Friday, November 1, 2024

Threats and lies -- how Trump ends his campaign

As the election winds down, Convicted Felon Donald Trump drops the mask and calls for the execution of former U.S. House Representative Liz Cheney. And all his ever dwindling number of supporters can do is lie and pretend that he did not do that.   Kipp Jones (MEDIATIE) reports:

 

Trump was speaking Thursday night to Tucker Carlson about Cheney when he said she wanted to send Americans to die on foreign battlefields in wars she would not enlist to fight in. Trump addressed her as a “radical war hawk” and added:

Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, ok? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, “Oh, gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.”

CNN’s Kasie Hunt took flak from the far right throughout Friday after she told her viewers Trump had said Cheney should be “fired upon.” Hunt was accused of taking Trump out of context in her reporting of his controversial remarks.

On Friday’s The Lead, Tapper welcomed Hagerty on to discuss Trump’s comments. Tapper aired them in full and argued they rightly offended some people.

Hagerty disagreed and called CNN’s reporting of the story a “hoax”:

 

It was not a hoax.  It is what Convicted Felon Trump said.  And the crook repeated it today.  Victoria Bekiempis (GUARDIAN) reports:

Donald Trump repeated his aggressive attack on Liz Cheney at a rally in Michigan on Friday, one day after he first said the former Republican US representative should be under fire with rifles “shooting at her”.

Trump’s comments came as the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, with both the former president and his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, battling to woo voters in Michigan and other key swing states.


He also claimed, "That's why I broke up with her."  Does he expect people to believe that lie?   He must.  He keeps lying.  Sarah K. Burris (RAW STORY) adds:


It has been less than 24 hours since Donald Trump uttered a violent fantasy that former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) should experience "nine guns are trained on her face" in a war zone.

The comment was widely translated as wishing that Cheney be executed.

On Friday, he took to Truth Social in an effort to clean up his comments about her on Truth Social.


More liars from the biggest liar of all time.  In other news, Joe Sommerlad (INDEPENDENT) reports:


With just four days of campaigning to go in the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump is facing new claims about his past friendship with the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Journalist Michael Wolff, who wrote three books about the Republican’s first administration between 2017 and 2021, has released an audio clip on his podcast Fire and Fury of what he says is Epstein talking in intimate detail about the inner workings of Trump’s Cabinet.

Wolff says the audio was recorded, to the best of his recollection, at the SoHo branch of Ladurée, a Manhattan patisserie, in 2017 when he met with Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in August 2019, to discuss the prospect of writing his biography.

Speaking over the background bustle of the eatery, Epstein is heard in the audio telling Wolff how then-president Trump played his administration officials off against each other.

“His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside,” he says.

Offering examples, he names then-Trump officials Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway: “He will tell 10 people ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kellyanne has a big mouth – what do you think?’

“‘[JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to [financier] Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson.’”


Of course, the felon was tight with Jeffrey Epstein.  They should have shared a prison cell.  Lastly, Taylor Odisho (LATIN TIMES) reports:


The city of Albuquerque went tit for tat with former President Donald Trump by blocking his preferred venues for his Thursday rally since he still owes them $500,000 from 2019.

Trump initially requested to use the local convention center for his rally, but the City of Albuquerque cited ongoing repairs, according to KOB 4. His campaign received the same response when they asked to use Expo New Mexico.

The former president's campaign finally landed on the CSI Aviation Inc. Hangar at the airport, but the state would not allow attendees to park two miles down the road in the Isleta Amphitheater parking lot, which vexed many of Trump's supporters.


He does not pay his bills.  Because he does not have the money he pretends to have.  He sits on a mountain of debt. This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:


 Friday, November 1, 2024.  Donald Trump threatens violence against Liz Cheney, Jennifer Lopez nails down why we need to vote for Kamala, and much more





