April Fool – Not! True Stories from the Media on April 1

Today is an annual day to celebrate tricksters, often through the mass media, but this year’s media stories, as ridiculous as many of them may sound, are true. Here’s a sampling of the ridiculous, and accurate, occurrences—many of them involving Republicans.

First commissioned in 1997, the F-35 fighter jet, estimated at a cost of over $1 trillion for the program and not yet ready for prime time, has been a joke. One plane costs $135.8 million, but its problems include catching on fire, rolling during landings, pilot blackouts, software development disasters, premature part failures, and shortage of spare parts to keep the planes flying.

Why did Johnson & Johnson have to throw away COVID-19 doses for 15 million people? Workers in Emergent BioSolutions, a Baltimore manufacturing plant, accidentally mixed its ingredients from those for AstraZeneca. Biologically different, the two vaccines are not interchangeable. Production was delayed by an FDA investigation. FDA has already repeatedly cited Emergent for poorly trained employees, cracked vials, and mold in one facility. The mix-up was not discovered for days, but currently distributed and administrated J&J vaccines in the U.S. were not affected because they were produced in the Netherlands under federal regulator watch. Approved in February, J&J has a 66-percent efficacy fate but only 42.3 percent effective a month after vaccinations for people over 60 with comorbidities.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), already stripped of her committee assignments, entertained herself for a few weeks by putting forward multiple proposals to adjourn the House of Representatives. Members of both parties had to leave important meetings and other duties as they rushed to the chamber floor to vote against her motion. Now the QAnon follower introduced a bill to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s appointed chief medical adviser in a position not even requiring Senate confirmation. Greene’s Fire Fauci Act cuts Fauci’s salary to $0 until “a new NIAID Administrator is confirmed by the Senate.” Which isn’t required. Two days ago, Greene accused the president of Satanism by tweeting any “vaccine passport” is “Biden’s Mark of the Beast.”

Greene, who accuses Democrats of sex-trafficking, is vigorously defending Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in his investigation regarding alleged sex-trafficking of a 17-year-old and accuses the DOJ of a “witch hunt.” DDT’s AG Bill Barr began the investigation and deliberately avoided being seen in the same place with Gaetz, refusing to attend a meet-and-greet event with the House Judiciary Committee because Gaetz would be present.

Popular with multitudes of Republicans, Greene is the subject of a “RealDoll” patterned after her (left). Abyss Creations, which makes life-size “sex dolls” has sold out of the Greene model. The company’s marketing director Andrew Canard stated Abyss’ success comes from targeting evangelical MAGA fans with these female companion manikins, leading to the design of the Marjorie Taylor Greene Freedom Doll. [Visual – RealDoll Greene]

The entire Matt Gaetz story becomes more and more bizarre. According to reports, he bragged about his sexual exploits with a number of women and showed other lawmakers photos and videos of nude women who he had sex with, some images kept on his phone. The investigation is looking into his possible use of campaign funds to pay for the women’s travel and expenses.

Media has obtained receipts from Cash App and Apple Pay showing how Gaetz used cash apps to send money to women as well as paying them in cash from hotel ATMs.

Gaetz denies paying women for sex, asserting he is just generous, but some women claim he told them to say that money paid for sex was just for dating. During 2019 and 2020, Gaetz and Greenberg told women to meet with them, often at Florida hotels, and told them how much they would pay, according to text messages and interviews. The men met women through Seeking Arrangement, a site of over 20 worldwide members which is self-described as wealthy people finding attractive companions to treat them “with fine dinners, exotic trips and allowances.”Before sex, some women and men, including Gaetz, would take ecstasy, an illegal mood-altering drug. Gaetz also asked the women to find others willing to have sex with him and his friends. Greenberg is not making any comment about the allocations.

Paying for hotels, meals, and other gifts is not illegal, but payments for sex is trafficking the women under “force, fraud or coercion.” Providing drugs in exchange for sex is classified as trafficking because feeding another person’s drug habit can be described as coercion. Giving anyone under the age of 18 anything of value for sex—even hotels or cigarettes—violates the federal child sex trafficking law and carries a ten-year minimum prison sentence. QAnon finally found real alleged sex-traffickers among the ich and famous, but they protect Gaetz and his friends.

The Government Accountability Office reported that Ivanka Trump’s women’s empowerment initiative failed to track funds and didn’t determine the definition of a woman-owned business. According to the GAO report:

“USAID has not developed a process to support compliance with statutory requirements to target MSME resources to activities that reach the very poor and to small and medium-sized enterprise resources to activities that reach enterprises owned, managed, and controlled by women. We identified three key gaps that impair USAID’s ability to develop such a process. First, USAID has not identified the total funding subject to the targeting requirements. Second, although USAID has programs designed to help the very poor, it is unable to determine the amount of funding that reaches this group. Third, although USAID has MSME activities that benefit women, it has not defined enterprises owned, managed, and controlled by women and does not collect data by enterprise size.”

During her years in the White House, Trump claimed she tracked spending and efficient use of funds, yet she didn’t know where the money was going or if the recipients were minority-owned.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) cannot escape a $5,000 fine for disobeying a House rule. After some House members tried to carry guns onto the House floor, representatives were required to go through a metal detector. Several GOP representatives refused to comply with security screening, and the House imposed fines for their noncompliance. The first offense is $5,000, and all subsequent offenses are $10,000. Gohmert contested the fine, saying he didn’t know he should use the metal director after going to the bathroom, but the House Ethics Committee upheld the charge. The Texas representative admitted that he refused to comply with a Capitol Police officer’s request to be screened.  

The death of Don Wright, sworn into the U.S. House a month after being sworn into the 117th Congress, left an opening from Texas. A congressional candidate and former DDT official who hopes to win Wright’s seat is campaigning against Chinese immigrants accusing then of not holding “themselves accountable” and causing the pandemic. The candidate? Sery Kim, a Korean-American woman who served in the Office of Women’s Business Ownership at the Small Business Administration. She says she doesn’t feel discrimination for being Asian-American because “I blame China.”

