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Thanks to @MeidasTouch for putting my clip in their new documentary “Against All Enemies” and recapitulating the research I’ve been doing for four years.
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) August 13, 2024
However, credulously platforming criminal lunatic Stanley McChrystal is pretty weird tbh.#ArrestMikeFlynn https://t.co/tdCONsdxw7 pic.twitter.com/r4P347ipA0
The Shallow State@OurShallowState
Trump is many things, but at the top of the list, he's a grifter. He's a carnival-style conman. He peddles rudimentary and unmistakable frauds to a fearful angry disenfranchised following of people who, frankly, disgust him. For years he's fed them heaping helpings of bullshit, and they've asked for bigger spoons.
Here's the thing, though: Any conman, regardless of how talented, and regardless of how susceptible the audience of "marks" is, has to be able to convey a thought coherently. He is challenged in this regard, and that ain't getting better.
It doesn't mean all these people will leave him. But some already have, and some others will, and some will simply cease to intertwine their very existences with him, and some will scratch their heads, and some will stay home, and a good many others will face off against cognitive dissonance for the first time, and everyone is different.
This is a general election. Trump needs big numbers - more than 45% of voting age Americans. That's a reach.
Trump was always a persona, an image, a myth. He surrounded himself with superlatives, bombast, and hyperbole. He needs to be able to muster sufficient diction, structure, and coherence, and he's been diminishing in this area for a long time. He's now below the minimum level he needs to be at to pull off the superlatives, bombast, and hyperbole to a sufficient number of people. He's too obviously battered, feeble, rambling, and weakened. I don't want to be overconfident or presumptive, as the stakes are too high. But I do think he's going down.
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Mark Hertling@MarkHertling
Haven't posted on various Ukrainian actions for the last few weeks, as I've been involved with some other things. But I was asked my thoughts this morning on the Ukrainian operation over the last 8 days.
In my view, this action has been impressive. It shows a careful intelligence preparation of the battlespace, a well-designed maneuver plan, the use of combine arms (infantry, mechanized forces, artillery, air defense, engineers, signal, air coordination (drones) and supporting logistics), good operational security, a prisoner plan, & an linkage between the tactical and the strategic.
I'd classify this as a doctrinal "demonstration," which is defined as "a show of force in an area where a decision is not sought, but an action is made to deceive the enemy or gain a short-term advantage." Demonstrations - depending on the design - last anywhere between a day to a few weeks, depending on the ability to resupply and secure the operation against enemy counterattacks.
It is the ground equivalent of the Doolittle Raid of WWII, which demonstrated that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American air attacks when the Japanese least expected it.
Well done Ukraine!
10:23 AM · Aug 13, 2024
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99.5K
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Oh, one more thing...
— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) August 13, 2024
Ukraine is using Strykers (not "Strikers") a vehicle which is perfect for these types of operation.
By the way, when there was a lot of requests for Abrams, I suggested Bradleys and Strykers would be more beneficial.
Having been the first Stryker… https://t.co/7IWvWntLil pic.twitter.com/xyZbOeZbPg
Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her pregnancy could kill her.
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 13, 2024
That's according to a complaint she and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed over whether the hospital violated a federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in 2023. pic.twitter.com/gzaNn0GZTe
UAW hits Musk, Trump with federal labor charges over union-busting comments
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/13/musk-trump-uaw-labor-union-x-interview.html
Published Tue, Aug 13 202411:32 AM EDTUpdated An Hour Ago
The United Auto Workers filed federal labor charges against Donald Trump and Elon Musk for their comments applauding the practice of firing employees who threaten to strike.
Under federal law, it is illegal to fire workers who threaten to strike.
Trump has been vying for the labor vote in the presidential race against Vice President Kamala Harris, though the UAW has already endorsed the vice president.
The United Auto Workers union on Tuesday filed federal labor charges with the National Labor Relations Board against former President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk for publicly applauding the practice of firing employees who threaten to strike.
“I look at what you do,” Trump said to Musk during a two-hour interview Monday night on X, the social media platform Musk owns.
“You walk in, you say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike,” Trump said to Musk, who also is CEO of the EV car maker Tesla and of SpaceX.
“I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone,’” Trump said.
Trump was referring to the 2022 gutting of Twitter staff after Musk took over the social media business and renamed it X.
It is illegal to fire workers who threaten to strike, because the right to strike is protected under federal labor law.
“When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement Tuesday on the new charges. “When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean.”
Neither the Trump campaign nor Musk replied to CNBC’s request for comment on the UAW action.
Trump’s praise of union busting is notable because the Republican presidential nominee is currently fighting to win support from organized labor in a tight race against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The UAW, which represents more than 400,000 autoworkers, has already endorsed Harris. But another major U.S. labor union, the Teamsters, has yet to make an endorsement.
A spokesman for the Teamsters did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Trump’s support for union busting.
In July, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention.
He said his attendance was intended to underscore that the union’s powerful political endorsement was still available to whichever candidate pledges to champion workers’ interests.
“Companies fire workers who try to join unions, and hide behind toothless laws that are meant to protect working people but are manipulated to benefit corporations,” O’Brien said at the RNC in Milwaukee.
“This is economic terrorism at its best,” said O’Brien.
Musk is no stranger to labor battles. Tesla has clashed with union proponents for years, and Tesla workers remain without a union.
In 2021, the NLRB found that Tesla violated labor laws when it fired a union activist.
The board had made the same finding after Musk wrote on Twitter in 2018, “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?”
SpaceX has also been accused by the U.S. labor board of illegally firing eight employees, this time in retaliation over their internal, open letter criticizing Musk and his public conduct.
In response, SpaceX filed a suit claiming the NLRB’s authority and administrative proceedings are unconstitutional.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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Trump rambles, slurs his way through Elon Musk interview. It was an unmitigated disaster.
For a fascism-curious billionaire who loves cuddling up to right-wing loons, Elon Musk sure is good at making right-wing politicians look stupid.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/08/12/trump-musk-interview-x-twitter-spaces-disaster/74774628007/
Rex Huppke USA TODAY
For a fascism-curious billionaire who loves cuddling up to right-wing loons, Elon Musk sure is good at making right-wing politicians look stupid.
Former President Donald Trump had loudly trumpeted a planned Monday night interview with Musk that would stream on X. But much like the disastrous X-platformed launch of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, the Musk/Trump interview failed to launch, leaving social media users laughing at the collective incompetence.
Since Vice President Kamala Harris rose to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket last month, Trump’s reelection campaign has been flailing. His childish attacks against her aren’t working. His racist comments about her mixed-race heritage have repelled all but his most loyal supporters. His vice presidential pick, JD Vance, becomes less likable every time he speaks.
So his answer, weirdly, was to sit down with Musk and talk to what would undoubtedly be a very online audience that doesn’t represent the broader electorate. Had the conversation gone off without a hitch, it still would have been odd and largely useless for Trump’s effort to halt Harris’ momentum.
Trump's interview with Elon Musk was an unmitigated disaster
But the online interview went off (the rails) with a multitude of hitches. X users erupted with either frustration or laughter as the planned start time passed, and nothing could be accessed. It took more than 40 minutes before the interview could start and be heard by anyone. It was amateur hour, the last thing a campaign struggling to project competence needed.
In May 2023, when DeSantis' presidential campaign premiered with a glitch-tastic interview with Musk on what was then called Twitter, Trump mocked the debacle, writing on social media: “Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”
On behalf of DeSantis, allow me to say this: HAH!
Forget the glitches, Trump's X interview got worse when he started talking
Of course, things didn’t get better for Trump once the interview was able to proceed.
Trump says AI did it:Trump blames Harris' crowds on AI, so let's all assume everything we don't like is fake!
He was rambling, babbling on about crowd sizes and immigration and President Joe Biden and whatever else seemed to pass through his mind. He was also badly slurring his words, raising questions about his health, and doing nothing to knock down rising concerns about his age and well-being.
He sounded like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck.
Elon Musk is no Barbara Walters – his interview skills stink
Musk, meanwhile, has the interviewing skills of a stoned introvert. He did little but cheerlead Trump and agree with every bizarro thing that fell out of his mouth, while occasionally going on the kind of odd right-wing tangents you’d expect from a man too rich to ever be told to pipe down.
I’m not going to quote anything Trump said in the interview because it was either too stupid to merit transcription or a mere repetition of the nonsense he spouts at every rally he holds.
Harris can beat Trump:I was wrong about Kamala Harris. And that's a huge problem for Donald Trump
A big part of Trump’s problem right now is he has become almost unbearably boring. Build a wall. Drill, baby, drill. Marxist, socialist something-something. Harris only recently became Black. Blah, blah, blah.
