Hurricane Helene Disrupted Abortion Care in the South– www.scientificamerican.com Source Link Excerpt:
CLIMATEWIRE | ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — North Carolina’s only abortion provider west of Charlotte has been closed since Hurricane Helene because it lacks potable water.
The monthlong closure of the Asheville Planned Parenthood has forced patients to travel hours for care. It has also strained other abortion clinics in North Carolina, which have seen increases in appointments over the last two years as neighboring states have limited or banned procedures following the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court.
“This is a very harmful loss of access for patients in North Carolina and also surrounding states and region,” said Julia Walker, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. “But this would not have been such a harmful and impactful storm if we had laws that allowed more access for people to obtain care.”
Most Republican states have made voting harder since 2020. Our research shows how successful they’ve been – The Conversation Source Link Excerpt:
In late September, the governor of the state of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, boasted that election officials had removed 453,000 people from the state’s voter rolls since 2021. In a state with only 2.3 million registered voters, it appears that roughly one in six registered voters had been purged.
While some of these people were dead or disfranchised owing to felony convictions, nearly 200,000 of them were removed for being “inactive voters”. This means they likely failed to respond to a postcard sent to their mailing address.
Voters can re-register if they were incorrectly removed, but this “voter list maintenance” process still creates a barrier to democratic participation.
This bucks the national trend. Overall, across the United States, electoral turnout has increased in presidential and midterm elections since 2018. Americans feel, now more than ever, that elections have high stakes.
And some states have made it easier to vote. Minnesota, for example, allows voters to register online or at the polls on Election Day.
‘Morning Joe’ Host Accuses Trump Of Killing People– trendingpoliticsnews.com Source Link Excerpt:
Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” delivered a dramatic monologue on Thursday, accusing Donald Trump of “killing women” and endangering their safety. The fiery rant, which appeared more like an emotional outburst than reasoned analysis, was triggered by a controversial Atlantic article, published ahead of the 2024 presidential election, which alleges that Trump admires Hitler’s generals and disregards military service.
“His cozying up to dictators, his obsession with Hitler that has now come out, what he has said about our veterans, and what he wants to do with the military against his political adversaries, it’s all huge news,” she said. “This is the future that we’re looking at in the next Trump term, if there is one,” she claimed, appearing visibly frustrated.
“But this is what voters know right now, that he is killing us. I’m talking about us women. He’s killing us.” Brzezinski said while laced with hyperbole. “He is putting us at risk. He is making us afraid to have babies. He is putting our reproductive health at risk, and some women have died already because of this.”
Former model says Donald Trump groped her during Trump Tower visit with Jeffrey Epstein in 1993 – US politics live | US politics– www.theguardian.com Source Link Excerpt:
A former model has told the Guardian that Donald Trump groped her at his Manhattan tower in 1993, after she was introduced to the real estate mogul by notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Stacey Williams said Trump put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and buttocks in their brief meeting, unwanted touching that left her “deeply confused”.
Kamala Harris Asks Americans: Are You Really Going to Elect a Guy Who Has Good Things to Say About Hitler?– www.vanityfair.com Source Link Excerpt:
With 13 days to go until the election, Kamala Harris laid out in the starkest terms possible the choice Americans face when they head to the ballot box in less than two weeks: They can vote to elect a man who thinks Adolph Hilter is someone to emulate, or they can vote for a woman who has never said a good thing about a genocidal maniac.
Speaking outside the Naval Observatory on Wednesday, Harris responded to a new story from The AtlanticdetailingDonald Trump’s infatuation with dictators, the negative things he has allegedly had to say about members of the armed forces, and the positive remarks he has allegedly made about people like Hitler, all of which he of course denies.
“Yesterday, we learned that Donald Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired four-star general, confirmed that while Donald Trump was president, he said he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had,” Harris told reporters. “Donald Trump said that because he does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution. He wants a military that is loyal to him. He wants a military who will be loyal to him personally, one that will obey his orders even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States. In just the past week, Donald Trump has repeatedly called his fellow Americans the ‘enemy from within’ and even said that he would use the United States military to go after American citizens.”
GOP launches new civil war in last days of the election– www.dailykos.com Source Link Excerpt:
Less than two weeks remain until the election that will determine which political party controls the House of Representatives, but House Republicans are already battling over how they would run the chamber come January 2025.