An Arizona state representative, Mark Finchem, has started the process to run against the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. The Republican is known for leading the effort to overturn the state’s popular vote for President Joe Biden and invited DDT’s campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani for a Phoenix event with legislators to support him. Finchem was also invited to speak at a January 6 rally outside the U.S. Capitol to storm the building but claimed he knew nothing about breaching the building despite his tweeting photographs of it. Blaming the insurrection on leftists, he refused to give The Arizona Republic information about his travels to Washington, D.C. at that time. Rural Arizonans for Accountability began a recall effort against him because of his buy in to the “big lie” regarding how voter fraud “stole” the election from DDT. 

GQP ‘Spiritual Leader’ Demands Followers “Kiss the Ring’

President Joe Biden is making decisions for the United States, but Deposed Donald Trump (DDT), declaring on conservative media that the presidential election was stolen from him, waits at Mar-a-Lago for followers to come pay obeisance to him.

Sycophant Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who calls DDT almost every day, is again going to Mar-a-Lago to golf—and get him to build up the Republican party, now badly split after the impeachment and House Minority Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) attack on DDT. Last Tuesday, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) visited DDT. Brad Parscale, fired from being campaign manager and responsible for questionable expenditures of millions of campaign dollars, went to Mar-a-Lago for a long meeting. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) held a fundraiser on Saturday night.

Absent from DDT’s side for a few years, Steve Bannon is back. During the first few years of DDT in the White House, Bannon played him like a fiddle to accomplish his ends but got forced out. Once gone, Bannon stole almost a million dollars from a GoFundMe website ostensibly to build a tiny portion of DDT’s southern border wall, but DDT pardoned him for that offense shortly before Biden was inaugurated.

Now Bannon has another plan: run DDT for the House, become the Speaker because he believes Congress will turn Republican, and impeach Biden. His accusation is that Biden “stole” the election.

Top DDTers also have other plans such as making DDT’s first White House press secretary Reince Priebus the Wisconsin governor although Tony Evers has the position for another three years. In Pennsylvania, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey isn’t running in 2022, and the Republican party has its eye on a QAnon candidate. Toomey voted for DDT’s conviction in the impeachment, and furious Republicans announced they don’t elect people “to do the right thing.” The current criterion is to follow whatever corruption DDT wants. Bannon said, “Any candidate who wants to win in Pennsylvania in 2022 must be full Trump MAGA.”

Flush with what DDT sees as a strong following, he plans to put his extremist loyalists into primaries. They may win against other Republicans, but moderate Republicans and independents could elect Democrats. For example, Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward might lose a general election against incumbent Mark Kelly in 2022 for supporting conspiracy theories and leading her party in censuring Cindy McCain, former Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) wife, for supporting Biden. In Georgia, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an outspoken QAnon conspiracy theorist removed from her committee assignments, could run against former Sen. David Perdue in the primary, reducing the possibility of the Republicans defeating Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock. DDT has clashed with Republicans who might defeat Democrats for Congress, like former Sen. Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire.

The question is how long DDT will trust Bannon. Touting his new memoir Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes in an interview, former 60 Minutes producer Ira Rosen talked about Bannon’s attempt to remove DDT from the White House by using the 25th Amendment because of DDT’s early stage dementia. Bannon told DDT’s major rightwing donor Rebekah Mercer about his concerns, including DDT’s repetition of the same stories, and quoted a David Brooks column from October 2017:  

“And the polls show that if you want to win a Republican primary these days, you have to embrace the Trump narrative…  The Republican senators greeted Trump on Capitol Hill and saw a president so repetitive and rambling, some thought he might be suffering from early Alzheimer’s. But they know which way the wind is blowing. They gave him a standing ovation.”

One sycophant couldn’t go to Mar-a-Lago. Rush Limbaugh died February 17, 2021, leaving 15 million listeners without his consistent diet of racial prejudice, misogyny, hate, and lies.

DDT also lost “my Kevin,” as he called House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), after McCarthy told people about his frantic January 6 telephone call for help when DDT refused to send assistance for congressional members under attack in the U.S. Capitol. McCarthy tried to cover up the problem, but DDT found him lacking in deferential attitude. Following that event, DDT lambasted McCarthy for not removing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) from House leadership because she voted for DDT’s impeachment. Fox reports DDT looks at McCarthy “with disdain.”

McCarthy tried to crawl back into DDT’s favor in late January at a trip to Mar-a-Lago after he agreed DDT “bears responsibility” for the riot. Aides reported the meeting was “good and cordial,” and McCarthy he does not “believe he provoked [the attack].” DDT, however, never forgives a slight. 

Next weekend, DDT will collect the faithful at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando (FL). Usually located in Washington, CPAC chose the new venue because of its lax coronavirus guidelines producing its third-highest COVID-19 death toll last week. Sponsors include Fox, Washington Times, Epoch Times, Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA, and conservative video platform Rumble. The senators typically voting against Biden’s appointees—Martha Blackburn (TN), Tom Cotton (AR), Ted Cruz (TX), Josh Hawley (MO), James Lankford (OK), and Rick Scott (FL)—will attend along with loyalist House members Mo Brooks (AL), Madison Cawthorn (NC), Matt Gaetz (FL), Jim Jordan (OH), Devin Nunes (CA), and Steve Scalise (LA). Deposed people such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, former DOJ AG Matt Whitaker, former DDT lawyer Pam Bondi, and former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be there. It’s a place for the ambitious to aim at a better job, perhaps president, like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

One person missing from the event is former VP Mike Pence. Sources have said Pence will stay out of the public for the rest of the year after DDT looked willing to kill Pence at the January 6 insurrection. Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short said he and Pence now accept Biden as “the duly elected president of the United States.” Although absent from DDT’s farewell, Pence attended Biden’s inauguration.

Others may not actually show up, and sponsors are insecure because of uncertain guest bookings. The theme “America Uncanceled” is about “cancel culture,” and organizers sent a letter to Politico accused it of this practice, a form of not providing support, after journalists asked questions about the event. Organizers whined about attempts to “cancel our votes, our voices, and our values” while trying to erase all non-white people in the U.S. DDT’s repetition about a rigged election in his CPAC speech as well as his smears of Biden’s actions will be an example of “cancel culture.”

