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Emails are the best way for us to keep in touch with our supporters and deliver important campaign updates – they’re critical to helping Colin defeat Ted Cruz. Colin Allred for Senate |
Thursday, June 6, 2024
Ted Cruz’s election denying interview.
Tuesday, June 4, 2024
6/4/2024 UPDATE: IS THERE A BOTTOM? ARE TRUMP SUPPORTERS SO ETHICALLY CHALLENGED THAT THEY WILL SUPPORT HIM NO MATTER WHAT?
With his recent conviction, Donald Trump confronts this loss in an all too familiar way: LIES THROUGH HIS TEETH. As a Sociopath, we should expect nothing less from Der Fuehrer Trump. This story is a reminder of the type of "Individual" who continues to support a would be Dictator, no matter what he says or does. OLDER EXAMPLES OF TRUMPSPEAK ARE INCLUDED AFTER THE UPDATE.
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THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN FROM THE ARTICLE:
Vintage Trump remarks after convictions renew dilemma for news media and voters alike
Trump's well-worn playbook of false statements
Trump did not let his most recent court reversal take up all his on-camera time on Friday. With live TV coverage rolling, at least for a while, he veered off his latest court reversal to attack the man he wants to replace in the White House in November.
Calling Election Day Nov. 5 “the most important day in American history,” Trump blamed Biden for all his legal travails. He said the trial in New York had been orchestrated “in Washington” to protect the incumbent administration, which he called “a fascist state.”
Trump has made these accusations before, offering no form of evidence, as he again did not on Friday. But he used the allegation of Biden involvement to pivot to attacking Biden on immigration.
It was a kind of reprise of what might be called Trump’s greatest hit. In his speech in this same venue in 2015, he had stunned the political world with his language about immigrants at the U.S. border with Mexico: “They’re not sending their best ... they’re bringing drugs, they’re rapists.”
Trump on Friday broadened his assault to include a number of other specific countries and nationalities sending “millions” who were “pouring in” unchallenged across “open borders." He mentioned Congo in Africa and China in particular.
He said the prisons of Venezuela had been “emptied out” and that countries were sending people from their mental institutions.
He offered no evidence or sources for any of these statements.
And while some of his assertions took the form of casual, unproven superlatives such as “record numbers of terrorists” entering the country, some were downright false statements starkly at odds with the facts.
Early in his Friday remarks, when he criticized the Manhattan district attorney, he had said crime was “rampant” in the city and painted it in apocalyptic terms. Crime statistics in New York City are actually much lower today than in the 1990s, a decade in which Trump ally Rudy Giuliani was elected to his two terms as mayor. Shootings and homicides are down in particular in the past two years.
But this species of misstatement or disinformation has been part of the Trump arsenal for some time. He often raises rhetorical questions and makes sweeping statements that seem to have sprung from an alternative reality.
His talent for selling his own version of reality posed a challenge to the news media as far back as his years as the star of a TV “reality show” called The Apprentice. Trump was in the middle of his 14 seasons with the show when he began publicly questioning whether President Barack Obama had been born in the U.S.
It was just this kind of falsehood — picked up and promoted by countless commenters on cable TV, websites and social media — that made Trump a political force before he was an actual candidate. And when, in the fall campaign of 2016, he informed the world that he had himself laid to rest the “birther” issue (which he blamed on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign), it forced many in the mainstream media to reexamine their longstanding aversion to the word “lie.”
By the end of Trump’s term in office, the news media had come to routinely label many of his claims as false — especially his denial of his defeat in the 2020 election. Some had also taken to labeling as lies the Trump statements they believed he had to know were false.
But Friday at Trump Tower was another reminder that as the November election gets closer and the political season comes to predominate, Trump can be expected to test and exceed the boundaries of fact and fiction one again.
Are we better prepared to deal with it this time?
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He has been getting away with Fascist Hate Speech for years, because no one held him accountable.
How so? Read below.
On 9/30/2022 Donald Trump wrote the following on Truth Social;
“Is McConnell approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is willing to take the Country down with him?” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“In any event, either reason is unacceptable. He has a DEATH WISH. Must immediately seek help and advise from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” he added.
Anybody who has spent any time on this site knows what I think of Mitch McConnell, and since he has spent much of the past 5-6 Years promoting Fascism, and "DER RUEHRER" TRUMP, it is hard for me to have any sympathy for him. Yet, even at my level of disdain for him personally, it would never occur to me to imply a physical threat if he doesn't change, or use a juvenile racial slur about his wife.