Control of the House remains a toss-up, with forecasting models giving Democrats a slight edge to regain the majority. But if Republicans do maintain control, it looks like they will have a difficult time even agreeing on how to govern themselves, Politico reported.
While Speaker Mike Johnson and his allies would gladly nuke the archaic “motion to vacate” rule, a small group of right-wing members wants to preserve the provision that allows a single member to force a vote to oust the speaker of the House, according to Politico. That same faction used this tool to boot Kevin McCarthy in October 2023, a mere 269 days after he was elected speaker following a humiliating 15-round voting marathon.
The latest report of infighting is just another embarrassing display from the GOP, which has barely been able to govern with a narrow majority.
Could US-China military ties endure the turbulence of another Trump presidency? – scmp.com Source Link Excerpt:
The presidential race betweenDonald TrumpandKamala Harriscomes at a time of rising geopolitical tensions on multiple fronts. In the 10th report of anin-depth series, Amber Wang looks at how the candidate’s attitudes to the US military could shape the future of US-China military relations.
A victory for Donald Trump in the coming US presidential election next month could inject greater unpredictability and complexity into US-China military relations, given the former president’s history of friction with military officials, analysts warned.
US Vice-President Kamala Harris, who recently vowed to continue military communications with Beijing, is more likely to stick to President Joe Biden’s policies countering China, offering greater certainty if she wins the election, they said.
“If he [Trump] becomes president, his relationship with the military will be complex and potentially tense, although, broadly speaking, the military must obey the [orders from the] president,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor at Renmin University’s School of International Studies in Beijing.
Trump wanted ‘Hitler’s generals’ claims former White House chief of staff– www.euronews.com Source Link Excerpt:
Once an ally of the former president, General John Kelly also called Trump a “fascist” in an interview with US media.
John Kelly warned on Tuesday that the Republican nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office he suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “did some good things.”
The comments from the retired Marine general, who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, build on past warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final two weeks.
Kelly has long been critical of Trump and previously accused him of calling veterans killed in combat “suckers” and “losers.” His latest warning emerged as Trump seeks a second term in which he has vowed to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers “enemies from within.”
LA Times Owner Exposes Editorial Board’s Bias After Refusing to Draft Balanced Analysis of Trump and Kamala Harris Policies — Opts for Silence Instead of Informing Voters | The Gateway Pundit– www.thegatewaypundit.com Source Link Excerpt:
Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong
California’s largest far-left newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, has declined to endorse a candidate in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
The paper is now drawing fire for its decision to stay silent on the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
The decision to withhold an endorsement for Harris, their home-state candidate, is a striking indicator of her waning support, even in the heart of liberal California.
Insiders suggest the driving force behind this decision was the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who allegedly blocked the editorial board from endorsing Harris.
Sources close to the board revealed that they had intended to back Harris once again, as they did during her runs for California Attorney General and U.S. Senate. However, Soon-Shiong reportedly stepped in, directing the board to remain neutral this cycle.
ABC Unglued Over Kelly Claims, Lectures Trump Voters on ‘Damning’ News– www.newsbusters.org Source Link Excerpt:
ABC’s Good Morning America went full bore against half the country on Wednesday, going all out with over 10 minutes (10:28) of hyperbolic tailspins eagerly touting as fact wild claims from former White House chief of staff John Kelly that Donald Trump is a fascist, danger to democracy and the American people, and enthralled with Adolf Hitler.
In turn, they hurled nothing but venom toward Trump and his supporters as they were calmly soothed by Vice President Harris’s camp.
Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos — whoviews defeating Trump as a duty — gushed over the “truly extraordinary breaking news this morning” of Kelly “speaking out with things you have never heard before from someone who has served a president.”
Trump denigrates Harris as ‘lazy,’ invoking racist trope against Black people– www.denverpost.com Source Link Excerpt:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday called his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris “lazy,” criticizing the vice president with a word long used to demean Black people in racist terms.
“Who the hell takes off when you have 14 days left,” Trump said at a campaign event in Doral, Florida, aimed at courting Latino voters. “She’s lazy. She’s lazy as hell.”