Opposing DDT’s control of the GOP, House Minority Mitch McConnell (R-KY) ignores DDT, especially after McConnell’s vitriolic attack against DDT following McConnell’s vote against an impeachment conviction based on a mythical technicality. The speech scorched DDT about his faults, how he should have been convicted and how he can be criminally indicted. Three days later, DDT’s rebuttal rained lies and blistering attacks on the man who forced over 200 highly conservative and largely incompetent judges onto federal benches. A part of DDT’s statement:

“Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”

Advisers talked DDT out of stating McConnell had too many chins and not enough smarts, according to one source.

Because a large QAnon following thinks DDT will be inaugurated on March 4, 2021, 5,000 National Guard troops will stay in Washington for at least another three weeks out of concern for violence. If that date doesn’t work out for them, QAnon followers picked May 20, 120 days after January 20 based on an economic recovery plan proposed over 20 years to forgive the national debt. Conspiracy theorists claim the military will take Biden from the White House on May 20 and install DDT in his former Washington home. Robert Guffey, who tracks the QAnon movement, explained more conspiracy beliefs:

“Then all the debt goes away and the IRS is abolished. And then, at that point, Trump starts releasing all these hidden patents for free energy. It’s going to be utopia and all the Democrats will be in Gitmo.”

Conservative media feeds these lies to the tens of millions of their audience:

• The Biden’s marriage and romance is “part of a slick PR campaign devised by cynical consultants determined to hide the president’s senility by misdirection.”—Tucker Carlson, Fox 
• The Bidens 12-year-old German Shepherd, Champ, “needs a bath and a comb and all kinds of love and care. [He] looks like … from the junkyard.”—Greg Kelly, Newsmax
• About cutting off the video of the insurrection at the Capitol during the impeachment trial: “This is all emotional, political theater.”—Greg Gutfeld, cohost of Fox The Five
• “[There] was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered…  The autopsy showed that George Floyd almost certainly died of a drug overdose, fentanyl.”—Tucker Carlson, Fox
• About fighting domestic terrorists: “They’re creating extremists, just as we did in Iraq… And dramatically elevating the chance that something really awful is going to happen.”—Tucker Carlson, Fox
• “If the [COVID-19] vaccine was so great, why were all these people lying about it.”—Tucker Carlson, Fox (before Biden was inaugurated)
• “[I don’t know] a single conservative or single Republican who frankly even knows what QAnon.”—Sean Hannity, Fox

Much has been said from conservative leaders telling Democrats about “moving on,” but DDT will never let that happen as long as he stays the face and voice of the GQP.

Biden: The Move Back to Governing

Two astonishing things happened on Thursday. Both were predictable, but the first was refreshing after four years of Deposed Donald Trump (DDT). In President Joe Biden’s first foreign policy address, he provided the United States is back—and Biden is governing through diplomacy and rejection of authoritarianism.

Russia: Biden clearly told Vladimir Putin the U.S. is through “rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions,” specifically referring to the detention of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after Putin’s failure to kill Navalny with a nerve poison. 

Yemen: Biden said the U.S. will not support “offensive operations” and instead increase humanitarian aid in the country devastated by DDT’s friend Saudi Arabia. A special envoy at the State Department is to work toward ending the conflict. Biden has also frozen these DDT’s arms sales to the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates while he investigates if U.S. weapons are being used to continue the Saudi-led attacks on Yemen, causing thousands of civilian deaths and overwhelming hunger.

Myanmar: Biden asked House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for a bipartisan response to persuade the military to release detained activists and officials and end the coup in the Southeast Asian nation.

Other Biden actions include a memorandum protecting LGBTQ rights worldwide, an increase in refugees permitted into the U.S. to 125,000 (instead of DDT’s 15,000) in the fiscal year beginning October 1, and a freeze on DDT’s deployment of U.S. troops from Germany. Biden told State Department employees, “We’re going to rebuild our alliances. We’re going to reengage the world and take on the enormous challenges we face.” Biden added that in his administration employees will “be trusted and empowered to do your job. [It will] not target or politicize you.” As Biden said, “America is back.”   

On the bottom of the strata, 199 GOP members of the House endorsed QAnon conspiracy theories and incitement to violence by voting against removing committee assignments from newly sworn-in Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) led the exoneration when he told the assembled House members that Greene had assured him she didn’t echo QAnon statements or if she did, she didn’t mean them now. Videos show Greene had lied to him, and he accepted her lies without looking into her background. Her writings in 2019 refute her claim she broke away from QAnon in 2018 and knew nothing about “space lasers,” controlled by a wealthy Jewish family, causing California forest fires.

Documentation clearly shows Greene either supported or stated graphic threats to kill Democratic political figures such as Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She didn’t withdraw her threats when she gave her speech to the House, only justifying herself by saying she was “allowed to believe things that weren’t true.” While campaigning last September, Green posted an image of three progressive Democratic House members—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), and Rashida Tlaib (MI)—next to her photo holding an AR-15 with the caption, “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.”

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Chair of the Rules Committee, said:

“I just have to say that I did not hear an apology or denouncement for the claim, the insinuation that political opponents should be violently dealt with. I didn’t hear anybody apologize or retract the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic remarks that have been made, that have been posted, over and over again.”

Greene called being the mother of three children “the greatest blessing of my life and the greatest thing that I’ll ever achieve. One of her children responded with a tweet, calling her mother “batsh*t f**king crazy.”

Instead of taking responsibility, Greene blamed the media. In her speech, she said they were “just as guilty as QAnon for promoting lies.”

With their unwillingness to defend Greene’s outrageous statements, GOP representatives claimed the House had no right to remove her from committees. McCarthy called it “unprecedented” because the opposite party has never taken away committee assignments. Greene’s statements are also “unprecedented”: never before has a lawmaker threatened the unwarranted executions of legislators, a U.S. president, and other officials in the opposing party. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) described the vote as a “slippery slope” but overlooked the “slope” of permitting a lawmaker to make these threats without a penalty.