Why would Trump do this? BECAUSE HE KEEPS GETTING AWAY WITH IT, AND HE REALIZES THAT HIS HARD-CORE SUPPORTERS ARE LITTLE MORE THAN FASCIST THUGS, WHOSE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT SEEMS TO LACK THE ABILITY TO EMPATHIZE AND UNDERSTAND THAT HUMANITY IS MORE THAN JUST A WORD DESCRIBING PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES, BUT A SPECIES WHO HAVE DEVELOPED THE ABILITY TO FORM AND CREATE ETHICAL GUIDELINES THAT ALLOW FOR PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE APPLICABLE TO ALL IT'S MEMBERS.
It would be different if this were an aberration, but the DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP, NEWS MEDIA, ACADEMIA etc., seems to forget the recent past. Well, I don't.
TAKE FOR EXAMPLE THE FOLLOWING;
CANDIDATE TRUMP TALKING ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON,
HINTING AT WHAT GUN EXTREMISTS COULD DO if she is elected.
8/10/2016.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.
Although the second amendment people, maybe there is,
I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
EVEN MURDER WOULDN'T BOTHER HIS MOST FANATIC SUPPORTERS.
"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."
Actually, it would have been more accurate for TRUMP to have said; ..."and I wouldn't lose votes." Why? We know now that the Rigging of Voter returns in Key States was suppose to Guarantee a TRUMP Victory, but just in case that the plan was discovered, and thwarted, Donald concentrated on a campaign that would ensure that his Most Radical Supporters:
White Supremacists.
Religious Zealots.
Xenophobes.
Homophobes.
Ultra-Conservative Nationalists.
Not only would support him, but defend any Lie or Deception that Trump spread across the Media. Unfortunately, as has happened so many times over the past half dozen years or so, Trump says things like the examples above, and the opposition and the Media fail to point out previous transgressions.
As of now, we hear constant talk about TRUMP making False Claims about the 2020 Election, Yet for some bizarre reason there is a failure to MENTION THAT TRUMP MADE THE SAME ACCUSATIONS BEFORE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND AFTER THE 2018 MID-TERMS.
In 2016 it was a clever Back-Up, in case Russia didn't deliver on the anticipated altering of Voter Returns in Key States. He had a ready made collection of FASCIST SYCHOPHANTS ready to believe anything he said. (So the Insurrection had to wait 4 years) In 2018, it was a way to explain the GOP losses at the polls.
Remember the following? Do you really think they were calculated to appeal to the Majority of Americans, or a select segment:
TALKING ABOUT MEXICO.
6/15/2015
"They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Immigration.
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries coming here?”
Violence In Charlottesville.
These are just a few examples, but you get the idea. As I have said in the past:
THE CONSTITUTION MANDATES THAT WE TOLERATE SPEECH WE CONSIDER OFFENSIVE. HOWEVER, WE ARE NOT REQUIRED TO RESPECT IT. IF YOU BELIEVE I AM BEING UNFAIR TO TRUMP SUPPORTERS, I LEAVE IT TO YOU: PLEASE POINT OUT WHAT YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE "RESPECTFUL" NATURE OF THE THINGS TRUMP AND HIS ALLIES DO AND SAY. I AM ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER, TUMBLER, DIGG AND LINKEDIN. I WOULD BE MORE THAN WILLING TO GIVE YOU A CHANCE TO POINT OUT DONALD TRUMPS POSITIVE QUALITIES, AND HOW HIS SUPPORTERS JUST WANT WHAT IS BEST FOR THIS COUNTRY.
UPDATE- TAKEN FROM THE INSIDER ARTICLE:
Liz Cheney is the only Republican member of Congress to explicitly condemn Trump's racist remarks about Mitch McConnell's wife Elaine Chao— but disapproval among the GOP is growing.
BY ERIN SNODGRASS
Several prominent conservatives this week denounced former President Donald Trump's racist remarks toward Elaine Chao, a one-time member of Trump's own cabinet and wife to GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Sen. Liz Cheney, however, remains the only Republican member of Congress thus far to explicitly condemn the former president for his xenophobic comments.
Trump on Friday unleashed a barrage of insults against Senate Minority Leader McConnell in a Truth Social tirade accusing the Kentucky lawmaker of approving "trillions of dollars worth of Democrat sponsored bills" because he "hates Donald J, Trump."
"He has a DEATH WISH," Trump wrote in a marked escalation of his usual political rhetoric.
In castigating Trump on Monday, Cheney became the only Republican member of Congress to publicly decry the former president's remarks. McConnell himself has yet to address the situation.
"When you see former President Trump just in the last 24 hours suggesting in a pretty thinly veiled way, using words that could well cause violence against the Republican leader of the Senate, saying he has a death wish and then, you know, launching an absolutely despicable, racist attack against Secretary Chao, Leader McConnell's wife, and then you watch the fact that nobody in my party will say that's unacceptable," Cheney said during at an event held at Syracuse University, according to The Hill.