Musk gave Trump the same gift he gave Ron DeSantis. Whomp whomp.
So for Trump, sitting down with a rich weirdo few people like and slurring his way through an interview that failed to launch was, in the words of one Donald J. Trump, “a DISASTER!”
Musk, with his social-media ineptness and unmerited sense of self-importance, made DeSantis look like a fool. And now he’s done the same to Trump.
Heck, if Musk keeps this up, I might start to like him.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
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Musk’s X Ordered to Pay Compensation to Dismissed Irish Employee
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-13/musk-s-x-ordered-to-pay-compensation-to-dismissed-irish-employee?
Commission rules €550,000 to be paid to former Twitter staffer
Musk sent email to employees giving ultimatum over severance
By Olivia Fletcher
August 13, 2024 at 10:27 AM MDT
Elon Musk’s X has been ordered to pay compensation to a former staff member of its Irish unit in an unfair dismissal case.
The social network platform formerly known as Twitter was ordered to pay out over €550,000 ($602,640) to the former employee, Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission, the state body responsible for adjudicating employment disputes, said on Tuesday. It is the largest sum the agency has ever awarded, according to Irish broadcaster RTE.
Gary Rooney, who held a senior procurement role at the time of his dismissal in December 2022, had been employed by the company since September 2013. The Commission heard that the social media platform maintained that the employee had resigned voluntarily after he failed to tick a box committing to new unspecified working arrangements in an email from the company’s new owner Musk.
Rooney was one of thousands of Twitter employees sent an email by Musk requiring them to pledge to stay with the company, working long hours at “high intensity” during its transformation, or to accept a buyout. Staff were given a day to click “yes” to agree to unspecified employment terms.
The commission rejected X’s argument that Rooney quit voluntarily and ruled that not clicking “yes” in response to the email did not constitute an act of resignation.
“It is not OK for Mr. Musk, or indeed any large company to treat employees in such a manner in this country or jurisdiction. The record award reflects the seriousness and the gravity of the case,” the complainant’s solicitor Barry Kenny told Bloomberg.
It’s one in a string of cases that have sprung up since Musk purchased the platform. Multiple lawsuits have already alleged that Twitter employees didn’t receive their promised severance benefits, while the site has come under more intense scrutiny since he acquired it.
The dispute arose in Dublin after billionaire Musk took ownership of the platform in late 2022. The Irish capital had about 500 employees before the takeover, but has since been impacted by the global staff exodus from the firm.
The WRC in its 73-page ruling stated the emails had been sent “at a time of rapid change in Twitter and in the context of inconsistent, contradictory and confusing communications from the Respondent in connection with the takeover of the Company by Mr. Musk.”
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company can lodge an appeal to the Labour Court within 42 days.
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Seems like it's working, or at least starting to work, I see a lot more headlines expressing it, but still see a lot of MSM trying to cover it up. Getting to be a pretty hard job to the covering, but the tide is turning, the MSM will notice that the public wants their entertainment viewing the demise of criminal trump and more and more clicks (sales) are hitting the ridiculed trump button instead of for MAGA food. Pendulum is turning to the MANA (Make America Normal Again) sales and swinging away from the MAGA cult.
.@gtconway3d: "My PAC has four objectives. One is to point out his mental disorders. Second is to explain why his mental disorders are dangerous for the country. Third is to get the media to talk about it...the fourth...provoke him into demonstrating those qualities of insanity." pic.twitter.com/qYQ1eKbtPr
— Anti-Psychopath PAC (@PsychoPAC24) August 13, 2024
There never will be a "debate" for him, ever, trump doesn't have the cognitive ability to truly debate, he lost that quite some time ago and he didn't "debate" last time. That's not even the intent, it's just a way for him to bellow out slices off his one trick pony and he's having a harder and harder time doing that. They can time the dementia drugs and overload him to a certain extent at the right time, but even the drugs can only do so much and can create side effects to the human body that come out just as bad or worse and the deterioration of his cognitive abilities will still happen at an increasing rate as time goes on.
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"After the last in a four-year string of tax court decisions last week, Coke will shortly have to fork out an initial $6bn in cash to cover unpaid taxes and interest for the years 2007 to 2009."https://t.co/xtqjo5wPKl
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) August 12, 2024
Of course he stole it, stealing from everyone else is what he does, always done, and will always do. It's all criminal trump knows.
Trump stole “Make America Great Again” from Ronald Reagan pic.twitter.com/NwBXa3BcjG
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) August 12, 2024
Judge calls criminal trump "mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process.” Of course he would be nothing without the corruption in the Supreme Court.
Apropos of today’s “news”:
— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) August 12, 2024
Here’s the scathing 46-page sanctions order against Trump and Alina Habba issued by federal judge, Donald Middlebrooks, ordering them to pay almost $1 million dollars for the “completely frivolous, both factually and legally” lawsuit “brought in bad…
162 lies and distortions in a news conference. NPR fact-checks former President Trump
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/11/nx-s1-5070566/trump-news-conference
August 11, 20247:00 AM ET
Domenico Montanaro
There were a host of false things that Donald Trump said during his hour-long news conference Thursday that have gotten attention.
A glaring example is his helicopter emergency landing story, which has not stood up to scrutiny.
But there was so much more. A team of NPR reporters and editors reviewed the transcript of his news conference and found at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes. That’s more than two a minute. It’s a stunning number for anyone – and even more problematic for a person running to lead the free world.
Politicians spin. They fib. They misspeak. They make honest mistakes like the rest of us. And, yes, they even sometimes exaggerate their biographies.
The expectation, though, is that they will treat the truth as something important and correct any errors.
But what former President Trump did this past Thursday went well beyond the bounds of what most politicians would do.
Here’s what we found, going chronologically from the beginning of Trump’s remarks to the end:........................................
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Dozens of pregnant women, some bleeding or in labor, being turned away from ERs despite federal law
https://apnews.com/article/pregnant-women-emergency-room-ectopic-er-edd66276d2f6c412c988051b618fb8f9?taid=66ba0d15d1662d0001f201af
By AMANDA SEITZ
Updated 10:00 AM MDT, August 12, 2024
All it is, all anything and everything is, is a desperate donOld criminal and his handlers that are seeing Harris overwhelming taking all the air from him media wise and at the polls, and trying to get his name being shouted and on the front page. But all he has been able to do is serving weak attempts from a one trick pony menu that's OLD and fading. The republicans know that criminal old trump has already lost, their only hope is by lawfare and the republican house with their corrupted USSC.
Observations of Trump at his press conference:
— Nick Carmody JD, MS Psych (@Nick_Carmody) August 9, 2024
He's raging. At the beginning of the speech, Trump’s eyes were squinty/narrowed…his brow/forehead was tight/furrowed….and his mouth was very tight, especially at the beginning of the speech.
When he's feeling it/himself at… https://t.co/Yq1TloNBCd pic.twitter.com/QIKJpjkitF
VIX above 50?
— Ryan Detrick, CMT (@RyanDetrick) August 12, 2024
Yes, tends to be quite rare and it happens in clusters, but did you know the S&P 500 was higher a year later 91 out of 92 times? pic.twitter.com/Jpt3z4n0CB
We need more reporters in large corporate newsrooms (beyond @teddyschleifer at @nytimes and others like @davetroy) to explain the motivations behind the pro-crypto investors supporting Trump-Vance.
— Susan Bordson (@susanbordson) August 12, 2024
👉🏼Fever dreams of an unregulated crypto market overtaking the $USD as currency https://t.co/EsVJ1gGuqZ
Criminal donOld trump's puppet master not happy, so sad. Putin's republican buddies expected to do an investigation, maybe an impeachment inquiry of Zelenskyy. 😆
Shoigu and Gerasimov during today's meeting with Putin on the situation in Kursk region.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 12, 2024
Caption their faces? https://t.co/sCj1WyfWJa pic.twitter.com/7LkI0QwM5F
We just put up these billboards around Trump’s golf courses in Doral and Bedminster. pic.twitter.com/IICt4n3IqC
— Anti-Psychopath PAC (@PsychoPAC24) August 12, 2024
I knew there was a reason he chose J.D. Vance! 😂 pic.twitter.com/YINITKcHhW
— Annie (@AnnieForTruth) August 12, 2024
US air force avoids PFAS water cleanup, citing supreme court’s Chevron ruling
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/air-force-epa-water-pfas-tucson
EPA says Tucson’s drinking water is contaminated but air force claims agency lacks authority to order cleanup
Tom Perkins
Mon 12 Aug 2024 07.29 EDT
Last modified on Mon 12 Aug 2024 08.52 EDT
Several air force bases are largely responsible for trichloroethylene (TCE) – volatile organic compounds – and PFAS contaminating drinking water sources in Tucson. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
The US air force is refusing to comply with an order to clean drinking water it polluted in Tucson, Arizona, claiming federal regulators lack authority after the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned the “Chevron doctrine”. Air force bases contaminated the water with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” and other dangerous compounds.