Eleven House Republicans voted with 219 Democrats to remove Greene’s committee assignments:

• California – Young Kim
• Florida – Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimeniz, Maria Elvira Salazar (all three from the southern part of the state where a gunman killed 17 people and wounded 17 others at a high school, a tragedy which Greene called a staged “false flag”)
• Illinois – Adam Kinzinger
• Michigan – Fred Upton
• New Jersey – Chris Smith
• New York – Chris Jacobs,  John Katko, Nicole Malliotakis (representatives of the 9/11 tragedy location killing 3,000 which Greene originally said didn’t happen)
• Pennsylvania – Brian Fitzpatrick

On Wednesday, almost 30 percent of the Republicans secretly voted to remove Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) from her party leadership position in the House because she had voted to impeach DDT. Thursday, she voted to leave Greene on the committees but condemned her statements, stating, “Republicans are not the party of QAnon conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, or Neo-Nazis.” After the 95-percent GOP support for Greene, she sounds wrong. Greene’s statements cannot be separated from her political philosophy.

In the past 15 days, the GOP has supported conspiracy theories, and state GOP leaders censured anti-DDT Republicans. At the same time, the country has approved Biden’s executive directives and ideas: demonstrated approval for many of Biden’s actions during the past 15 days:  

• 83 percent: extending the anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ. (Even 64 percent of self-identified Republicans support the executive order.)
• 77 percent: committing to a government-wide focus on racial equality, with 52 percent of Republicans approving.
• 71 percent: a Gallup poll showing a support of transgender people in the military.
• 68 percent: continuing suspension of federal student loan repayments.
• 66 percent: continuing eviction ban.
• 65 percent: extending the DACA program.
• 65 percent: a Pew poll last year indicating people believing the government does too little on climate change.
• 63 percent: rejoining the Paris climate agreement.
• 62 percent: rejoining the World Health Organization.
• 61 percent: recommitting to the Paris climate agreement.
• 57 percent: reexamining DDT policies on public health and the environment.
• 56 percent: allowing noncitizens to be counted in the U.S. Census.
• 53 percent: stopping the southern border wall.
• 52 percent: ending the Muslim travel ban to the U.S.

A moratorium on drilling in the Arctic refuge and revoking the permit for the Keystone gained supporting pluralities. And 68 percent of people in the U.S. supports Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University. As Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said about the bill, “It is bipartisan amongst the American people.” Another 61 percent supports increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, and the same percentage is optimistic about Biden’s next four years in office. 

Biden created a task force to reunite migrant children after DDT separated them at the southern border from their families. Another Biden directive reviews opportunities for foreign workers and students to enter the country. Biden ordered the State Department to consider the suspension of rapidly deporting migrants seeking protection to Central America. More “cooperative agreements” would replace those with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras although DDT’s appointees still refuse migrants entry or deport them. DDT was responsible for over 400 immigration-related executive actions during his four-year term.

Biden also resumed relations with Palestinian leaders and returned U.S. contributions to the UN agency giving aid to Palestinians. DDT cut off all support four years ago to please Israel. Richard Mills, acting U.S. ambassador to the UN, said the new administration wants a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “to ensure Israel’s future as a democratic and Jewish state.” DDT closed the Washington, D.C. office of the Palestine Liberation Organization; halted contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency aiding Palestinian refugees and their descendants; moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as Israel’s capital; recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights; and proposed a peace proposal which left all Israeli West Bank settlements in place.

Biden is also correcting DDT’s removal of disability benefits from hundreds of thousands of people.

Biden restored the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), initiated by George H.W. Bush. It protects scientists from political interference and ensures federal decisions across the agencies are based on science whenever possible. An accompanying memo states, “Science, facts, and evidence are vital to addressing policy and programmatic issues across the Federal Government.” A task force will evaluate scientific-integrity policies across the government. A chief science officer will ensure agencies follow the task force guidelines and provide annual reporting for complaints about guidelines not being followed and the investigation’s outcomes. Biden has moved from evidence-free to evidence-based.

On his first day, Biden issued an executive order requiring the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to review regulations proposed by the executive branch. It calls for appropriate offices to “provide concrete suggestions on how the regulatory review process can promote public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, equity, and the interests of future generations.” The entire executive order is well worth reading.

DDT postured and bullied for four years; Biden is governing.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Voice of the GOP

When wealthy heiress and QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene decided to run for the U.S. House, she moved to the deep red and more impoverished district in northwest Georgia. Former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) called her a “future Republican star,” former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) used her endorsement during her second campaign in January 2021 before she lost to Raphael Warnock, and House GOP whip, Steve Scalise (LA), wanted to talk about with her about her goals after she was sworn in. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-CA) put Greene on the Education Committee.

McCarthy and other GOP House leaders had opposed Green in her primary because of her offensive comments about Blacks and Jewish donors to Democrats, but Greene surged ahead in the primary because of her support from radical politicians DDT’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, his wife Debbie, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) through the Freedom Caucus. The National Republican Campaign Committee spent thousands of dollars helping Greene get elected in the general election.

Greene claims to be the “voice of the people.” With Greene as the voice of the GOP, the Republican base—denying methods of preventing COVID-19—thinks it can obtain power through threats, violence, smears, and horrifying falsehoods promoting domestic terrorism with no accountability: 

In January 2019, Greene liked a comment that “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). In a speech posted on Facebook, Green asked for Pelosi to be executed for treason—with no mention of a trial—because “she’s a traitor to our country.” She also liked posts about executing FBI agents, accusing them of being in the “deep state” against DDT.

Almost two years ago, asked her about the Iran deal:

“Now do we get to hang them ?? Meaning H & O [President Obama and Hillary Clinton] ???”

Greene responded:

“Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off.”

In a Facebook post, now removed, Greene promoted the false “Frazzledrip” accusation that Clinton and a top aide, Huma Abedin, participated in a satanic ritual with the murder and mutilation of a child and drank its blood.

About the far-right attacks on the U.S. Capitol, Greene falsely said “Antifa/BLM terrorism” and Democratic politicians stoked the insurrection, specifically “accomplices” such as Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), VP Kamala Harris, and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and called for them to “be expelled.” She also claimed, “The Antifa/BLM terrorism [is] funded on ActBlue.”