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WOW, I've often criticized the Democratic Leadership for not standing up to DONALD TRUMP, BUT FOR THE ENTIRE GOP MEMBERSHIP IN CONGRESS NOT TO CONDEMN "DER FUEHRERS" RACIST COMMENTS, OR HIS COMMENTS ON MCCONNELL HAVING A "DEATH WISH" TELL ME ONE THING:
THE GOP IS SO WRAPPED UP IN THE FASCIST AGENDA OF TRUMP, THAT THEIR CONGRESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP IS LITTLE MORE THAN A COLLECTION OF ETHICAL, SOCIAL, AND PHYSICAL COWARDS.
MY GOD, MCCONNELL WON'T EVEN STAND UP FOR HIS WIFE, AND HIS REPUBLICAN COLLEAGUES WON'T EVEN ADDRESS THE THREAT MADE AGAINST HIM.
OXFORD DEFINITION OF COWARD: a person who lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.
HOW DOES THIS NOT DESCRIBE TODAYS GOP?
Saturday, June 1, 2024
INITIAL OBSERVATIONS REGARDING TRUMPS AND THE FASCIST PARTY OF AMERICAS REACTIONS TO THE MANHATTAN VERDICT.
The reactions to Donald Trumps recent conviction(s) by the Republican Party/Fascist Party of America prove, once again, that Treason, Betrayal of the Oath to protect and Defend the Constitution of the U.S. and a desire to create a Dictatorship to replace our REPUBLIC is part of their National Agenda.
Why they don't skip the pretense and just appear in public wearing a Uniform expressing their Fascist Beliefs and Hatred of Freedom is mystifying. People like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, (Among many others), would look perfectly natural dressed in NAZI/SS LIKE UNIFORMS. while spouting their Treasonous Hate Speech.
I think it's hilarious how Der Fuehrer Trump always predicts negative outcomes for Court Cases and Elections before the Results or Verdicts are finalized. (Well, negative for Him, but positive for the vast Majority of Humanity.) It's like he's preparing his Sycophants/Stooges/Lackeys for his continuing failures.
By the way, exactly how many Court Cases or Recent Elections have proven to be a selling point for Trumps Candidacy? Yeah, America is behind his return to office. (Well, other than the Intellectually Sound and Morally Responsible part of the Public)
Thursday, May 30, 2024
U.S. NEWS Guilty: Trump becomes first former US president convicted of felony crimes. ASSOCIATED PRESS.
BY MICHAEL R. SISAK, JENNIFER PELTZ, ERIC TUCKER, MICHELLE L. PRICE AND JILL COLVIN.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read as cheering from the street below could be heard in the hallway on the courthouse’s 15th floor where the decision was revealed after more than nine hours of deliberations.
Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts marks the end of the former president’s historic hush money trial. But the fight over the case is far from over. Here’s what to know.
- When is Donald Trump’s sentencing date? The judge has set the former president’s sentencing for July 11, just days before Republicans are set to select him as 2024 nominee.
- Trump’s voting eligibility: He may be convicted of a felony and reside in Florida, but he can still vote as long as he stays out of prison in New York state.
- Will Trump’s conviction impact the 2024 election? It’s unclear whether his once-imaginable status as a person convicted of a felony will have any impact at all on voters.
“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial,” an angry Trump told reporters after leaving the courtroom. “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people. They know what happened, and everyone knows what happened here.”
Judge Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where GOP leaders, who remained resolute in their support in the aftermath of the verdict, are expected to formally make him their nominee.
The verdict is a stunning legal reckoning for Trump and exposes him to potential prison time in the city where his manipulations of the tabloid press helped catapult him from a real estate tycoon to reality television star and ultimately president. As he seeks to reclaim the White House in this year’s election, the judgment presents voters with another test of their willingness to accept Trump’s boundary-breaking behavior.
Trump is expected to appeal the verdict and will face an awkward dynamic as he returns to the campaign trail tagged with convictions. There are no campaign rallies on the calendar for now, though he’s expected to appear Friday at Trump Tower and traveled Thursday to a fundraiser in Manhattan planned before the verdict, according to three people familiar with his plans who were not authorized to speak publicly. Trump’s campaign fundraised off the verdict, including a pitch that called him a “political prisoner.”
The falsifying business records charges carry up to four years behind bars, though Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would not say Thursday if prosecutors intend to seek imprisonment, and it is not clear whether the judge — who earlier in the trial warned of jail time for gag order violations — would impose that punishment even if asked.
The conviction, and even imprisonment, will not bar Trump from continuing his White House pursuit.
Trump faces three other felony indictments, but the New York case may be the only one to reach a conclusion before the November election, adding to the significance of the outcome. Though the legal and historical implications of the verdict are readily apparent, the political consequences are less so given its potential to reinforce rather than reshape already hardened opinions about Trump.