Though former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and legal experts who reviewed the air force’s claim say the Chevron doctrine ruling probably would not apply to the order, the military’s claim that it would represents an early indication of how polluters will wield the controversial court decision to evade responsibility.
It appears the air force is essentially attempting to expand the scope of the court’s ruling to thwart regulatory orders not covered by the decision, said Deborah Ann Sivas, director of the Stanford University Environmental Law Clinic.
“It’s very odd,” she added. “It feels almost like an intimidation tactic, but it will be interesting to see if others take this approach and it bleeds over.”..........................
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‘A different level than 2020’: Trump’s plan to steal election is taking shape
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/trump-overturn-result-presidential-election-vote
Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results serves as a preview to expected challenges in November
The fight for democracy is supported by guardian.org
Sam Levine in New York
Mon 12 Aug 2024 06.00 EDT
There wasn’t anything particularly controversial about Georgia’s presidential primary in March this year. Donald Trump won the Republican contest – picking up a little more than 400,000 more votes than Nikki Haley, who had long dropped out of the race.
Nonetheless, two Republicans on the five-person Fulton county election board refused to certify the election.
Julie Adams and Michael Heekin didn’t point to specific irregularities. Instead, they said they needed more information from election administrators, like chain-of-custody documents for ballots. Adams and Heekin were outvoted.
But it didn’t end there. In May, Adams, who is a part of an election activist network founded by Cleta Mitchell, voted against certifying another Georgia primary election. Again, despite no irregularities, she said she needed more information. With the backing of a group closely aligned with Donald Trump, Adams had also recently sued the Fulton county board, asking a judge to declare that she and other commissioners could choose not to certify the election.
It was an unusual request – verification of ballot totals happens in the extensive process that leads up to certification and state laws generally do not permit those responsible for certifying them the discretion to investigate.
In early August, the Republican-controlled state election board in Georgia adopted a new rule that essentially gave Adams what she wanted. It requires local election board members to conduct an undefined “reasonable inquiry” into any discrepancies before they can certify the election. There are concerns that officials could use that discretion to hold up certification of the election.
The episode in Fulton county, and the new rule in Georgia, could be an alarming dress rehearsal for how Donald Trump and his allies will try to challenge the election results in November if he loses.
Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to accepting the election results, declining multiple times to do so during a 27 June debate. He has suggested that Christians would “never have to vote again” if he wins. The anti-democratic sentiment has been echoed by other prominent conservatives, including Mike Howell, the director of the oversight project at the Heritage Foundation, who said earlier this year there was a “0% chance of a free and fair election”.
“I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election,” he said at a Heritage Foundation event this summer.
The effort poses a challenge that again would test the strength of the US’s voting system and its democratic institutions. It could probably stretch from little-known county election officials to the Congress.
In some ways, Trump’s attempt to challenge the election result in 2024 could look a lot like his effort in 2020. It has begun months before election day with the seeding of doubt about the integrity of the election and could continue after.
Trump's election challenges by the numbers
7 States in which Donald Trump convened fake electors
42 Legal challenges filed by Trump's campaign
10 Election contests filed by Trump's campaign and allied organizations across Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. None were successful.
4--Number of election recounts (two each in Georgia and Wisconsin). None found any irregularities or wrongdoing.
There are two key differences.
First, Trump may be better prepared. Mitchell, a close Trump ally, has spent the last few years building up a network of activists focused on local boards of elections. And the Republican National Committee’s election litigation team is now being led by Christina Bobb, an election denier who is now facing criminal charges for her efforts to overturn the 2020 race. The RNC claims it is recruiting an army of 100,000 poll observers who could provide significant disruption during voting and counting.
“I think we saw efforts by Republicans in 2020 that were pretty ham-handed,” said Marc Elias, a top Democratic voting rights lawyer. “I worry that there will be both legal and extralegal efforts by Republicans to keep ballots from being counted.”
But more significantly, the idea that the 2020 election was stolen has moved from the fringes to being a pillar of the Republican party. A January poll from PRRI found that 66% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen. “The most important thing we have to do is protect the vote. You have to keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and, frankly, it’s the only thing they do well,” Trump said in a prerecorded video that played all four nights during the Republican national convention in July.
The belief in stolen elections, Elias said, was “no longer the provenance of crazy people like Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell. This is no longer the province of people who thought that there were bamboo filaments in paper or mythical sea creatures involved in the election with Venezuelan dictators.
“It has become now the standard position of the Republican party.”
Seeds of doubt in 2020 to bloom in 2024
Trump began seeding doubt in 2020 by pointing to mail-in voting as evidence the election was being stolen months beforehand. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, many states were quickly changing the rules around voting by mail, allowing expanded access because it was not clear if it would be safe to vote in person on election day.
This year, Americans are unlikely to use mail-in voting at the same levels they did during the pandemic, and Republicans are now encouraging their supporters to take advantage of it. But Trump and allies are using a new messaging tactic in its place: that there are scores of non-citizens and other ineligible people on the voter rolls.
"They’re hanging the hooks to later hang their hat on
Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center
Mitchell has played a key role in leading a coalition of groups that has pushed the false idea that there is a serious threat of non-citizens voting in US elections. Her coalition has supported federal legislation championed by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and others to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Such a restriction would probably do little to prevent fraud, which is exceedingly rare. Instead, it would probably make it harder for millions of eligible voters to cast a ballot. Nearly one in 10 eligible voters – 21 million Americans – lack easy access to proof of citizenship documents, according to one study released earlier this year.
Even though Johnson’s congressional bill passed the House, it will probably go nowhere in the Senate. But it helps create an impression that something is amiss with American elections. To make matters worse, when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, Republicans also immediately sought to suggest her candidacy was illegitimate, calling the effort a “coup”.
A constellation of groups – including the RNC, the Public Interest Legal Foundation and United Sovereign Americans – has also filed several lawsuits in various states to create the false impression that voter rolls are not properly being cleaned in several swing states. These lawsuits use misleading methodology and legal claims to suggest that there are a suspiciously large number of people registered in certain jurisdictions. Among other issues, they compare up-to-date voter registration information and outdated data from the American Community Survey.
“They’re hanging the hooks to later hang their hat on,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the top voting rights expert at the Brennan Center.
“It’s all part of creating sort of a pretext to say, ‘Oh, we need to throw out this set of ballots’ or ‘We can’t really know who the real winner is,’” said Ben Berwick, a lawyer at the non-profit Protect Democracy who works on voting rights issues. “I think much of it won’t stick, but I think the point is to have enough of it stick to create enough uncertainty for that critical post-election period.”
‘Tricky legal questions and room for shenanigans’
Any effort to challenge the election results will probably start at the local level.
Just as there was in 2020, there’s likely to be a period of uncertainty after election day when votes are still being counted in key swing states. Two of those, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, still do not allow election officials to begin to process mail-in ballots until election day.
“I’m definitely concerned that you’re gonna have a lot of efforts to disturb the process of counting those votes, if we go into the late evening, early hours of the next day and all of that,” said Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University who specializes in election law.
The observers amassed by Mitchell and the RNC could have a significant role. In 2020, chaotic confrontations at polling sites offered misleading evidence that Trump and allies used in their effort to try to overturn the election. Trump’s effort to challenge the election results in Arizona, for example, was undergirded by affidavits from observers and poll watchers who falsely claimed they saw ballots being rejected because of the type of pen voters were using.
In Georgia, Trump pointed to reports from observers in Atlanta falsely claiming they were removed from the facility where mail-in ballots were counted. In Michigan, Trump’s team used as evidence an “incident report” from an election observer who falsely said she heard workers giving instructions to count a rejected ballot.
Accusations of fraud may find a receptive audience at county boards responsible for certifying elections. Until 2020, no one gave much thought to these positions, sometimes filled by elected officials and other times by little-known party loyalists. In 2020, Trump’s campaign made a strong effort to try to delay certification at the local and state level as part of his effort to overturn the election.
In Wayne county, home of Detroit, Trump personally called two Republican canvassers on the board responsible for certifying the vote there. The two officials briefly refused to certify, then reversed themselves and did. At the state level, Aaron Van Langevelde, a Republican on the state board of canvassers, faced pressure not to certify the vote, but decided to anyway.