In her belief that “none of the school shootings were real,” including the 2012 Sandy Hook attack leaving 20 children and six adults dead, Greene called the 2018 mass shooting at Florida’s Parkland high school a “false flag.” She called the shooting survivor David Hogg, now an activist, “#littleHitler” and claimed he was a “bought and paid little pawn” and actor. According to a video, she trolled the 18-year-old for at least two minutes, calling him a “coward” and accusing him of being paid by billionaire George Soros. Other “false flags,” according to Greene, are the mass shootings at Las Vegas and the New Zealand mosque.

Before her election, Greene prepared a White House petition in January 2019 to impeach Pelosi for “crimes of treason,” accusing her support of the so-called “sanctuary” policies of “serving illegals and not United States citizens” and attacking her for her lack of support for DDT’s border wall.

About the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville (VA) killing one person and beating many others, she said it was an “inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites.” She also accused Democratic Party leaders of running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring, partially run out of a Washington, D.C. pizza place.

In late 2018, Greene claimed Rothschild family-funded space lasers cause the recent disastrous wildfires. She also claimed that the attacks on 9/11 killing over 3,000 people in the U.S. was a hoax, President Obama is a Muslim, and the Clintons are murderers, specifically referencing John F. Kennedy Jr’s deadly plane crash in 1999. And she stated the “deep state” used a body double for Ruth Bader Ginsburg after she died.

Vice has a long list of Greene’s conspiracy theories.

Greene (above right) wore a “Trump Won” mask, (poorly) to be sworn into the 117th Congress, immediately announced she was filing for articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden, and called CNN the “enemy of the American people.” With DDT’s loss leaving the QAnon community in disarray, Greene has taken up the mantle of leadership.

Democrats denounce her, and some, including Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), plan a resolution to expel Greene from the House. Reps. Nikema Williams (D-GA) and Sara Jacobs (D-CA) also plan a resolution to censure Greene and call for her resignation. Jacobs said the Capitol is unsafe with Greene there:

“We saw on January 6th what can happen when elected leaders use their positions of public trust to encourage and incite violence.

Gomez said his Democratic colleagues are being fitted for bullet-proof vests, partly because GOP lawmakers try to sneak guns onto the House floor.

Rep. Alexander Ocasio-Cortez said she and some of her colleagues “don’t yet feel safe around other members of Congress.” She added that “white supremacist sympathizers are at the core of the Republican caucus in the House.”

Rep. Cori Bush has moved her office away from Greene for the safety of herself and her staff: Greene refused to wear a mask while berating Bush and her staff while supporting violence against politicians and “antagonism” directed toward Bush.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) asked for additional security resources because “the enemy is within the House of Representatives.” She said:

“We have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.”

GOP lawmakers are staying quiet, but concerned GOP centrists fear the brand of Greene and QAnon for the GOP will be a catastrophe. The image of Republicans as only insurrectionists and conspiracy theorists may get publicity, but it won’t appeal beyond a small, hardcore base. McCarthy finally said he will “have a conversation with her” and called a House GOP leadership meeting on Wednesday after postponing a scheduled one on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Greene is bragging about DDT praising her.

After McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet with DDT, Dr. Jason Johnson said:

“Kevin McCarthy … basically says that the majority of America that I actually want to serve is an America that wanted to kill Mike Pence. The majority of the America that I want to serve is an America that wanted to kill Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that wanted to hang Ilhan Omar, that wanted to kill Ayanna Pressley. He is saying those are the kinds of people he wants to represent. … Politicians can choose their constituents. John McCain in 2008 said I don’t want people up here voting for me because they think Barack Obama is a Muslim. [Putting Greene on the Education Committee is] like putting Jeffrey Dahmer to babysit your kids. It’s insane, but that’s who they seem to think that America’s going to be going forward.”

Pelosi said Greene’s appointment giving her the ability to shape federal education policy is “appalling, really beyond the pale.” In an opinion piece, Karen Tumulty wrote:

“The sad thing is, the Republican embrace of people like Greene and its tolerance of what she represents show the party no longer recognizes a line between what is and isn’t acceptable. They have made their bargain, and now they are stuck with it.”

The QAnon community thinks DDT will return as president on March 4, the original inauguration date before the 20^th Amendment changed the date to January 20 in 1933. The belief came from members of the sovereign citizens movement who believe they have the right to pick which laws they will obey. They think a 1871 law creating a government in Washington, D.C. secretly made the U.S. a corporation owned by foreign interests and did away with the Founding Fathers government. To these people, DDT will become the 19^th U.S. president because every president since 1871 has been illegitimate.

Protecting conspiracy theorists, Fox pundit Tucker Carlson ridiculed the idea that QAnon is dangerous and denounced their critics as a “mob of censors, hysterics and Jacobin destroyers.”  On her show, Laura Ingraham agreed, accusing Press Secretary Jen Psaki of cracking down on all conservatives when she discussed attempts to share information to “disrupt violent extremist networks.”

Greene’s constituents may be less enchanted with their newly-elected representative after learning about her penchant for physical threats and her deranged conspiracy theories. Her campaign had kept to vague generalities about anti-socialism and pro-American. The question is how far they are willing to sink into Greene’s destruction of their Republican party.

Don’t know anything about QAnon? Here’s a beginner’s guide.

While Republicans continue to threaten democracy, the U.S. has over 600,000 new COVID-19 infections in the past four days and another 15,000 deaths from the coronavirus—or more.

Seven Weeks until U.S. Presidential Inauguration

Yesterday, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey certified the state’s votes; today, Mark Kelly was sworn in to the Senate, bringing the number of Democrats to 48. The state’s other Democratic senator, Kyrsten Sinema, held the Bible during the ceremony. This election adds another state to the list of formerly red Southwestern states with two Democratic senators. The others are New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. They join the western block of California, Oregon, and Washington to have complete Democratic representation in the U.S. Senate. 

A major goal for Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) in the next seven weeks is drilling in the Arctic, including its National Wildlife Refuge, but big banks may be a stumbling block. All six refuse funding for fossil fuel extraction, with Bank of America joining the other five against DDT’s push for “irreversible harm” to the local ecosystem and communities. Not even DDT’s proposal last month to stop banks from excluding customers changed the banks’ position. The sale, open to the entire 1.5 million acres of the coastal plain, will be after January 17, three days before the inauguration, but oil wouldn’t be extracted for at least ten years. The area is also sacred to indigenous peoples, but the current Supreme Court recognizes only Christianity and Judaism as “religious.”