Harris was spending Tuesday in meetings in Washington, D.C., and was scheduled to sit for recorded interviews with Telemundo and NBC to air Tuesday evening. It was the first day in more than two weeks that the Democratic nominee had no public events scheduled after a run of more than 14 consecutive days of travel to political events in pivotal states, including a three-state run on Monday, starting in Pennsylvania, continuing to Michigan and ending in Wisconsin.
Trump has often characterized Harris as weak and challenged her mental competence, as he did again Tuesday, referring to her as “slow” and as someone with a “low IQ.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Harris, noted that Trump canceled a Tuesday afternoon town hall with allies Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard before his evening rally in North Carolina.
“Donald Trump continuing his recent trend of canceling campaign events… With just two weeks to go…,” wrote Sams on X. “Granted, this one seemed like a real peach, so don’t blame them for wanting to call it off!”
CNN commentator Says White People Need To Be Held Accountable If They Don’t Vote For Kamala– www.louderwithcrowder.com Source Link Excerpt:
CNN commentator Angela Rye has declared that “White folks” should not be permitted to “escape the accountability that they must face for not showing up to save democracy.”
Firstly, no one gives a crap about what pin candidates wear. Secondly, how do these people make these things up with a straight face? And thirdly, how immature does one have to be to tell yourself happy birthday while trashing the majority of people in this country?
“I think it is a mistake to let white folks escape the accountability that they must face for not showing up to save democracy.”
It’s also pretty ironic how she claims a certain skin color must vote a certain way in the most undemocratic election in American history for a candidate no one elected. But that is the lack of logic these people use, as making sense is not something they do.
What was even the point of this rant? Did she think it would win over swing voters? Because at best, she sounds like she’s trying to intimate Americans and at worst, she sounds like the lunatic she is. And the fact that some people actually listen to that and think she’s smart is a scandal in itself.
Elon Musk Gives Democrats a Chance to Run Against Oligarchy – thenation.com Source Link Excerpt:
Donald Trump’s richest supporter has been busy finding new ways to corrupt democracy.
American campaign finance laws are so ridiculously lax—thanks to a string of Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United (2010), which loosened restrictions on dark money—that it is hard to imagine a scenario where a rich person would get into legal trouble for swaying an election. Even so, Elon Musk, reportedly the world’s richest man, with a net worth of more than $240 billion, is pushing his luck with actions that, at the very least, merit criminal investigation.
For the duration of the election, Musk has set up camp in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where he’s offering a $100 reward to anyone who signs a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments (in effect, standard right-wing agitprop)—with the possibility of a further $1 million prize for any registered voter who signs the petition.
In Michigan, Voting Rights Groups Are Preparing to Counter ‘Anti-Voter’ Activists on Election Day– readsludge.com Source Link Excerpt:
On Election Night 2020, there was commotion at the convention center in downtown Detroit, Michigan, where absentee ballots were being counted. Republican groups had called for a wave of supporters to show up at the site, and many of them raised claims of election fraud. Democratic and nonpartisan election groups dispatched volunteers to be present as well, adding to the crowds. The rush of volunteers who showed up—about double the permitted number of challengers at the site—initially flooded the counting floor at the arena, then called the TCF Center, in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hundreds of poll challengers roamed the basement where ballots were piled, with one observer urging her colleagues to “challenge every single ballot.” Some observers ignored the rule keeping their distance to an allowed 6 feet away from the counters, and began encircling tables and chanting “stop the count.” Some of those present had to be removed from the floor by police, like one challenger in a white full-face mask who yelled that the process was “crooked,” and protestors later banged on windows to the counting room. On social media, fevered claims circulated, like a photo of ballots supposedly being imported on a wagon—though the supposed proof was a snapshot of a local news photographer moving equipment.
But after election administrators worked in the tense atmosphere until Thursday at 4:30 am, the Detroit ballots were counted, the Detroit Free Press wrote. Chris Thomas, a former director of elections for the Michigan Secretary of State who worked under the administrations of both parties, worked to fact-check claims on social media, saying he was “extremely confident” in Detroit’s vote-counting process.
Video: Sludge’s David Moore speaks with Kate Mason, election protection coordinator at Michigan United, about statewide efforts to safeguard the 2024 elections.
