments alongside the two justices he landed on the Supreme Court. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has joked that his motto while leading the GOP majority in the Senate is to “leave no vacancy behind.”
Donald Trump smiles at State of the Union (Win McNamee / AFP / Getty)
Trump received 1,871,515 total votes in the Texas Republican primary on Tuesday, with 99.5 percent of the vote reporting. That’s more than the top four remaining Democrats combined, as currently former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Michael Bloomberg, and Elizabeth Warren have earned a total of 1.7 million votes in Texas, with 91.3 percent of the vote reporting, although the Democrat votes are still being counted.
Trump received the most votes ever for an incumbent president running in Texas.
Fifteen years ago, 635,948 Republican Texans voted for then-President George W. Bush in the 2004 Republican primary. In 2012, 520,410 Democrats voted for then-President Barack Obama in their primary.
Texan Republicans did have a Senate primary in the state in 2020, but Sen. John Cornyn was the easy winner with 74 percent of the vote.
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unemployment benefits
