Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

...so he used the media for the best campaign speech he’s ever delivered.

After a day of historic indignity — spent getting booked and arraigned at a Manhattan courthouse — former president Donald Trump retreated to his safe space, Mar-a-Lago, where he delivered an embittered televised address to the nation.

Trump entered his ballroom to the strains of Lee Greenwood’s “I’m Proud to be an American.” The crowd chanted “USA! USA!” as he took the podium in front of a backdrop of American flags, ready to reassert himself after a day of powerlessness in court.

But Trump’s delivery was drained as he rattled through an endless litany of conspiracy and complaint, not only about the day’s criminal proceedings but about the “onslaught of fraudulent investigations” he claims are unfairly targeting him, ranging from “Russia, Russia, Russia,” to the dual impeachment “hoaxes,” to the “boxes hoax” (his new term for his mishandling of classified documents at his Florida resort), to his “persecution” at the hands of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump took advantage of the free air time to proclaim his innocence: “The only crime I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”

A key purpose of Trump’s speech seemed to be priming his faithful for additional prosecutions that may soon be incoming. He blasted the “local racist” prosecutor in Georgia who is investigating his election interference in that state. (In an odd throwback to his impeachment over Ukraine, Trump characterized his haranguing of Georgia election officials as another “perfect phone call.”)

Similarly, Trump trashed the “radical-left lunatic bomb-thrower” Jack Smith, whom Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped to lead federal investigations into his document scandal and his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

And despite a caution from the judge in his Manhattan case to lower the temperature, Trump specifically lashed out at the New York jurist: “I have a Trump-hating judge,” he insisted. He also bashed the Manhattan DA who just indicted him, calling him the “radical-left George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg.”

Trump: I have Trump hating judge with a Trump hating wife and Trump hating family pic.twitter.com/PyAXCWn3mv
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 5, 2023

Throughout his campaign-style speech — in which he name checked the “Hunter Biden laptop from hell” and wove in references to Hillary Clinton’s emails — Trump spun a narrative that he, instead of being the perpetrator of a crime, is now a conservative martyr, subject to baseless political slings and arrows.

To be clear: Trump today was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to illegally cover up a hush money payment to a porn star who alleges she carried on an affair with him beginning in 2006, shortly after the birth of his fifth child to his third wife.

Trump, the charging documents assert, cheated in the 2016 election — orchestrating a payment to Daniels to prevent an explosive story from coming to light that October — and then cheated through his business accounting to cover it up. Trump even used a White House meeting in the Oval Office to shore up the particulars of the crime. Trump’s fixer in this case, his former attorney Michael Cohen, has already served federal prison time for his role in the scheme, and the new charging documents insist that Cohen acted at Trump’s explicit direction.

But from Trump’s perspective, he is blameless.

During his Mar-a-Lago address, Trump insisted, “There’s no case. There’s no case!” Retreating into projection, Trump claimed the prosecutor was the one who should be on trial: “The criminal is the district attorney,” Trump insisted, alleging that Bragg “illegally leaked grand jury information” and should resign.

Cutting his speech short after just half an hour, Trump seemed absorbed by the trauma of the day’s events. When he railed against the “cripled economy,” the shame of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and a nation “going to hell,” he seemed lost in the darkness, a lonely troubled man sunk in his own emotional well. He wants Americans to make him president again.

Another big D L

what, is using her own private abbreviations supposed to confirm her devotion to the MAGA cause or something?

One of the biggest asymmetries in US politics is you cannot speak ill of rural areas—really, you should be gushing praise for them, it’s politically correct, and you’ll get a lot of flak if you don’t—but you can dump on urban areas as much as you want with little to no objection.

Quote:
...so he used the media for the best campaign speech he’s ever delivered.

I swear that in the history of mankind that is greatest **** anyone has ever
produced!!

she said she found New York disgusting, repulsive, a terrible place that smells bad.

Scott Walker@ScottWalker
7h
Younger voters may be the behind the stinging loss for conservatives in WI this week. In Nov, 18- to 29-year-old voters in WI went with the radical candidate by 40 points. Digital ads. Student coalitions. None of these will do it. We have to undo years of liberal indoctrination.