In Wisconsin, Republicans nearly got the state supreme court to block certification of the state’s election. In Arizona, Trump called the then governor, Doug Ducey, as he was certifying the vote amid a pressure campaign to stop the certification of votes there.
Since 2020, there have been at least 20 instances in eight states of election officials refusing to certify election results.
The first red flag came in 2022, when county commissioners in Otero county, New Mexico, refused to certify the results of a primary election, citing vague concerns about voting equipment. The secretary of state eventually went to court to force the commissioners to certify the election.
In July of this year, two Republicans on the county commission in Washoe county, Nevada – a key county in a battleground state – refused to certify its primary vote, setting off alarms. The commissioners who refused to certify eventually reversed themselves. Nevada’s secretary of state, Cisco Aguilar, has since asked the state supreme court to clarify that county commissioners have an obligation to certify votes.
"There’s damage done even where certification is eventually forced
Ben Berwick of Protect Democracy
Sometimes election officials who refuse to certify have pointed to mistakes that happened during the election, even though they did not affect the outcome. In other cases, like Adams’s in Georgia, officials have refused to certify to protest about what they view as unfair laws.
While courts would probably force recalcitrant officials to certify the vote, significant damage could still be caused.
“You can force certification through legal mechanisms, [but] those events tend to be like rocket fuel for conspiracy theories and misinformation and undermining confidence in the election. So there’s damage done even where certification is eventually forced,” said Berwick, the Protect Democracy lawyer.
The timeline for certifying the vote is important because, under federal law, states must have an official election result by 11 December, six days before the electoral college meets. Delaying certification efforts at the local level could put states at risk of missing that deadline.
“If we get past that deadline, it opens up a lot of questions, like tricky legal questions and room for shenanigans,” Berwick said.
Pildes, the NYU professor, said that while he was concerned about efforts to block certification at the local level, he was confident that state courts could resolve any disputes by the time the electors meet.
A new law, the Electoral Count Reform Act, should provide a significant new layer of protection against election subversion. The bipartisan bill passed Congress at the end of 2022.
The law makes it so that Trump and his allies cannot repeat what they did in 2020 and submit false slates of electors from key swing states. Significantly, it says that the slate of electors submitted by a state’s executive is the legitimate slate and raises the threshold in both houses of Congress to object to the electoral result.
While the law controls what Congress must do once it receives certificates from electors, it doesn’t have much to say about what must happen in the lead-up to the electoral college vote. That could leave a lot of wriggle room for Trump and allies to try to slow down certification and go to court to try to force states to miss their certification deadline.
Prepared for challenges
After Donald Trump nearly succeeded in overturning the 2020 election, is the US better prepared to stop a similar effort in 2024?
Lawyers and other activists say they are ready, having spent the last four years studying and understanding the vulnerabilities that Trump and allies targeted in 2020. Any effort to block certification is likely to be swiftly challenged in courts, where Trump has already been unsuccessful dozens of times.
The new Electoral Count Reform Act should offer additional safeguards should there be an effort such as there was in 2020 to get Congress to stop its certification of the vote
Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss the threat altogether. The same pressure points that existed in 2020 exist in 2024, and in some places election deniers have been elevated to positions of power.
“This has started earlier in the cycle and is louder and is more consistent,” said Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center. “That is all just at a different level than it was before 2020.”
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Anywhere the GOP is attacking democracy with voter suppression tactics, check your voter registration multiple times. Probably be good wherever you might be, republicans are attacking our rights nationwide anywhere they can.
You’re reminder to CHECK your registration. Bad dudes are purging voter rolls. Make sure you’re good to go at https://t.co/xL8HC04R7x
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) August 10, 2024
GOP nominee to run North Carolina schools advocated pro-Trump military coup in January 6 video
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/politics/kfile-michele-morrow-january-6-comments/index.html
By Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski, CNN
6 minute read
Updated 6:11 PM EDT, Fri August 9, 2024
A lot of the #ncpol Right wants to quietly ignore @michelemorrownc and downplay the obviously crazy stuff she believes because they think it serves the ultimate purpose of beating the Democrats.
— Carolina Forward (@ForwardCarolina) August 11, 2024
This, of course, is what has happened to the GOP at large. And everyone sees it.
Elon Musk sues his critics into silence. So much for ‘free speech.’
The X boss sued a group of advertisers for using their rights of freedom of association to not associate with the racist content on the social media site.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-x-advertisers-lawsuit-social-media-rcna165605
Aug. 10, 2024, 4:00 AM MDT
By Andy Craig, Director of election policy at the Rainey Center
Elon Musk, self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” is demanding the government infringe on free speech rights. Again.
Despite his posturing as a defender of free expression, Musk is one of the nation’s most vexatious litigants against anybody who exercises their First Amendment rights in a way he doesn’t like. His latest target is GARM, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, an industry association of advertisers on online platforms of which X, formerly known as Twitter, is still a member. The lawsuit also targets several of GARM’s members for the supposed crime of declining to purchase ads on Musk’s website.
Major corporations generally do not want to pay for ads running next to posts praising Adolf Hitler.
X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, posted a video on Tuesday explaining that the suit is part of the company’s noble pursuit of preserving “the global town square … the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly.” Yaccarino wore a pendant around her neck that read “FREE SPEECH.”
On Thursday, GARM, citing its inability to handle legal fees that would likely run into the seven figures, simply shut its doors, ending all operations. Musk’s censorial bullying worked — abusing the legal system to shut down his critics.
Musk’s argument against GARM fits a long-running pattern for him: attacks on free speech wrapped in the rhetoric of defending free speech.
Major corporations generally do not want to pay for ads running next to posts praising Adolf Hitler, among other noxious content that has flourished on X under Musk’s ownership. It’s hardly an unreasonable position, and GARM worked to promulgate shared standards companies can adopt for this type of brand safety. This, Musk alleges, amounted to a violation of antitrust laws.
Deciding where to purchase ads is an exercise of core free speech and free association rights for any individual or organization. Boycotting X because it’s overrun with hate speech is no different from a conservative advocacy group declining to pay for ads on a progressive podcast. It’s also a case of business judgment for for-profit corporations. PetSmart might well choose to buy magazine ads in Cat Fancy rather than Cigar Aficionado, for example.
It’s the latest in a long line of Musk lawsuits seeking to silence his critics, a tactic known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP.
He’s also sued Media Matters for documenting how X fails to keep ads from large corporations away from extremist content. In the same vein, he’s gone after the Center for Countering Digital Hate. He also endorsed the patently absurd criminal investigations into Media Matters launched by the Republican attorneys general of Texas and Missouri, already enjoined by a federal court as the obvious First Amendment violations they are.
It’s the latest in a long line of Musk lawsuits seeking to silence his critics, a tactic known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP.
Sometimes Musk’s interest in promoting censorship extends beyond his own critics, such as when he agreed to pay the legal fees of a Canadian anti-vaxxer who had sued a wide range of people for being mean to her.
For many years, actual free speech advocates have been pushing for anti-SLAPP laws, which make it easier to promptly dismiss and receive legal fees for litigation targeting constitutionally protected speech. Texas and California among other states have adopted these robust protections. Unfortunately, there is no national anti-SLAPP law for lawsuits based on federal law claims, such as Musk’s antitrust theory. Federal circuit courts are also divided on whether state anti-SLAPP laws can apply even to state law claims, such as defamation, being heard in federal court under interstate diversity jurisdiction.
In the meantime, Musk’s anti-speech lawfare has its intended effect even when it could never plausibly reach a final decision in his favor.
In addition to shutting down GARM, Media Matters recently laid off several employees, too, with many observers pointing to Musk’s litigation as a likely contributor. This is the defining feature of SLAPP strategy: process as punishment, ruining targets with the expense of fighting a case even when it lacks any legal merit. The tactic can be particularly effective aimed at nonprofits and individuals, whose relatively modest budgets simply cannot handle a protracted court battle with one of the world’s richest men.
Beyond simply being a rich and powerful bully who can waste his own money on vexatious, performative litigation, Musk’s theory of “free speech” is a censorship wolf in sheep’s clothing. He and those he agrees with should be free to speak their minds, the thinking goes, but nobody else should be allowed to criticize or disassociate from them in response. If it falls under nebulous labels like “cancel culture” or the “woke mind virus,” your speech is actually bad for speech and so shouldn’t be allowed. It’s unabashedly statist in its eagerness to use and abuse government power to police the discourse.