A couple weeks later, the Michigan appeals court rejected as “not credible” a Republican legal challenge to the counting of absentee ballots in Detroit. On Nov. 18, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers—after an initial refusal by its two Republican members—certified the election results.
Learning from the 2020 experience, election administrators oversaw a smoother ballot counting process in the 2022 midterms, ensuring that the downtown Detroit site was free of chaos. Two Republican statewide candidates who had denied the 2020 election result, gubernatorial challenger Tudor Dixon and state attorney general challenger Matt DePerno, conceded their races the day after voting.
A worker with the Detroit Department of Elections sort through absentee ballots at the Central Counting Board in the TCF Center on Nov. 2, 2020. (Photo by Elaine Cromie/Getty Images)
Now in the 2024 election, the nonpartisan coalition Michigan United is working to counter voter suppression tactics and address the disenfranchisement of marginalized communities by countering what it calls “anti-voter challengers.”
The nonprofit Michigan United was formed in 2013 out of a statewide coalition of churches, labor, and community groups working to strengthen democracy, defend civil rights, and promote a fair economy. Sludge spoke with attorney Kate Mason, election protection coordinator with the group, about how its poll monitor program assists voters at polling places and feeds updates to a statewide election protection coalition.
“Our election protection work is not about any candidate or party, it is 100% nonpartisan,” Mason said. “It is about making sure that our elections here are free, fair, safe, and accessible.”
A key part of the group’s election work is its poll monitor program. The poll monitors, part of what the group calls its “rapid-response program,” call in reports from polling places to a statewide hub. The group will also work closely with Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office to do a postmortem after the election.
Another part, a nonpartisan challenger program, is more specialized, requiring that challengers be credentialed by an organization or party.
“Some anti-voter challengers will try to make challenges, the vast majority of which are not permissible in the absentee voter counting room,” Mason said. “Our role is to make sure we know the rules backwards and forwards so we’re helping support the floor supervisors, election administrators, and let them do their job.”
Michigan United election protection program members (photo via Michigan United)
Michigan is a premier battleground state this year, with the presidential race polling neck-and-neck, a toss-up race for U.S. Senate, several close contests for U.S. House, and other state races on the ballot such as for the Michigan House, the Michigan Supreme Court, and state education boards.
In March, the Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit, RNC v. Benson, alleging that Michigan has failed to keep its voter rolls up to date under the National Voter Registration Act, a complaint that the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice moved to dismiss, representing the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Michigan. The Brennan Center described the RNC’s case as a continuation of conservative activists’ efforts in Michigan in recent years to sow unfounded doubts about the quality of the state’s voter rolls—and push jurisdictions into purging eligible voters.
Mason said that a Michigan United poll monitor volunteer might encounter unclear signage at a polling place, a voter seeking translation assistance, a voter who needs to look up their precinct information on the secretary of state’s website, or a recalcitrant poll worker.
Michigan United training of nonpartisan election challengers, part of the coalition’s election protection program (Michigan United)
Conservative groups have made a concerted effort since the last election to recruit more poll watchers. For example, a Conservative Partnership Institute project called the Election Integrity Network has been working to recruit what its leader, Cleta Mitchell has described as “a volunteer army of citizens” to counter what she says is Democratic bias in election offices.
In 2021, Michigan Senate Republicans introduced a package of bills that would restrict voting access, including a ban on mailing absentee ballot applications to all registered voters. Grassroots groups in the Defend Black Voters coalition pushed back with a campaign against the legislation, including by calling on large Michigan companies to cut off donations to any politician who supported the bills. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed the restrictive voting measures in 2021, and in 2023 signed a package of election reform bills that expanded access to voting.
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Donald Trump has not committed to accepting the election results if he loses, and as many conservative legislators and candidates echo claims of a “stolen” 2020 election, many voters are still inclined to believe, without evidence, in widespread election fraud. In March, the nonprofit organization States United Action released a report finding that 31 Michigan state legislators met the criteria of undermining the integrity of the 2020 election based on baseless legal theories. A count published by USA Today, not long after the 2020 contest, found that 61 of 62 pro-Trump legal challenges to the results of the presidential election failed, due to lack of standing or on the merits.