Jennifer Lopez:  The election is just five days away and there is so much at stake.  The choices facing Americans now are monumental.  And you guys have made this city a place where dreams come true, where people from all walks of life have planted a flag in hopes of creating a better future for themselves and their families.  And you are the ones who are going to send the message that Nevada is Harris country.  Kamala Harris is running for the people who dream, for the parents working overtime, the children studying by street light, the teenagers practicing in the basement.  She's the only candidate that wants to raise the minimum wage and make college more affordable, keep the Dept of Education and even put a teacher in the Vice President's job.  That's right.  On the other hand, her opponent wants to kill the Affordable Care Act and eliminated the Dept of Education.  Right now, we are on the brink of an election that demands a choice -- a choice between backwards and forwards, a choice between the past and the future, a choice between divided and united.  And if you are anything like me and you value the idea that in this country, any child, from any background, cannot only work their ass off to bring their dreams to life and to be able to do so with dignity and respect for their neighbors, then it isn't much of a choice at all.  Whether you're from Castle Hill in the Bronx -- yes, baby -- or Sunrise Manor in East Las Vegas, we all want a world where our kids feel safe and free and valued by their president because whoever lead this country matters -- that's how we make the greatest America.  Because I remember -- I remember growing up thinking my president cared about me, cared about my parents, cared about my neighbors and my community -- not just some Americans, but all Americans.  I believe that our kids and this wonderfully progressive, innovative and inclusive young generation deserve that too.  And it is in our hands -- it's our responsibility to provide that for them.  You know, when I started in TV and film, I could get roles playing the maid or the loud mouthed Latina, but I knew I had more to offer and I think there are a lot of people in this country who feel the same way, who know that they are capable of more  and we all just want a chance to prove it.  And elections are about choosing leaders who support that.  Not one who stands in the way. 



Jennifer Lopez laid out the case for Kamala Harris last night in Las Vegas.  


Surprisingly, Donald Trump also was making the case for why Americans should vote for Kamala.  Oliver O'Connell and Joe Sommerlad (INDEPENDENT) explain:


Having already addressed two gatherings of his supporters, the former president ended his day in a sit-down interview with Tucker Carlson on stage in Glendale, Arizona, at which he shockingly fantasised about former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney being shot at.

He also attacked senior Democrats Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Adam Schiff and warned baselessly against “cheating” at the polls and forced sex-change operations in schools.

Vice President Harris closed out Thursday with a raully in Las Vegas in which singer and actor Jennifer Lopez emotionally endorsed her.


But we were also supposed to be in mourning when Trump went around with the maxipad taped to the side of his head.  He can talk about someone shooting Liz Cheney, but he wants sympathy when one of his nut job supporters takes a shot at him?  





Donald Trump said former Rep. Liz Cheney is a “war hawk” who should be fired upon, as he raged against one of his most prominent intra-party critics while campaigning Thursday night in Arizona.

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” the former president said at a campaign event in Glendale with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Trump also hurled insults at Cheney, once the third-ranking Republican in House leadership, calling her “very dumb,” a “stupid person” and “the moron.”     

             Trump’s suggestion that Cheney be fired upon represents an escalation of the violent language he has used to target his political foes. And it comes days before an election in which the former president — who never accepted his 2020 loss — has already undermined public confidence. In recent weeks, he has also suggested a military crackdown on political opponents he has described as “the enemy within.”

Cheney is perhaps the most vocal Republican critic of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and his role in his supporters’ January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. She played a leading role on the House select committee that investigated the attack, and later was ousted from her deep-red Wyoming House seat by a Trump-backed primary opponent in 2022.

Cheney responded to Trump’s comments overnight, saying: “This is how dictators destroy free nations.”     



Trump is a danger to this country.  He cannot be allowed back in the White House.  We have all got to vote in this election.


As for his continued lies about transgender operations taking place at schools?  

Maybe he's scared or insulted.  Maybe someone's suggested to him that he have top surgery?

Watch Dave Bautista in the video below.


2.2. million views in less than two weeks.  "He's got jugs.  Big ones.  Like Dolly Parton," Dave notes. So maybe people have suggested breast reduction surgery to Donald one time too many and that's what has him obsessing over trans surgery?  Donald, don't panic.  Just buy yourself a bra.




Over the course of just four years, male voters under 30 have shifted a net of 14 points towards Republicans, according to polling by the Harvard Kennedy School of Politics.

Citing inflation, immigration, the withering of the American dream, the left’s war on “toxic masculinity,” and the former president’s ability to bro-out with their favorite podcasters, young men told The Post what made them ready to get behind Trump this November.

“As far as young male voters are concerned, I feel like the Democrats have no message for them. The Democrats have totally ignored that base,” Alex Bruesewitz, a 27-year-old campaign advisor for Trump, told The Post.