Musk is free to run his own website however he wants, as he should be. But his claims to be a champion of free speech are a hypocritical farce. In reality, he is one of the biggest enemies of the First Amendment, and should be recognized as such
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Bishop is known as "Bathroom Dan", election denier, voted against certifying President Biden's election, panders to the extreme right, and had to be schooled by Raskin on the constitution.
LOL Raskin just schooled Bishop on the House Floor pic.twitter.com/EdCl8L7Nkr
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 15, 2024
The August edition of the Carolina Forward Poll wrapped up yesterday.
— Carolina Forward (@ForwardCarolina) August 10, 2024
For this one, we partnered with @YouGovAmerica to survey 800 registered North Carolina voters.
Releasing results Monday. All we can say for now is: wowza. 😳#ncpol
Fully expected, was going to post this yesterday and didn't get to it. Russia, China, NK, and Iran have been at it for awhile. It's all in adversaries playbook, the same one the republicans get their tricks out of.
Iran is accelerating cyber activity that appears meant to influence the US election, Microsoft says
https://apnews.com/article/iran-russia-china-election-disinformation-hacking-ee65e29b866852b146e75c9f3312a1ae
By ALI SWENSON
Updated 6:47 PM MDT, August 9, 2024
NEW YORK (AP) — Iran is accelerating online activity that appears intended to influence the U.S. election, in one case targeting a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack, Microsoft said Friday.
Iranian actors also have spent recent months creating fake news sites and impersonating activists, laying the groundwork to stoke division and potentially sway American voters this fall, especially in swing states, the technology giant found.
The findings in Microsoft’s newest threat intelligence report show how Iran, which has been active in recent U.S. elections, is evolving its tactics for another election that’s likely to have global implications. The report goes a step beyond anything U.S. intelligence officials have disclosed, giving specific examples of Iranian groups and the actions they have taken so far. Iran’s United Nations mission denied it had plans to interfere or launch cyberattacks in the U.S. presidential election.
The report doesn’t specify Iran’s intentions besides sowing chaos in the United States, though U.S. officials have previously hinted that Iran particularly opposes former President Donald Trump. U.S. officials also have expressed alarm about Tehran’s efforts to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike on an Iranian general that was ordered by Trump. This week, the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against a Pakistani man with ties to Iran who’s alleged to have hatched assassination plots targeting multiple officials, potentially including Trump.
The report also reveals how Russia and China are exploiting U.S. political polarization to advance their own divisive messaging in a consequential election year.
Microsoft’s report identified four examples of recent Iranian activity that the company expects to increase as November’s election draws closer.
First, a group linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in June targeted a high-ranking U.S. presidential campaign official with a phishing email, a form of cyberattack often used to gather sensitive information, according to the report, which didn’t identify which campaign was targeted. The group concealed the email’s origins by sending it from the hacked email account of a former senior adviser, Microsoft said.
Days later, the Iranian group tried to log into an account that belonged to a former presidential candidate, but wasn’t successful, Microsoft’s report said. The company notified those who were targeted.
In a separate example, an Iranian group has been creating websites that pose as U.S.-based news sites targeted to voters on opposite sides of the political spectrum, the report said.
One fake news site that lends itself to a left-leaning audience insults Trump by calling him “raving mad” and suggests he uses drugs, the report said. Another site meant to appeal to Republican readers centers on LGBTQ issues and gender-affirming surgery.
A third example Microsoft cited found that Iranian groups are impersonating U.S. activists, potentially laying the groundwork for influence operations closer to the election.
Finally, another Iranian group in May compromised an account owned by a government employee in a swing state, the report said. It was unclear whether that cyberattack was related to election interference efforts.
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Iran’s U.N. mission sent The Associated Press an emailed statement: “Iran has been the victim of numerous offensive cyber operations targeting its infrastructure, public service centers, and industries. Iran’s cyber capabilities are defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces. Iran has neither the intention nor plans to launch cyber attacks. The U.S. presidential election is an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere.”
The Microsoft report said that as Iran escalates its cyber influence, Russia-linked actors also have pivoted their influence campaigns to focus on the U.S. election, while actors linked to the Chinese Communist Party have taken advantage of pro-Palestinian university protests and other current events in the U.S. to try to raise U.S. political tensions.
Microsoft said it has continued to monitor how foreign foes are using generative AI technology. The increasingly cheap and easy-to-access tools can generate lifelike fake images, photos and videos in seconds, prompting concern among some experts that they will be weaponized to mislead voters this election cycle.
While many countries have experimented with AI in their influence operations, the company said, those efforts haven’t had much impact so far. The report said as a result, some actors have “pivoted back to techniques that have proven effective in the past — simple digital manipulations, mischaracterization of content, and use of trusted labels or logos atop false information.”
Microsoft’s report aligns with recent warnings from U.S. intelligence officials, who say America’s adversaries appear determined to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims ahead of November’s vote.
Top intelligence officials said last month that Russia continues to pose the greatest threat when it comes to election disinformation, while there are indications that Iran is expanding its efforts and China is proceeding cautiously when it comes to 2024.
Iran’s efforts seem aimed at undermining candidates seen as being more likely to increase tension with Tehran, the officials said. That’s a description that fits Trump, whose administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of the top Iranian general.
The influence efforts also coincide with a time of high tensions between Iran and Israel, whose military the U.S. strongly supports.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last month that the Iranian government has covertly supported American protests over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups linked to Iran have posed as online activists, encouraged protests and provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said.
America’s foes, Iran among them, have a long history of seeking to influence U.S. elections. In 2020, groups linked to Iran sent emails to Democratic voters in an apparent effort to influence their votes, intelligence officials said.
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Half true at least, donOld's campaigning bills are left unpaid wherever he goes. Never changes, he stiffed contractors, businesses, and people all his life. Now he stiffs the American people and lets our taxes pay his bills. But I'm not sure of the airport denials, would need a lot more verification from reliable sources.
When Trump comes to town, he brings excitement, leaves unpaid bills
https://dailymontanan.com/2024/08/08/when-trump-comes-to-town-he-brings-excitement-leaves-unpaid-bills/
By: Jenna Martin - August 8, 2024 12:39 pm
Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally outside Schnecksville Fire Hall on April 13, 2024 in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania. Hundreds of supporters waited hours in a line stretching for more than a mile to see Trump speak in a suburb of Allentown, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to be in Bozeman on Friday for an 8 p.m., rally at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse at Montana State University. While rallies of presidential candidates are known to bring large crowds and media attention, they also bring a slew of logistical and technical challenges.
“Large political rallies like this aren’t common,” says Montana State University spokesman Mike Becker, adding that the last time the Fieldhouse hosted a political rally of this scale was during Obama’s visit in 2008. “We use the same processes of working through the logistics of the event, but it’ll be unique to work with the Secret Service.”
For Secret Service, the indoor venue is a welcome change from Trump’s typically outdoor rally sites, but indoor venues located in the heart of cities rather than at the airport, as Trump so often prefers, require far more safety precautions and coordination.
The logistics
Trump’s Sept. 6, 2018 rally in Billings at MetraPark, for example, necessitated a multitude of security measures, including protection, crowd control and traffic management. According to 2018 press releases by both the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office and the Billings Police Department additional assistance was also required from outside agencies Montana Highway Patrol, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, the Laurel Police Department, and both Rosebud County and Carbon County Sheriff’s offices. Even Billings Public Works employees were called on to use large city vehicles to help block off two square blocks of downtown Billings for close to 20 hours.
“It’s usually a pretty all-hands-on-deck situation,” says Billings Police Department Public Information Officer Lt. Matt Lennick. “We work closely with the Secret Service and usually have to bring in extra staff, because at the same time we still have to monitor our calls for service and respond to calls within the city. It’s pretty extensive for our department and costly because of the amount of overtime and things like that.”
That cost can quickly add up, and for many municipalities it’s often impossible to predict ahead of time what that cost will be. As Billings Police Chief St. John told the Billings Gazette in 2018 in preparation for Trump’s rally in Billings, “We won’t have any idea of the cost (of Trump’s visit) until we get the final bill.”
And it’s something that can’t be stuck in a budget plan.
“I’ve never seen the situation where we knew ahead of time in a budget year that we were going to have a visit because they (candidates) don’t put out their schedules that far in advance. My understanding is we normally recoup whatever cost we can on the backside,” Lennick said.
Attempting to recoup those costs is what the Billings Police Department, years later, is still trying to do.
The taxpayer burden
Trump’s campaign has been notorious for flaking on bills for security. According to a 2019 report from the Center for Public Integrity, Trump owed more than $840,000 to various city governments, and likely more, as Trump’s campaign does not acknowledge a single one of these city governments as debt in his federal campaign financial disclosures.