A strong majority of Michigan voters adopted a new law in 2018 allowing every eligible voter to request an absentee ballot, and this year already more than 670,000 voters have submitted their completed ballots, according to the secretary of state’s office. Detroit has opted to start its in-person early voting on Oct. 19, and Canton Township and East Lansing will begin on Oct. 21, with most Michigan jurisdictions beginning early voting on Oct. 26.
Trump Parrots Putin’s Talking Points On Ukraine– crooksandliars.com Source Link Excerpt:
During an interview with Patrick Bet-David on the PBD podcast, Trump blamed Ukraine President Zelensky and President Biden for Russia’s unprovoked and bloody attack on Ukraine, which started the war.
“I think Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen,” Trump said. “Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion. Who else got that kind of money? In history, there’s never been.”
President Zelensky didn’t have to sell anything. Russia thought they could swoop in and take over Ukraine in a blink of an eye with their assault and they failed.
“But he should never have let that war start,” he said. “That war is a loser.”
WTF? Loser for who? How would Biden stop the war? Maybe a Trumpian love letter to Putin would have done the trick. Ukrainians are fighting for their lives and their country. They did not attack Russia. Maybe Trump misremembered.
TRUMP: Ukraine, remember, is not Ukraine anymore. Every city almost is knocked down to the ground. All those beautiful golden domes are laying on their side, smashed to smithereens. There’s no city.
You go into the city, and every building is demolished.
It looks like a demolition crew went through.
They’ve been hit by missiles.
Ukraine being attacked and invaded and they survived should be celebrated, not demeaned. Putin’s Comms director couldn’t have said it better.
TRUMP: This should have been settled before it started.
It would have been so easy. If we had a president with half a brain, it would have been easy to settle.
And I’m not, you know, everyone would say, oh, this is terrible, he’s blaming Biden.
I do largely blame Biden.
If you watch his words, his words were the exact opposite of what he should have been saying.
He instigated that war.
Why are Ukrainian buildings destroy and their people dead? Vladimir Putin did it, idiot.
This is complete garbage. It’s unseemly that a former US president would blame his successor and defend an enemy state like Russia for their invasion of a US ally.
Vladimir Putin has never had a stronger vocal supporter in the entire world than Von Shitzinpants.
An article in The National Interest has highlighted a potential critical fail in America’s war strategy, especially as it relates to her number one threat, China. The article highlights the development of one American Ford Class Aircraft Carrier, $13 billion, contrasted with a Chinese Frigate armed with hypersonic missiles, operating at a fraction of the cost of an aircraft carrier.
The world is building cheap systems to destroy carriers while America continues to direct more of its resources to these increasingly legacy platforms. The game-changer is the hypersonic missile, though, as of yet, no country has demonstrated reliable accuracy with these missiles, it is only a matter of time before that part is mastered as well, and then America’s massive military advantage, its aircraft carriers, will be over.
The Navy Is Freaked: The Age of Big Warships Is Just About Done – nationalinterest.org Source Link Excerpt:
What You Need to Know: The dominance of large surface warships, especially aircraft carriers, is increasingly threatened by advanced anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems developed by adversaries like China. Hypersonic missiles and other sophisticated weapons, such as China’s Dong-Feng 26B, pose a significant risk to these expensive platforms.
-The U.S. Navy’s reliance on carriers is becoming a liability in potential conflicts, as seen in Russia’s losses during the Ukraine War.
-To counter A2/AD threats, the U.S. must expand its submarine fleet, develop unmanned drones, and invest in hypersonic weapons. However, the Navy continues to prioritize legacy systems like carriers over future-proof solutions.
For centuries, navies around the world have taken pride in their large surface warships. The dominance of these warships persisted even after the advent of submarines. In fact, during the Second World War, when submarines became a primary weapons platform for navies, the aircraft carrier stole all the headlines.
Today, however, things are changing…
The rise of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) means that the large surface warship’s days as the primary form of power projection in a naval fleet are coming to an end.
Consider that the Ford-class aircraft carrier, America’s newest, costs $13 billion per unit, plus hundreds of millions of dollars per year to maintain. The more numerous Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, while older than the Ford-class, are also very expensive.