According to Mark Becker, former chair of Brown County (WI) GOP, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told him in a private call on November 14 that Republicans refuse to recognize Joe Biden as president-elect because it would be “political suicide.” In an editorial for the conservative Bulwark, Becker wrote:

“Senator Johnson knows that Joe Biden won a free and fair election. He is refusing to admit it publicly and stoking conspiracies that undermine our democracy solely because it would be ‘political suicide’ to oppose Trump.”

Johnson led the conspiracy-theory-laden hearings attempting to smear Biden with lies about his son, Hunter Biden. Johnson, who has not responded to Becker’s editorial, may be vulnerable in a 2022 re-election after his unswerving devotion to DDT in a state returning to blue in the midst of surging cases and deaths from COVID-19.

Another judge, this one in Wisconsin, has scolded a DDT lawyer, Sidney Powell, for her ridiculous argument to eliminate the state’s election results. He had a number of other reasons than her idea; the judge wrote:

“There was no indication that the plaintiffs gave notice to the adverse parties of the morning’s motion. There was no affidavit filed with the motion. The complaint is not verified, and there was no certification from counsel about the efforts made to give notice to the adverse parties or why notice should not be required… This motion indicates that the earlier motion was an inadvertently filed draft and acknowledges that the referenced proposed order had not been attached.”

Brad Heath, reporter on crime and criminal justice for Reuters, tweeted:

“Rocky start continues for Sidney Powell’s election-fraud lawsuit in Wisconsin. The judge assigned to the case says her team filed a draft motion by accident and still hasn’t complied with the basic rules for seeking a temporary restraining order.”

In her Georgia case, Powell cited a well-known QAnon leader, Ron Watkins, to challenge the Dominion voting machines. Watkins, not an expert in voting machines, didn’t directly allege fraud in his affidavit. He may have inspired death threats against a 20-year-old contractor for Dominion which included a noose left outside his home. Watkins uploaded two videos showing a Dominion employee transferring data from a voting machine to a laptop and claimed it proved voter fraud. A county employee explained the report was transferred to a laptop because third-party software cannot be installed on voting machines. The contractor’s name was shared on the QAnon’s message board and then widely shared on Twitter and right-wing sites such as Parler. The act was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to Gabriel Sterling, voting systems manager for Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, in his press conference asking DDT to step up and stop the madness. DDT continued with his claims about the “rigged” election and shares the videos with his Twitter followers. Watkins stays on as a regular guest on the Russia-connected One America News Network.

Legal expert Rick Hasen has found Rep. Mike Kelly’s (R-PA) appeal to the Supreme Court also ridiculous. Kelly wants an emergency injunction to block all mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania because he thinks they are unconstitutional. No indication of how mail-in ballots violate the U.S. Constitution because the filing declares states can set up their own rules. Any why did Kelly wait until after the election to make the filing when the law has been on the books for almost a year? It’s as crazy as all other “election fraud” lawsuits. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who claimed the virus would end on November 4, is encouraging the Supreme Court to either reject the 2.5 million mail-in votes or reject the entire election results. He probably lacks standing in the case.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other groups are suing DDT, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the White House to keep them from destroying documents during the next seven weeks. DDT traditionally destroys his tweets, and Kushner uses “non-official messaging accounts like WhatsApp to conduct official White House business.”

When DDT fired Christopher Maier, Pentagon policy official overseeing the military’s Defeat ISIS Task Force and disbanded his office, he weakened U.S. defenses. Maier’s responsibilities were given to two other offices dealing with special operations and regional policies led by DDT’s new appointees in last month’s purge. One of them, Ezra Cohen-Watnick who served as aide to Michael Flynn, is now the undersecretary for intelligence at the Pentagon, and the other, Anthony Tata, couldn’t even be confirmed by Republicans because of his right-wing conspiracy theories. Now scattered across the bureaucracy throughout other agencies,

Maier’s team had communicated with Biden’s transition regarding terrorist threats, relations with allies, and counterterrorism missions. Their scattering will hurt not only present information but also future counterterrorism information. DDT pretends the ISIS threat is gone, keeps his incompetent loyalists at the Pentagon, and undermines Biden. For DDT it’s a win-win; for the U.S. it’s a lose-lose.

In a fight on another front, DDT has been talking with personal and campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani about not only pardoning his family but also himself. DDT mentioned pardons for son-in-law Jared Kushner and Giuliani. To be pardoned, people must admit guilt to crimes. 

Investigators from the Washington, DC’s AG office deposed DDT’s daughter Ivanka Trump in a lawsuit about misuse of inaugural funds. Last January, the AG’s office opened the case about abuse of over $1 million by “grossly overpaying” for event space at DDT’s Washington hotel for the 2017 inauguration. Tom Barrack, chair of the inaugural committee was deposed on November 17. Other people deposed include first lady Melania Trump and Rick Gates, former inaugural committee deputy chair. Gates had told Ivanka he was “a bit worried about the optics of PIC [Presidential Inaugural Committee] paying Trump Hotel a high fee,” and event planner Stephanie Winston Wolkoff advised against the price, at least double the market rate. DDT received $175,000 a day for four days. During the Robert Mueller investigation, Gates pled guilty to lying and conspiracy against the U.S.

Last month, DDT pardoned Michael Flynn, briefly his national security adviser. Flynn, a QAnon member, now demands DDT declare martial law and order the military to oversee a “national re-vote.” He follows Sidney Powell’s call for DDT to suspend the Electoral College vote and investigate voter fraud through a military tribunal by declaring the Insurrection Act. Both cite evidence of voter fraud but have none. A third notable, Lin Wood, urges DDT to combat “Communist China’s … nefarious efforts to take away our freedom” through martial law. In a rally, Wood, an Atlanta lawyer, told Republicans to boycott the runoff election for two U.S. senators from the state on January 5. About GOP incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Wood said:

“They have not earned your vote. Don’t you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election, for god’s sake!”

Wood claimed DDT will be president for another four years and then called for Flynn and Powell to run on a joint ticket in 2024.