In Billings, the protective measures put in place for his September 2018 rally resulted in 1,362 overtime hours between Billings PD and the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s office: 951 hours from the former, and 411 hours from the latter, bringing the total cost to $58,830.
While the Yellowstone Sheriff’s office did not bill Trump’s campaign for the $12,930 cost it incurred – a standard practice the office follows for all political campaigns – Billings PD did, and as of the publication date of this article, that $45,900 bill has been left unpaid.
Earlier that year, Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. also made stops in Billings. The vice president spoke at a public rally on July 25, also at MetraPark, organized by America First Policies. Donald Trump Jr. spoke at the Republican Convention in Billings on June 22.
According to an internal memo sent to city council on Sept. 13, 2018, Vice President Mike Pence’s July 25 visit required 647.50 hours of overtime pay, totalling $31,200. Donald Trump Jr.’s visit ran $5,000 in overtime pay, bringing the total amount spent by the Billings Police Department alone on security for Trump’s campaign rallies in Billings in 2018 to $82,100.
Billings isn’t alone. Missoula county commissioners also sent a bill to the Trump campaign in 2018 for nearly $13,000 for public safety staffing costs. The county requested $10,835.41 for officer salaries, $1,059.26 for dispatcher salaries, $693.72 for Office of Emergency Management salaries, and $334.43 for miscellaneous expenses. According to Missoula County Communications Manager Allison Franz, that bill has also not been paid.
Some municipalities, like Great Falls, don’t submit requests for payment, instead eating the cost from their own budgets. The Great Falls Tribune reported Trump’s July 5 visit to Great Falls cost the city, Cascade County and Montana Highway Patrol a total of $57,236, none of which was submitted for payment to Trump’s campaign.
In total, in 2018 alone, Trump’s campaign cost various city and state departments – whether they billed for reimbursement and weren’t paid, or never billed at all – at least $150,000 in taxpayer money.
“It’s a lot for a budget,” Lennick said. “It’s not something that’s built into our initial budget that we plan every year.”
A different ballgame
Trump’s rallies, while similar in size to other candidates, consistently have higher security costs. For one, he is a former president, which comes with an added layer of security compared to other candidates.
For example, Trump’s October rally in Missoula had an estimated 8,000 attendees and cost Missoula County nearly $13,000 while Bernie Sanders 2016 rally had 9,000 attendees and the mayor’s spokeswoman told NBC Montana that the cost to the city was minimal, resulting in only five paid hours in police overtime. The rest of the cost was covered by Secret Service.
Trump’s rallies are also known for their large crowds of protestors, an added safety concern for all parties involved.
“It’s important that your local sheriff is the one handling protestors because we know these people,” says Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter, adding that no matter the cost law enforcement will always be up for the job. “As local law enforcement it’s our duty to protect the process of our elections and keep our community safe when candidates and presidents show up.”
The total cost for Gallatin remains to be seen. Sheriff Dan Springer declined requests for comment and City of Bozeman Communications and Engagement Specialist Allison Killip directed all questions regarding potential costs to Trump’s campaign.
It’s unknown whether or not the assassination attempt at Trump’s July 13 Pennsylvania Rally will drive security costs further.
Montana State University however, will at least get some money ahead of time.
“Anyone who rents the Fieldhouse has to put down a deposit,” says university spokesman Mike Becker, which amounts to the first day’s cost of $3,250. “If they cancel, they’d owe $6,500.”
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Walz vs Vance financials. Quite telling.
How Tim Walz’s personal finances compare to JD Vance, other politicians
Walz’s financial portfolio makes him by far the least wealthy candidate on either major party ticket this year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/08/tim-walz-personal-finances-worth-house/
Crowdless, crying, criminal donOld trump is running out of ketchup and diapers. lol As Jo said, "The only way Trump could draw a crowd this big and this happy would be if they gave out tickets to watch him walk into federal prison at the start of his sentence."
This is Glendale #Arizona , we ain’t red and we ain’t weird.
— Scottacular (@Scottcrates) August 9, 2024
Let’s go!!! pic.twitter.com/qNLSTDqv2L
Musk should be having an arrest warrant out for him also.
Two men jailed for social media posts that stirred up far-right violence
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/09/two-men-jailed-for-social-media-posts-that-stirred-up-far-right-violence
People who threw stones, hurled racist abuse and pushed a burning wheelie bin at police also sent to prison
Jessica Murray, Rajeev Syal and agencies
Fri 9 Aug 2024 13.35 EDT
Last modified on Fri 9 Aug 2024 16.49 EDT
Two men have been sent to prison for stirring up hatred and violence online after the Southport attack, in the first cases of their kind linked to the recent riots seen across the country.
Jordan Parlour, 28, was jailed for 20 months after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred with Facebook posts in which he advocated an attack on a hotel in Leeds as part of the violent public disorder that swept England last week.
In Northampton, Tyler Kay, 26, was given three years and two months in prison for posts on X that called for mass deportation and for people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers.
They are the first people to be charged for posting criminal messages online linked to the recent far-right violence.
Parlour’s post said: “Every man and their dog should be smashing [the] fuck out [of] Britannia hotel.” More than 200 refugees and asylum seekers lived at the hotel. The initial post received six likes, but could be forwarded more widely owing to Parlour’s privacy settings.
Passing sentence on Friday, the judge, Guy Kearl KC, accepted Parlour took no part in the violence but said: “There can be no doubt you were inciting others to do so.
“You went on to say that you did not want your money going to immigrants who ‘rape our kids and get priority’,” Kearl said. “You were encouraging others to attack a hotel which you knew was occupied by refugees and asylum seekers.”
Nicholas Hammond, mitigating, told the judge Parlour was “not part of any sinister group activity designed to stir up violence” and was “not affiliated with any group”.
In a letter to court, his mother said: “We can only speculate he’s been caught up and swept away by emotions circulating throughout the country.”
Parlour appeared to blow a raspberry as he was led from the court. Rosemary Ainslie, the acting head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s special crime and counter-terrorism division, said: “Let me be absolutely clear, people who think they can hide behind their keyboards and stir up racial hatred should think again.”
Kay used his own name and profile picture on his account, while advising others on “staying anon” and saying he had “watched enough CSI programmes” and would “categorically not be arrested”. He also tagged Northamptonshire police force in one of his posts.
Elsewhere, a woman who pushed a burning wheelie bin into a police line before falling to the ground and being arrested was jailed for 20 months. Stacey Vint, 34, was sentenced for her part in the riots in Middlesbrough town centre on Sunday.
A woman is led away by police after pushing a burning wheelie bin into the police lines during the far right riots in Middlesbrough on Sunday
Stacey Vint was apprehended by police in Middlesbrough on Sunday. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer
Charlie Bullock, 21, who was described as “the main instigator” of a large group pushing against a police line and throwing stones and rocks at officers, was jailed for 18 months.
In Sunderland, a balaclava-wearing rioter identified by his distinctive tattoos was jailed for two-and-a-half years. Josh Kellett, 29, was identified by an anonymous member of the public who watched a live stream of the riot and contacted police to say they recognised a person throwing stones at police.
Jordan Plain, 30, was jailed for eight months after he was filmed making monkey gestures and shouting “rubber lips” towards black and Asian people as hundreds of people took part in rival demonstrations in Leeds city centre.
Jordan Davies, 32, was jailed for two years and four months after he was seen with a knife near a vigil for the victims of the Southport stabbing. Sentencing him, the judge Dennis Watson KC said Davies was on his way to join a “mob” who had seen an opportunity to “stir up trouble”.
Kay, Vint, Bullock, Plain and Davies all pleaded guilty to their charges. Senior police officers have said rapid sentencing has helped act as a deterrent to far-right agitators. But those who are jailed will be entering a prison system at maximum capacity and could be released from prison early under a scheme to tackle overcrowding, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.
Last month, ministers announced they were changing the law to allow some criminals to leave prison early because of a lack of space. This means that prisoners who do not fall into exempt categories, such as those serving sentences for serious crimes, will be released under the new scheme after they have served 40% of their sentences, rather than 50%.
The release points for those convicted of involvement in violent disorder will depend upon the offence they are convicted of and the sentence they receive. Sentences for serious violent offences of four years or more, including arson and terrorism-related offences, are among those excluded from the early release scheme.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The government has brought in over 500 new prison places early, to ensure there is a cell waiting for everyone involved in the recent disorder and thuggery. The lord chancellor was forced to introduce the emergency capacity measures last month, to address the prison crisis the government inherited.”
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Ukraine politically blackened both Putin's eyes and bloodied his nose. Strategically did some damage too.