Is that what the incel feels?  He's been for Trump since he could vote.  He published a (bad, really bad) book in 2022 with additional lies because that's what a liar does.  And I guess Rikki's a liar as well since no research was done before rushing to quote the impotent male.

That's what's behind this -- impotency.  

"Toxic masculinity."  The term's been misunderstood by many -- especially by idiots like Impotent Alex.  

Masculinity is not toxic.  No feminist has argued that.  There is a strand of masculinity that is toxic.  That's the sort that bullies and batters.  

And while that strand is toxic, it doesn't just apply to men.  Ava and I long ago dubbed Ellen Barkin's Smurf on  ANIMAL KINGDOM as the best example of toxic masculinity -- see 2017's "TV: Conventions ingrained."

It's a point lost on Alex who'd rather spend time styling his hair -- what a big strong man he is using hairspray for his professional photo on AMAZON! -- than actually thinking.

These impotent incels worship a fat man with droopy boobs who craps himself -- as DeSantis' campaign kept whispering to the press (DeSantis had an accident in a Congressional bathroom, Trump knew about it and made jokes about it and whispered it to the press, in response DeSantis' campaign tried to get it known that Trump was crapping himself due to his age) -- and that's because they never learned what masculinity was -- toxic or otherwise.  

That's why they are afloat and aimless. Alex wanted to run against a sitting Republican in the House and thought he could win because he's just that stupid.  Then it was pointed out to him that the gay rumors swirl around him like no one since George Michael, that he's accomplished nothing with his life, and that his would be opponent was a  military veteran who served in Iraq (really served, not in some glorified steno pad like Miss Sassy).  Even though the US House Rep stepped down, the humiliating reality that Alex was greeted with prevented him from running for office.  Maybe he can get some life experience?

Incels do feel powerless and do dream of  Donald Trump's massive, saggy boobs.  

When I was gifted with a drive of Glenn Greenwald's web life -- it was left with my agent by someone I do not know -- a number of outlets were interested.  But then I guess it just didn't look believable.  That these incels could be as disgusting as they actually are.  But now they realize that, yes, that wasn't just Glenn's weird surfing habits, this was an actual movement of weak and powerless men trying to beat up women, beat up Black men and force themselves on gay men (submissives into humiliation like Glenn).  That is MAGA.  They pretend otherwise, but that is who they are.  And their violence against women was especially disturbing.  And you can find all that garbage on Elon Musk's Twitter.  

They're also strangely obsessed with Hasan Piker.  In the last few months, we've highlighted some videos by Hasan.  But when that drive was dropped off, I had no idea that Hasan was a real person.  I thought maybe he was a character on some teen show.  But they have all these fantasies -- these MAGA 'men' - of "breaking" Hasan -- of Charlie Kirk spanking him over the knee on live television, of them 'breeding' him, etc etc.  They are incels and they get really excited about sex with men despite their use of the f-term and their supposed hatred of gay men.

Since we're bringing up Glenn, the prisoner claiming to have had a relationship with Glenn, who's due out of prison shortly?  He specializes in humiliating other men.  So if he and Glenn did have a relationship, as the prisoner claims, let's be clear that Glenn was paying for degradation and humiliation.   Severe degradation and humiliation. 

Back to old man Trump, the busty babe the incels worship.  Meanwhile, Brad Reed (RAW STORY) reports:



Former President Donald Trump's most recent campaign speeches are not nearly as succinct or energetic as they once were, and riddled with gaffes, according to a new National Public Radio review.
The 78-year-old Trump's speeches are marked by "lower energy" and also a tendency to go off on "nonsensical tangents," NPR reported Tuesday. What's more, Trump seems to at times have difficulty recalling very basic vocabulary.

"When ad-libbing about a visit to a McDonald’s where he served food to supporters in a campaign stunt meant to attack Vice President [Kamala] Harris, he couldn’t remember the word fryer," NPR reported.

During the event, Trump reportedly said he took French fries "right out of whatever the hell they may come out of.”


Senile and getting worse.  Melody Schreiber (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports:

In June 2019, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Samoa with his anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, meeting with local anti-vaxxers and government officials at a time when the country’s measles vaccine was under attack. Prominent anti-vax voices, including CHD, blamed the vaccine for two infant deaths the prior year, even after the true reason was discovered. Amid the swirling misinformation, vaccine rates plummeted from 60–70 percent to 31 percent.