An aircraft carrier is a large, highly complex warship. Its purpose is to maneuver a floating airbase near the territory of an enemy in order to threaten that rival with precise and consistent airstrikes.
Yet for a fraction of the cost, China’s Dong-Feng 26B missile can either sink an aircraft carrier outright or simply destroy its flight deck, rendering the carrier useless in battle.
The carrier is the primary means of American power projection. Its absence or limitation leaves a critical gap in U.S. military capabilities. That is a strategic gap that a rival like China can easily exploit.
It’s not just aircraft carriers that are vulnerable to China’s growing anti-ship capabilities. Other surface warships are also targets.
The Chinese military has developed a growing coterie of hypersonic weapons capabilities that it is planning to launch against incoming U.S. warships. Whatever defenses those warships have against conventional anti-ship missiles, there are no known countermeasures on U.S. warships to protect against these hypersonic systems.
According to an arrest affidavit, Sayers Sr. is accused of shooting a man in the head during a child’s birthday party Saturday evening at Pioneer Park in Commerce City. The victim, identified as Malcolm Watson, is believed to be a friend of the man once believed to have killed Sayers Sr.’s son.
Watson, 28, was pronounced dead at the scene with three gunshot wounds.
Lumumba Sayers Jr., who was also an MMA fighter and anti-gun violence advocate, and another man were killed in a quadruple shooting near the intersection of 28th and Welton streets on Aug. 19, 2023.
Despite these seemingly contradictory outcomes, there is a through line.
In both cases, the justices gave partisan state legislatures more power to craft congressional districts and overruled the lower federal courts that had ordered state legislatures to draw new maps.
President Biden told the nation that he has always personally authorized that Trump, as a former president and the Republican nominee, has the highest level of security.
The alleged shooter, a 20-year-old, used an AR-15-style rifle. Cleese did not mention there are 28,144,000 such rifles in circulation, yet only one of those more than 28 million guns was used in that heinous fashion.
CBS ran a news special on Sunday night after President Biden’s remarks in the Oval Office. CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell interviewed former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and dragged him right back to January 6 to discuss how rhetoric has grown hotter. Typically, CBS didn’t include itself in the atmosphere of overheated rhetoric.
Kevin McCarthy came on CBS, and Norah O’Donnell went right to January 6. McCarthy said it was important to tone down the rhetoric, so Norah asked TWICE if he pushed Trump around on that point. pic.twitter.com/W2ZkX5ZiCr
O’DONNELL: You were speaker of the house on January 6th. We spoke that day. We were live on the air for more than ten hours or so, and I remember our conversation vividly, because you called on the president, to come forward, come before the cameras, and ask for the violence to stop. And you said, this should be a moment that brings us together, not divides us. But it’s almost like the rhetoric’s gotten hotter since then.
The Washington Post shamelesslyjumped right into the “no evidence” game on Sunday when Republicans complained that all of the Left’s routinely extreme demonization of Donald Trump could inspire violence. Michael Scherer’s headline jumped right in:
Trump allies immediately blame Biden, Democrats for their rhetoric
Supporters argued that Democratic portrayals of Trump as a threat to democracy led to the violence, though the shooter’s motive was not apparent at the time of their remarks.
This is how a paper proves they’re a Democrat rag at the worst possible time. Let’s guess that if Trump has been seriously wounded, the Post would have done this story just the same way. They can’t acknowledge that this is a favorite leftist tactic, to connect conservative speech to violence…and then suggest the tactic cannot be reversed.
The president deftly avoids the trap of surrendering his critique of MAGA lawlessness.
Joe Biden delivers a nationally televised address from the Oval Office of the White House on July 14, 2024.(Erin Schaff-Pool / Getty Images)
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday has upturned the political world, not least the reelection campaign of Joe Biden. Trump, empowered now with a dramatic photo showing him defiantly raising his fist after being fired on, has assumed the role of a righteous and perhaps divinely protected victim. In response, could Biden really carry on with his planned strategy of highlighting Trump’s threat to American democracy?
Some of Biden’s political allies were so demoralized they seem to have preemptively surrendered. On Sunday, Axiosquoted a “senior House Democrat” as saying, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez correctly responded to this comment by noting, “If you’re a ‘senior Democrat’ that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism. This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people. Retire.”
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