The Ukrainian blackout on the invasion of Russia is gone. Here are soldiers of the 61st Brigade recording a video at the Gazprom offices in Sudzha, a district center of the Kursk region of Russia. “The city is under the control of armed forces of Ukraine and quiet.” pic.twitter.com/xNfrI4Ur54
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) August 9, 2024
Ukrainian soldiers several miles inside the Ukrainian-occupied part Russia seem relaxed enough to start repainting town names with the Ukrainian spelling. Not sure this is what Putin had in mind in February 2022. pic.twitter.com/Zp7zRMDzEw
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) August 9, 2024
A russian woman desperately crying: “Putin, help us, please. Where is our government?”
— Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇦 (@rshereme) August 8, 2024
I want to make three comments:
First, I feel no sympathy toward her. They were rejoicing when russian soldiers attacked Ukrainian cities, raped women, and killed children.
1/n pic.twitter.com/KKM3OC2Umu
TranslateMom has subtitled your video in English!
— TranslateMom (@TranslateMom) August 9, 2024
For instant translations and captions, visit our web app at https://t.co/vgpywdvEdE, trusted by 100,000+ happy users worldwide.
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You've reached your daily limit for translation requests. pic.twitter.com/E6MWFhWeYL
We need an electoral landslide. If we're ekeing this out, we're going into a very bad place. Because the other side is going to be decertifying votes and trying to set up a contested election.
The punditocracy is already trying to get us to take our foot off the gas because they benefit from a close election.
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) August 9, 2024
“No more couch jokes!” 😱
Fuck off.
We need to win by a large margin. We need an electoral landslide. Also, mocking fascists is a patriotic duty. Let’s ride. https://t.co/VUedKyyNd6 pic.twitter.com/lOyPtg4kEN
Without paywall:
— Simsala 🪄 (@SimsalaMaya) August 9, 2024
Texas’ voter suspense list tops 2.1 million. Here’s what to do if you’re on it
More than 2.1 million Texas voters are on the state’s suspended list, three months before the presidential election between Trump and Harris.https://t.co/FfwvAyBRCz
Trump’s Social Security Benefit Tax Repeal Would Lower Taxes, Accelerate Program Insolvency
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/trumps-social-security-benefit-tax-repeal-would-lower-taxes-accelerate-program-insolvency
Former president Donald Trump’s plan to repeal the tax on Social Security benefits would lower taxes for US households by an average of $550, according to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center. But that tax cut would come with a big price: By reducing Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance (HI) revenues by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, Trump would drive both programs into insolvency faster, resulting in sharply reduced benefits for tens of millions of recipients.
Winners And Losers
TPC estimated that lower-income households would get little or no benefit from the tax cut in 2025. Those making $32,000 or less would receive no tax cut since most of their Social Security income already is untaxed. Those making between $32,000 and $60,000 would get an average tax cut of about $90.
In dollar terms, the biggest winners would be those in the top 0.1 percent of income, who make nearly $5 million or more. They’d get an average tax cut of nearly $2,500 in 2025. But as a share of after-tax income, the biggest beneficiaries would be middle- and upper-middle income households, those making between about $63,000 and $200,000.
One reason for that seeming inconsistency is that Social Security benefits often account for a substantial share of middle-income household earnings. Thus, repealing the tax on those benefits reduces their average after-tax income by a larger percentage than for very high-income households, who get a relatively small amount of their total income from Social Security.
Less than 1 percent of the lowest-income households (those making about $33,000 or less, would get any tax cut at all. But about 28 percent of middle-income households would get a tax cut. Among the top 0.1 percent, about 20 percent of households would get a tax cut.
TPC’s analysis included all Social Security benefits, incorporating survivor’s and disability benefits, as well as retirement. It was unable to break out taxpayers by age due to data limitations.
Trump announced his idea in one sentence on his Truth Social site. Keep in mind he is not talking about the Social Security payroll tax, which is paid by current workers to fund Social Security and Medicare’s HI trust fund. Rather, he’d repeal the current tax on Social Security benefits, which is paid by individual recipients making $25,000 or more annually ($32,000 for married couples) who currently owe tax on half their Social Security benefits. That revenue is used to shore up Social Security’s retirement trust fund.
The Cost To Social Security And Medicare
Social Security recipients with annual incomes over $34,000 ($44,000 for married couples), are taxed on an additional 35 percent of their benefits, with that revenue going to help support Medicare HI.
Repealing the tax, which has been in place since 1984 and was expanded in 1994, would accelerate the looming insolvencies of both trust funds. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Social Security would have to reduce promised benefits by one-quarter if the tax is repealed. Its old age trust fund would become insolvent in 2032 instead of 2033. The Medicare HI trust fund would become insolvent in 2030, six years faster than under current law.
Lower Taxes, Fewer Benefits
Low-income households not only would miss out on any tax cut, they’d take a significant financial hit when Social Security falls into insolvency. A recent analysis by my Urban Institute colleagues Richard Johnson and Karen Smith found that, even under current law, Social Security insolvency would reduce annual median benefits by $5,900 by 2045 and throw 3.8 million seniors into poverty. It would slash incomes of the lowest-income 40 percent of households by one-fifth.
And they analyzed current law. The situation would be worse for low-income older adults if the Social Security benefits tax is repealed, which would magnify and accelerate the program’s financial woes.
Repealing the tax on Social Security benefits conflicts with Trump’s months-long promise to oppose any cuts in the program. The 2024 Republican Party platform, orchestrated by Trump, says, in all capital letters: FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE.
It’s notable that Trump also proposed deporting millions of immigrants, many of whom improve Social Security’s finances because they work and pay payroll taxes but are unlikely to collect benefits. Now, he’d repeal the tax on Social Security benefits, without proposing any way to shore up the retirement system by either raising other taxes or otherwise restructuring benefits. It is the latest example of how his agenda inevitably would result in exactly the kind of Social Security cuts he vows to oppose.
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GOP official with multiple sexual misconduct allegations joined JD Vance’s Michigan presser
https://heartlandsignal.com/2024/08/08/republican-prosecutor-with-multiple-sexual-misconduct-allegations-preaches-public-safety-at-jd-vances-michigan-presser/
By Richard Eberwein – 8/08/24
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks at a campaign event at Shelby Township Police Department, Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, in Shelby Township, Mich. Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido, right, also spoke at the event. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
During a press conference in Michigan on Wednesday, Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance spoke with Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido, a former Republican state representative with numerous sexual harassment claims filed against him.
The press conference was held in front of the Shelby Township Police Headquarters on Wednesday afternoon, and it was focused on public safety. Lucido and Vance shared the stage together.
“Macomb County residents and businesses must rely on law enforcement to keep them safe and free from harm by others,” Lucido said. “As the Macomb County prosecutor, I am committed to bringing wrongdoers to justice.”
After Lucido’s words, the Ohio senator returned to the podium and said, “Look these guys are doing a good job.”
Throughout his career, Lucido has been accused of sexual harassment, offensive comments and inappropriate touching from female colleagues and coworkers. In 2020, while Lucido was a state senator, he told reporter Allison Donahue that she should “stick around” because he knew a group of teenage boys who could “have a lot of fun with you.” The incident prompted bipartisan calls for an investigation and an apology from Lucido that he later retracted on the claim that he was misquoted.
In January 2020, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak) filed a sexual harassment complaint against Lucido stemming from an incident in 2018 where Lucido allegedly grabbed her lower back and grazed her hip with his fingers when they first met. The incident happened on the same day Lucido spoke at a sexual harassment orientation, saying that the culture is “just the way it is.”
In the same month, Lucido received a third sexual harassment complaint, this time for inappropriately touching, staring and commenting about a woman’s appearance for an extended period of time. A Senate investigation into these three allegations found them credible enough for Lucido to be stripped of his chairmanship of the Advice and Consent Committee and asked to repeat sexual harassment training.
However, Lucido was still allowed to chair the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee. A liberal political group called Progress for Michigan criticized the punishment for not going far enough, and a spokesperson said, “Any decent workplace would fire someone for showing a pattern of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.” Lucido continued to maintain that he did not do anything wrong after the investigation.
This pattern continued after Lucido was elected the prosecutor of Macomb County in November 2020. Sexual harassment claims were brought forward by a judge and at least one employee from Lucido’s office. An investigation into the prosecutor’s office resulted in nine people corroborating “brutal” and “rude” remarks made by Lucido to female employees, with one claiming that Lucido was “boisterous when speaking to male employees, but that he treats female administrative staff much worse.”
In addition to sexist remarks, Lucido also reportedly stated that he wanted to assign a Black prosecuting attorney for the “Shelby Five” case so “those people” could not complain that he was being unfair.