A few months after RFK Jr.’s visit, measles swept through the freshly vulnerable Pacific island nation, killing 83 Samoans—mostly children. Kennedy doubled down, writing to the Samoan prime minister to question whether a “defective vaccine” was responsible for the outbreak. Even two years later, in 2021, Kennedy called a Samoan anti-vaxxer who had reportedly discouraged people from getting vaccinated during the 2019 crisis a “medical freedom hero.” Kennedy has also insisted for years, against all available scientific evidence, that vaccines cause autism, blaming them for a “holocaust” in the United States.
 

This week, Kennedy told supporters that if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins, he has promised Kennedy “control of the public health agencies,” including the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnik later denied that Kennedy would have a job with HHS—although, at the same time, he said Kennedy had convinced him to pull vaccines from the market. Trump himself, at his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, seemed to lend credence to the idea of Kennedy leading on health: “I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on medicines,” Trump said. Trump also said on a three-hour podcast episode with Joe Rogan last week that he’s told Kennedy, “Focus on health, focus—you can do whatever you want.” It’s not clear whether such a promise would have been made in exchange for Kennedy’s political endorsement, which would be illegal. But if Kennedy were to be put in charge of HHS, he would be leading the executive department that oversees the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, among others. In the meantime, Kennedy is an honorary co-chair on the Trump transition team, and claims to be “deeply involved in helping to choose the people who can run FDA, NIH, and CDC.”

In his own speech at Madison Square Garden, Kennedy took aim at Democrats, saying they were once “the party that wanted to protect public health, and women’s sports”—a bizarre pairing that highlights his recent pivot to attacking trans athletes and gender-affirming care. Kennedy, who ran as a Democratic and then independent presidential candidate before throwing his support behind Trump, is also spreading misinformation on chronic health issues such as obesity, diabetes, drug overdoses, and autism; on Tuesday, for example, he said diabetes could be “cured with good food.” In his Sunday speech, Kennedy characterized Trump as a president who would “protect our children … and women’s sports,” as well as “end the corruption at the federal agencies—at FDA, at NIH, at CDC, and at the CIA”—a constellation of bodies rarely joined together, which he implied are conducting surveillance upon and acting against the interests of the American people.

“This unbridled assault on science and scientists, it’s highly destabilizing for the country,” Baylor College of Medicine dean Peter Hotez, author of The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science, told me earlier this year, a few months after Kennedy announced his run. But it’s not just Kennedy—Trump and other Republicans in Congress are also leading the charge to undermine expertise and further erode public trust in the government, he said. “This is what authoritarianism is all about,” Hotez said, lamenting “the collateral damage that it’s going to do to our democracy” and pointing to the ways Stalin portrayed scientists as public enemies during the Great Purge.





Junior as Secretary of HHS?  That's the death Donald wants to sentence us all too.  

He is a menace who must be defeated at the ballot box -- a fact most Americans recognize.  Susan Benjamin -- better known by her stage name Medea -- has never been one to express patriotism so her decision to put her name to another column written by the man who controls her really isn't a surprise nor is its nonsense of pretending grifter Jill Stein is the 2024 answer for the United States.  

No link to trash -- and Susan made it clear she was trash when she wanted to share the stage with the Proud Boys because cameras would be present.  We will, however, note this comment to her garbage:


Mitchell_Zimmerman
6h

Benjamin and Davies write: “Most Americans have been persuaded that Stein cannot win the election.” It’s not a matter of being “persuaded”, any more than we are “persuaded” that Trump did not win the last election. It’s simply a fact. No one seriously imagines that Jill Stein will get more than a few percent of the votes anywhere, so I don’t understand what is served by encouraging anyone to think maybe she’'ll actually win. It’s not honest.
I also don’t see that we should regard voting for Jill Stein as just another individual decision, for which no one need be apologetic. If it leads to a disaster, you should feel bad about it. And it very well may.
I’ve fleshed out some of the reasons voting for the Green Party is destructive, in these pages; I won’t repeat them all. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/kamala-harris-gaza-2669543360.
Two points. First, I don’t see how anyone here can honestly take the position it doesn’t matter whether Trump or Harris is elected. We now have a full fledged fascist party, the Republican Party. The Democrats are far from a fascist party. Are progressives so locked into hating the Democrats that they cannot see the dangers of fascism? Is Gaza the sole issue that matters? Not whether we have a president who plans to deport 11 million people? Not climate change, not the elimination of honestly counted elections? Not abortion rights? Not whether reactionaries control the Supreme Court for another generation?
Yes, I know the Democratic Party is a capitalist party dominated by capital. But that doesn’t mean all the differences between Democrats and Republicans are trivial. I’m actually mystified anyone could believe that or pretend to.
Second, on whether building a third party is a realistic goal: There are structural issues that make this very challenging in a political system with single member districts, as opposed to multiparty list systems. The single-member district system pushes very hard toward two major parties. The trend is supported by the fact that – as is obviously the case here – third parties tend to injure the party closest to them, and voters grasp that, actually, yes, the lesser of two “evils” is better than the worse of two evils. Especially when the supposedly ideal party has no plan that would lead to victory.
Below is the Green Party’s percentage of the popular vote for President for every presidential election of this century:
2000 2.74%
2004 0.38%
2008 0.10%
2012 0.36%
2016 1.07%
2020 0.26%