In a tweet, Flynn shared a full-page Washington Times ad from We the People Convention with the same plea for martial law. It asks DDT “to temporarily suspend the Constitution” to hold the presidential election re-vote.

DDT may be involved in a pay-for-pardon scheme he gets to keep all the money. Redacted records from the DC District Court reveal a DOJ investigation about money in exchange for a presidential pardon. During a raid on offices, investigators picked up over 50 devices including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer drives. DDT has commuted 16 people’s sentences and granted 29 pardons since his inauguration, almost all bringing publicity—and perhaps cash.

December 2, 2020: U.S. COVID-19 by the numbers – 203,737 new cases; over 100,000 hospitalizations, and 2,833 deaths—almost as many as on the 9/11 attack. Mike Kel

Biden Works, DDT Tweets

Correction: After AG Bill Barr decided to use the DOJ to help Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) in frivolous lawsuits, Richard Pilger resigned from his role as top DOJ official investigating election fraud but will remain with the DOJ in a nonsupervisory position.

President-Elect Joe Biden is putting together his team to select his Cabinet and other agency appointees. Names here. He also spent part of his day talking to foreign leaders. Yesterday he called Canada’s Justin Trudeau and today leaders of the UK, Ireland, Germany, and France.

• Boris Johnson, UK’s prime minister, invited Biden to the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow next year.
• In his conversation with Irish PM Micheál Martin, Biden “recalled his strong Irish roots and his visit to Ireland with his family in 2016,” according to the Irish government.
• Angela Merkel’s spokesman said the German chancellor “expressed the wish for close and trusting future cooperation.”
• French President Emmanuel Macron reassured Biden and Harris “of his desire to work together” on issues such as climate, health, fighting terrorism, and defending fundamental rights.

Although Democrats lost eight House members, they held onto at least 225, over the majority of 218, and won 30 districts voting for DDT.

In the Oval Office, DDT was a security risk: he gave classified information to Russia, divulged secrets about Israel, held open meetings about the North Korea crisis in front of Mar-a-Lago guests and waiters, disclosed information showing U.S. spying capabilities, etc. to impress, intimidate, or bribe foreign governments. Gone from the Oval Office, he will be a bigger security risk with his deep debt and anger at most people in the U.S. government. Former CIA officer David Preiss said:  

“Anyone who is disgruntled, dissatisfied or aggrieved is a risk of disclosing classified information, whether as a current or former officeholder. Trump certainly fits that profile.”

DDT has always paid little attention to intelligence briefings, but he may illegally destroy records of any national security records in the administration, adding to the national security nightmare in the U.S. He can also be dangerous to people involved in collection intelligence both in the United States and U.S. allied countries. Except for the Espionage Act, the U.S. has had no safeguards to keep every other president from divulging information dangerous to the nation’s national security. That may stop with DDT if Congress passes legal safeguards. Congress may need to do something about the problem. In another national security risk, DDT’s people prevent Biden high level daily intelligence, classified information, and the ability to meet with officials at intelligence agencies and other departments, including the State Department, which usually facilitates calls between foreign leaders and the president-elect.

Republicans privately admit Biden won the election, but they are afraid that open admission would lose them the Georgia election for two senators. They’re willing to lose the United States to “win.”

During a press conference, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo supported the delay of election results and predicted “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” He got upset when questioned about DDT’s tactics undermining his department’s attempts to push world political leaders into accepting their own losing results. Diplomats are now furious because Pompeo is undermining their work abroad.

DDT started a new PAC for donations underwriting his future political activities, using money he claimed would be for a ballot recount. Of the first $5,000 in a donation, 60 percent goes to “Save America,” and 40 percent goes to the Republican National Committee. No small donations fund “the integrity of our Election.”

Tech companies are fighting to preserve the integrity of the internet as DDT’s supporters spread the lie about Biden losing Pennsylvania, created by DDT’s lawyers Pam Bondi and Rudy Giuliani.

DDT’s Hires:

Michael Ellis, a former aide to DDT’s spy Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), is the new general counsel of the National Security Council. Ellis is known for politicizing intelligence and suggested hiding DDT’s blackmailing telephone call with Ukraine in a special, unobtainable server. 

Another Nunes sycophant, Kashyap “Kash” Patel, became chief of staff to DDT’s new Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. He was an author of the “Nunes Memo” accusing the FBI and DOJ of bias against DDT.  

DDT’s former 30-year-old body man John McIntee is still vetting people for a second term. Unable to get a security clearance, he was fired by chief of staff John Kelly for gambling debts and financial malfeasance before Kelly left and DDT made him personnel director.

DDT’s Fires:

James Anderson and Joseph Kernan, each Undersecretary of Defense, were both told to leave today along with Eric Chewning, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s chief of staff. A question can be raised about whether DDT plans dangerous moves with the military.   

DDT’s COVID-19 spreading:

Harry R. Jackson, one of DDT’s evangelical advisers, died at age 66 after attending the September virus superspreading Rose Garden event introducing DDT’s new Supreme Court justice as his nominee. The church is not giving the cause of death. In 2012, Jackson compared the movement for marriage equality to “the times of Hitler” and once called it “a Satanic plot to destroy our seed.”

DDT’s Lawsuits:

The Pennsylvania postal worker causing an investigation into election fraud has recanted his sworn affidavit claiming he overheard an Erie postmaster ordering staffers to backdate ballots mailed after the Election Day deadline. After the worker’s original falsehood to Project Veritas, a letter from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about the worker’s lie to AG Bill Barr kicked off the DOJ authorization of federal prosecutors to interfere with the election. Graham also declared dead people have voted. CNN can’t find any.

Only 180 ballots of 155,860 votes are being questioned in the GOP complaint accusing Maricopa County (AZ) poll workers of having “incorrectly rejected” votes on Election Day. With Biden’s almost 13,500 vote lead in the state, DDT would need to pick up 70 percent of the uncounted ballots, and many of those are in the heavily Democratic Maricopa County.

In a third Michigan lawsuit, four GOP poll challengers and a Detroit city employee again claim problems with the counting process and demand an audit stopping certification of Wayne County votes and holding a new election. Judges denied the first two similar lawsuits. 