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Trump's Damaged Brain
https://unprecedented.ghost.io/archive/trumps-damaged-brain/
3 Mar 2024 • 0 comments
Is it the drugs? Or dementia? It's time to get serious about Trump's mental deterioration.
Trump's Damaged Brain
Let me start by saying I'm not a psychologist or a family member, so I'm not really in a position to speculate about the state of Donald Trump's brain.
So instead I'll quote Trump's niece, the psychologist Mary Trump, who just told CNN's Christiane Amanpour:
"We've seen in the last decade or so the difference in how he performs in depositions, for example. He appears to have much less impulse control. And he appears to have a much-lessened ability to be coherent for any length of time."
And Mary Trump's not the only one who's noticed.
Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi are tuned into the problem.
On social media and (finally!) in mainstream media there is a growing acknowledgment that he's "glitching" more frequently.
It seems that everyone's suddenly saying #TrumpIsNotWell.
So, what's new?
For the past many months we've been told repeatedly by outlets like The New York Times that Biden is old and the age issue is hurting him more with voters than it's hurting Trump.
And Fox News has convinced most of its viewers that Biden has now entered an advanced stage of dementia caused by eating ice cream.
Biden "moves more tentatively than he did," says the Times, while Trump "uses his physicality to project strength in front of crowds."
But then Biden and Trump both open their mouths and we see that the reality is something quite different.
Appearing on the Seth Meyers show on 26 February 2024, Biden proved he's got the experience, wit and wisdom to defeat Trump again. He spoke about the Israel-Hamas war with a level of knowledge and compassion that Trump could never even imitate.
https://x.com/EdGreenberger/status/1762497614577127593
Meanwhile, Trump just keeps glitching.
https://x.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1764100641272832279
On Election Day 2024, Biden will be 81 and Trump will be 78.
What are the differences between these two old timers when it comes to "the cognitive"?
As Biden himself can attest, he's always been a walking "gaffe machine" and having to overcome a childhood stutter that he still struggles with doesn't help.
The fact that he's 81 may bother some people but there's no doubt that he's a smarter, more effective—and more future-oriented—President than Trump will ever be.
Three years in, when Biden gives the State of the Union address on March 7, he'll have a very strong and very powerful list of accomplishments that puts Trump's record after three years to shame.
Meanwhile, Trump has a whole lot of mental problems.
As regular readers of this newsletter know, Trump is a diagnosed psychopath. That reality alone makes the idea of electing him to a second term a horrifying thought.
https://x.com/TheDailyEdge/status/1761437061234438244
When it comes to Trump, there has also been a lot of talk about drug abuse. It's something Noel Casler, a comedian and former Apprentice staffer, has highlighted for years. Actor and comedian Tom Arnold said the same thing, claiming Trump snorted Adderall on the set of The Apprentice and Mark Burnett knew about it. Trump is known to take a vanity hair loss drug that can cause mental confusion. And, as was recently revealed, prescription drugs and controlled substances flowed freely in the Trump White House, possibly leading to some of Trump's most garbled late-night tweets.
In addition to Trump's psychopathy and alleged drug abuse, we should also consider the impact that his history of cardiovascular disease (CVD) as well as his hospitalization for a severe case of Covid-19 might have had on his addled and aging brain.
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association:
CVD can negatively affect the integrity of cognition and communication long before an individual is diagnosed with a major neurological disorder like stroke or dementia.
While the American public was never fully informed about the severity of Trump's COVID-19 illness in 2020, what we do know is incredibly troubling.
As the New York Times later reported: "Trump had trouble breathing at the White House. He was twice given oxygen before being taken to Walter Reed."
The Times also revealed that Trump had:
Extremely depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus... His prognosis became so worrisome before he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that officials believed he would need to be put on a ventilator... he was found to have lung infiltrates, which occur when the lungs are inflamed and contain substances such as fluid or bacteria. Their presence, especially when a patient is exhibiting other symptoms, can be a sign of an acute case of the disease.... Trump’s blood oxygen level alone was cause for extreme concern, dipping into the 80s... The disease is considered severe when the blood oxygen level falls to the low 90s.
As the Alzheimer's Association makes clear, the effects of COVID-19 on the brain can be incredibly damaging and long lasting, especially for obese patients over 70 who require hospitalization and oxygen supplementation.
Other studies have shown a link between COVID-19 infection and new-onset dementia, and the acceleration of cognitive decline in older adults.
Trump is old in much the same way that Biden is old. There's little more than three years difference in their ages.
But that's where the similarities end.
With Biden, we pretty much know what we're getting. And we can judge him on his successful record as President.
With Trump, we have a rapist and business fraud whose biggest talent has always been conning people into believing he's something that he's not. If Trump feels his brain is going, he's not going to admit it, at least not until he needs to offer an insanity defense.
"A much-lessened ability to be coherent for any length of time"
Before we consider what experts have to say about Alzheimer's and dementia, let's just state the basic fact that, according to the National Institute on Aging: "people who are only mildly impaired may be adept at covering up their cognitive decline and reluctant to address the problem."
It's perfectly natural for an average person to try to deny or conceal their mental decline. Now imagine the lengths to which Trump—a congenital con artist—might go to downplay his own mental deterioration.
In assessing the situation, we must recognize that:
Trump is an obese old guy with a heart condition who had a really bad case of Covid not long ago. He may be a long-term drug user. And he's definitely a psychopath. He's hardwired to be deceitful, shameless and irresponsible—and never concede a weakness.
As Mary Trump says, he's having a harder and harder time appearing coherent. He's also facing the stress of 4 indictments, 91 felony counts and massive fines to punish him for multiyear business fraud and his relentless defamation of a woman he once raped.
But at the same time, many of his glitches aren't new. Anyone paying close attention has seen this before.
Here's one tweet of mine from June 2020:
https://x.com/TheDailyEdge/status/1272028689694416897
In 2024, though, other medical experts are observing that Trump is indeed "getting worse."
One recently responded to Trump's continued bragging about "acing" his dementia test by tweeting: "If you think a dementia screening test is very difficult, you may have early dementia."
So, does Trump have Alzheimer's or dementia?
In one widely discussed March 1 article from Salon, psychologist Dr. John Gartner, tells Chauncey DeVega that he sees "more evidence of (Trump's) accelerating dementia" based on "the fundamental breakdowns in his ability to use language."
According to Dr. Gartner, Trump is exhibiting "phonemic paraphasias," giving as examples:
He was trying to say evangelist, for example, but haltingly said "evangelish.” He was trying to say “three years later," but said, “three years, lady, lady, lady.”
Gartner later adds:
In my family we call sandwiches “slamichs” because that’s what my stepson called them when he was three. It was cute then. It’s not cute watching and adult man regress to the mental age of a three-year-old.
Gartner also says that Trump is showing signs of "semantic aphasia," i.e. using words in the wrong way.
Trump previously spoke about "the oranges of the investigation." More recently he displayed confusion saying:
“We’re going to protect pro-God….” In mid-sentence, he goes blank and looks at the ceiling. The words he uses to complete the sentence don’t really make sense: “…context and content.”
Gartner also explains why Trump's mental deterioration should scare anyone not part of the MAGA cult:
Whatever personality disorder someone has, it gets dramatically worse as their cognitive functions decline. All of Trump's viciousness, hostility, and unpredictable and other pathological behavior is only going to get worse.
If he's re-elected that means:
There will be no guardrails to Trump's absolute most primitive, impulsive, destructive, and insane actions. There will be no pushback from within his inner circle and regime. It is certainly very possible that a person in a state of cognitive decline is in a state where they are highly vulnerable to suggestions and being manipulated by others. I can easily imagine a scenario where Trump is a figurehead and there is a real power behind the throne pulling the strings.
As my recent two-part interview with Dr. Vince Greenwood made clear, it's scary to think of a mentally competent Trump on a second-term revenge tour. But it's perhaps even more terrifying to imagine a mentally feeble Trump as the puppet of an anti-democratic party of religious extremists equipped with "detailed plans to implement their fascist vision."
We all need to know what's wrong with Trump
Is it the drugs? Or is it dementia? Were the problems we began to observe during Trump's first term accelerated by his heart disease or his Covid hospitalization?
It's in Nikki Haley's interest to make ageism a factor in this year's presidential race. But maybe she's right about when she says Trump needs a mental competency test.
Because whatever the causes of Trump's accelerating mental deterioration, it's time for us all—including the media—to take that deterioration more seriously.
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"The Last Word, good watch;"
Correction; a really great must watch.
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-stupidest-candidate-trump-did-not-answer-reporters-questions-216787525948
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