There have been downs and ups. But the Greens have had more than twenty years, and we see no progression toward the Green Party playing a significant role in American politics. Other than as a spoiler.
Can someone explain to me what the plan is to break out of this role, in which the Greens are either irrelevant or destructive?


There is no plan.  The Greens committed political suicide this year by making Jill their presidential nominee for the third time. At 74, she's too old to run.  The Green Party was supposed to be a different party, a new party.  Yet they've run Jill three times now.  And she just gets older.  They could have made a break with the past, they could've run someone young and vital.  Instead, they went with tired, old Jill making it clear that there is no life left in the party.  

Jill's a gifter and a con artist sitting on millions but her fans don't know that.  Just like they didn't know she even had children, let alone that they weren't voting for mom.  

She's a grifter and a con artist.  

Maybe in 2025, the Green Party can rebuild and maybe they'll start focusing on real races and on building up a presence in the US Congress?  








LeBron James endorsed Kamala yesterday and Tavis Smiley participated in a discussion about that on CNN.




 I believe today's the last day of early voting in states that allow it.  Absentee ballots need to be mailed off as well.  Tuesday will conclude voting.  We have to vote.

And we have to vote wisely.

But we have to do more than that.

I'm tired and I know you're tired.  We've all done everything we could.  Or we think we have.

None of us like having to justify ourselves.  Having to explain ourselves.

Dana Bash tried to pull that trick on Kamala, remember.  'Trump says you're not Black.'  Whether it's your race, your gender, your sexuality, your religion, your ethnicity, whatever.  We are a nation of people with various possibilities and traits.  And we don't often fit the straight, White,  hateful model that Donald Trump represents.  

But we do usually have friends and lovers and spouses that care about us but may not grasp how much is at stake this election.  It can really be tiring to feel that you are always having to explain yourself to other people or to justify yourself.  But if you know even one undecided voter or one voter planning on staying at home and sitting this election out, there's one more thing you can do and that's share your own story with that person.  Share what Trump back in the White House means for you, how your life will suffer.  Try to enlarge just one person's understanding of how much damage Trump can cause to someone they know.  

The election will wrap up Tuesday night.  I think Kamala's run a great campaign.  I think she's brought real hope that we did not have in June -- 'we' meaning We The People as well as the Democrats running for office lower on the ballot.  She's done an amazing job in such a short time.  When I started THE COMMON ILLS, it was right after the 2004 election and it was after a meeting where we talked about what worked and what failed and what we could do differently.  Since starting THE COMMON ILLS, I have campaigned to end the Iraq War but not for politicians.  I haven't used this space for that.  But this is a very important election that determines the fate of our country and whether or not we have a democracy.

We've spoken in 48 states since Kamala became the nominee (all but Hawaii and Alaska) and there is so much excitement for Kamala to be our next president.  But to make that happen, we need everyone to vote.  So if you know anyone on the fence, please reach out to them this weekend.  And if you have the time on Tuesday to drive someone to the polls so they can vote, consider doing that.

Every vote counts -- even 'safe' states.  We've got until Tuesday and then we can all take a deep breath again.

Lastly, a number of e-mails on why I didn't post in the afternoon yesterday.  I did:


I just posted them to THIRD by mistake.  I was in the wrong account and didn't even realize it.  That's how tired and exhausted I am.  But we're almost there.



The following sites updated:

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