For another candidate in another time, a criminal conviction might doom a presidential run, but Trump’s political career has endured through two impeachments, allegations of sexual abuse, investigations into everything from potential ties to Russia to plotting to overturn an election, and personally salacious storylines, including the emergence of a recording in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals.
The case’s general allegations have also been known to voters for years and, while tawdry, are widely seen as less grievous than the allegations he faces in three other cases that charge him with subverting American democracy and mishandling national security secrets.
Ahead of the verdict, Trump’s campaign had argued that, no matter the jury’s decision, the outcome was unlikely to sway voters and that the election would be decided by issues such as inflation.
Even so, the verdict is likely to give President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats space to sharpen arguments that Trump is unfit for office, though the White House offered only a muted statement that it respected the rule of law. Conversely, the decision will provide fodder for the presumptive Republican nominee to advance his unsupported claims that he is victimized by a criminal justice system he insists is politically motivated against him.
Trump maintained throughout the trial that he had done nothing wrong and that the case should never have been brought, railing against the proceedings from inside the courthouse — where he was joined by a parade of high-profile Republican allies — and racking up fines for violating a gag order with inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses.
After the verdict, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said in television news interviews that he did not believe Trump received a fair trial and that the team would appeal based on the judge’s refusal to recuse himself and because of what he suggested was excessive pretrial publicity.
Republicans showed no sign of loosening their embrace of the party leader, with House Speaker Mike Johnson lamenting what he called “a shameful day in American history.” He called the case “a purely political exercise, not a legal one.”
The first criminal trial of a former American president always presented a unique test of the court system, not only because of Trump’s prominence but also because of his relentless broadsides on the foundation of the case and its participants. But the verdict from the 12-person jury marked a repudiation of Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in the proceedings or to potentially impress the panel with a show of GOP support.
“While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today in this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors, by following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor,” Bragg said after the verdict.
The trial involved charges that Trump falsified business records to cover up a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who said she had sex with the married Trump in 2006.
The $130,000 payment came from Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen to buy Daniels’ silence during the final weeks of the 2016 race in what prosecutors allege was an effort to interfere in the election. When Cohen was reimbursed, the payments were recorded as legal expenses, which prosecutors said was an unlawful attempt to mask the true purpose of the transaction.
Trump’s lawyers contend they were legitimate payments for legal services. He denied the sexual encounter, and his lawyers argued at trial that his celebrity status made him an extortion target.
Defense lawyers also said hush money deals to bury negative stories about Trump were motivated by personal considerations such as the impact on his family, not political ones. They also sought to undermine the credibility of Cohen, the star prosecution witness who pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges related to the payments, by suggesting he was driven by personal animus toward Trump and fame and money.
The trial featured weeks of occasionally riveting testimony that revisited an already well-documented chapter from Trump’s past, when his 2016 campaign was threatened by the disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording that captured him talking about grabbing women sexually without their permission and the prospect of other stories about Trump and sex surfacing that would be harmful to his candidacy.
Trump did not testify, but jurors heard his voice through a secret recording of a conversation with Cohen in which he and the lawyer discussed a $150,000 hush money deal involving a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who has said she had an affair with Trump. Trump denies that affair.
Daniels herself testified, offering a vivid recounting of the sexual encounter she says they had in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite. The former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, testified about how he worked to keep stories harmful to the Trump campaign from becoming public at all, including by having his company buy McDougal’s story.
Jurors also heard from Keith Davidson, the lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Daniels and McDougal. He detailed the tense negotiations to get both women compensated for their silence but also faced aggressive questioning from a Trump attorney who noted Davidson had helped broker similar hush money deals in cases involving other prominent figures.
The most pivotal witness, by far, was Cohen, who during days of testimony gave an insider’s view of the hush money scheme and what he said was Trump’s detailed knowledge of it.
“Just take care of it,” he quoted Trump as saying.
He offered jurors the most direct link between Trump and the heart of the charges, recounting a meeting in which a plan to have Cohen reimbursed in monthly installments for legal services was discussed.
And he emotionally described his dramatic break with Trump in 2018, when he began cooperating with prosecutors after a decade-long career as the then-president’s personal fixer.
“To keep the loyalty and to do the things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family,” Cohen said.
The case, though criticized by some legal experts who called it the weakest of the prosecutions against Trump, took on added importance not only because it proceeded to trial first but also because it could be the only only one to reach a jury before the election.
The other three — local and federal cases in Atlanta and Washington alleging that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election, as well as a federal indictment in Florida charging him with illegally hoarding top-secret records — are bogged down by delays or appeals.
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Associated Press journalists Ruth Brown, Joseph B. Frederick, John Minchillo, Mary Conlon, Ted Shaffrey, Cedar Attanasio, Julie Walker, Seth Wenig and Julia Nikhinson in New York and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.