Tennessee Republicans Accused of Racism After Expelling Two Black Lawmakers

Tennessee Republicans are being accused of racism after expelling two Black Democrats from the state House over breaching decorum while participating in a gun control protest.

Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were both expelled from serving in the heavily GOP-controlled chamber on Thursday, one week after they spoke out of turn to support a youth-led protest for gun control, which was held in the wake of the recent deadly shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville.

An effort to expel Democratic Representative Gloria Johnson, who is white, failed by one vote. While Johnson was not holding a bullhorn on the House floor like Jones, there appears to be little or no other difference between the trio of Democrats and their breach of protocol.

Johnson told reporters that her being spared while her Black colleagues were not "may have to do with the color of our skin." She was not alone in accusing Republicans of singling out Jones and Pearson based on race.

"What a blatant attack on democracy in Tennessee today," tweeted Bernice King, daughter of the late civil-rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. "The vote to expel @brotherjones_ is political retaliation and a reflection of a severe moral crisis in our state and national governments."

"So this attack on #democracy is also a #racist attack, as the third lawmaker, Rep. Gloria Johnson, is white," King added later. "A disastrously amoral day for Tennessee House Republicans in a state reeling from a school shooting."

"It is rare, RARE, that you will see racism so surprising that it even catches *black* folks off guard," attorney and political commentator Elie Mystal tweeted. "But, literally nobody I talked to, even as recently as a few hours ago, thought Tennessee would have the unmitigated gall to expel the two black guys and not the white woman."

"Tennessee Republicans just expelled two black men from the legislature for protesting, but allowed the white legislator who did the same to keep her seat," tweeted Olivia Julianna, director of politics and government affairs for the group Gen Z for Change. "This is outright racism. Alive and well at the TN Capitol. We stand with the Tennessee three."

"The[y] expelled the two black men and kept the the white woman!" tweeted Democratic Tennessee State Senator London Lamar. "The racism that is on display today! Wow!"

"This is fascism, full stop," tweeted Congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, also a Democrat. "MAGA Republicans are no longer content with inaction on gun violence—instead of thoughts & prayers they want to silence & expel politicians who speak up to protect children. I vehemently condemn this racist, undemocratic assault on freedom of speech."

In a statement, Representative Steve Cohen, the lone Democrat to represent Tennessee in Washington, D.C., called the move to expel Jones and Pearson "an embarrassing stain on an important democratic institution."

"The targeted expulsions of Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson - two Black duly elected members representing minority districts - makes clear that racism is alive and well in Tennessee," the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement.

"This move is not only racist and anti-democratic, it is morally-bankrupt and out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that we need common sense gun control reforms to save lives," the statement continued.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk reportedly said the social media platform’s recent decision to label NPR as a “state-affiliated media” account might not have been accurate during a series of emails he exchanged with an NPR reporter earlier this week.

“Well, then we should fix it,” Musk wrote in a Wednesday email to the reporter, when he was informed that the U.S. government support represents about 1% of NPR’s finances.

Musk’s comment comes as press freedom advocates have been sounding the alarm about Twitter’s decision to categorize NPR under a label that is typically used by the platform to identify foreign media outlets that represent the official views of their government, like Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua — which have been listed as state-affiliated media on the social media platform for years.

During the email exchanges, Musk also asked for a breakdown of NPR’s annual funding.

In response, NPR provided Musk publicly available documentation of the media organization’s finances, showing that nearly 40% of its funding comes from corporate sponsorships and 31% from fees for programming paid by local public radio stations.

In another email, Musk compared NPR to media outlets controlled by foreign governments, while also admitting “it sounds like” that might not be the case.

“The operating principle at new Twitter is simply fair and equal treatment, so if we label non-US accounts as govt, then we should do the same for US, but it sounds like that might not be accurate here,” he wrote.

But despite Musk’s remarks, as of Friday morning, the label on NPR’s accounts remained. NPR put out a statement decrying the decision and calling the label “unacceptable.” The outlet has since suspended its use of Twitter and said it will not tweet again until the “false disclaimer” is removed.