Ten GOP AGs from DDT-winning states want the Supreme Court to take the case opposing the three-day extension for Pennsylvania ballots to arrive after Election Day, already accepted by the high court. The AGs also support DDT’s myth of widespread election fraud. Biden is ahead in Pennsylvania by almost 50,000 votes without those ballots. 

Some of DDT’s lawyers involved in his attempted coup are getting cold feet, saying they could be undermining the electoral system. Jones Day, home of DDT’s former White House lawyer Don McGahn, defended Big Tobacco, the Bin Laden family, and the Cleveland Browns, but firm members have concerns about working for DDT. Outside one of its offices, a mural reads, “Jones Day, Hands Off Our Ballots.” The firm has made over $20 million in about 20 lawsuits involving DDT, his campaign, and the GOP, some of them opposing investigations into Russian election interference. Now it’s worried about DDT paying the bills. In Columbus (OH), another large firm has similar concerns; at least one lawyer has already quit in protest to advancing meritless arguments to destroy elections’ integrity.

VP Mike Pence canceled his vacation to Sanibel Island (FL). He’s staying in Washington to work on DDT’s lawsuits.

In his pretense that he didn’t lose the election, DDT told agencies to prepare his budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

Members of the fantasy conspiracy group QAnon have been more silent than DDT since the election, and Ron Watkins, administrator of their place on 8kun, resigned. He said he quit to focus on his health, marriage, and hobby of furniture-making. By Saturday, one user wrote, “Have we all been conned?” Loser DDT was supposed to vanquish a cabal of “deep state” child abusers and Satan-worshiping Democrats. QAnon is still looking for conspiracies, however, tying the location of Giuliani’s Saturday press conference with his use of “landscape” twice last year. [Left: A QAnon protester outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office (AZ) while votes were being counted. Photo: Dario Lopez-Mills/AP]

Still calling for attention, a Monday-night DDT tweet accused Pfizer, the FDA, and inaccurate pollsters including Fox and Quinnipiac University of election interference. Pfizer deliberately withheld information about a potential vaccine until after the election, according to DDT. Other than tweeting, DDT continues to have a blank schedule.

The 59,000+ COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals yesterday comprise the country’s highest number ever of in-patients being treated for the disease. New infections are at record levels for the sixth consecutive day, 135,653 for the past 24 hours in the U.S. with 1,346 deaths. 

What is wrong with DDT’s family!? Here’s a tweet from Eric Trump—today—one week after Election Day! 

QAnon, Part of the GOP

As QAnon (for Q Anonymous) has hit the mainstream media, more and more people are learning about the group of wacky—and dangerous—conspiracy theorists taking over the GOP. Even Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), after denying he knew anything about the group, admitted he thought the members were opposed to pedophilia.  DDT approves of them because they don’t like pedophilia. (DDT’s deceased friend Jeffrey Epstein would be disappointed.) But QAnon is about much more than the insane belief DDT is the savior to stop a huge Satanic human-trafficking ring operated by Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Tom Hanks.

QAnon’s latest announcement was a conversation-stopper—briefly. Members of the group expected DDT to announce John F. Kennedy Jr, who faked his death over 20 years ago, would replace Mike Pence as his running mate for vice president. What a pair! DDT and the son of President John F. Kennedy. QAnon members even wore special shirts at last Saturday’s rally for the grand presentation in Dallas. Sadly for them, JFK Jr was a no-show, but they would have been disappointed anyway. A staunch Democrat, JFK Jr was anti-racist and pro-gun control.

A former QAnon member who bailed from the group described it as “a community of people that radicalizes them into a world view, that just essentially detaches them from reality.” He has felt shame for his feelings while a member; i.e., the happiness of seeing Hillary Clinton dragged in front of a military tribunal, even though she’s a civilian.” He said:

“That still bothers me to this day, how willing and happy and joyfully I would have reacted to something that I would normally want no part in… This is how you get good people to do bad things.”

An FBI bulletin from May 2019 warns conspiracy theories like QAnon could “very likely” motivate criminal and sometimes violent activity.

At least 16 candidates running for Congress this year, some of them likely to win, are open QAnon members. Oregon’s GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, Jo Rae Perkins, held a rally including the author of two books about QAnon where maskless people clustered close together to hear the message about the wildfires fires being “part of the cover-up to keep guilty people’s crimes from coming to the public.”

Police officers following QAnon express surprise that their beliefs are controversial. Head of the NYPD union Ed Mullins gave a Fox interview displaying a QAnon coffee mug behind him.

GOP incumbents also support QAnon conspiracy theories, for example when Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) agreed with a rally participant that the number of reported COVID-19 deaths was far less than CDC reports. The House overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning QAnon, but 17 Republicans voted against the measure and another 50 abstained. The Senate has not taken up the bill.

VP Mike Pence tentatively disavowed the QAnon philosophy, but he attended a Montana fundraiser with top GOP officials in mid-September at the home of a QAnon couple. The wealthy hosts have also been in communication with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). DDT has called QAnon Georgia candidate for the House Marjorie Taylor Greene a “future Republican star.”  U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler enthusiastically accepted Greene’s endorsement. Greene was forced to remove a photo from her Facebook page showing her brandishing a semi-automatic rifle next to the faces of three freshmen congressional members of color: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). She also repeated the QAnon falsehood that “there’s never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon [on 9/11].”

Republican leadership mostly dodges questions about their connection to QAnon. On Fox, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said the movement had nothing to do with the election despite DDT’s endorsement of the group at last week’s town hall and his retweeting its conspiracy theory about President Obama killing the entire Navy Seal Team 6 after he ordered them to fake the death of Osama bin Laden.

Many of the conspiracies come from the anti-Jewish pamphlet, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, myths collected and published in 1902. The book was used as a basis for Adolf Hitler’s takeover and the Holocaust; the Nazi children’s version of the Protocols was required reading in every German primary school. Its message of racism and anti-LGBTQ people was communicated by Henry Ford, Father Coughlin, and the KKK.

QAnon follows the pattern of rational people following irrational conspiracy theory by being in groups, responding to terror, blaming scapegoats for misfortunes, and believing narcissistic demagogues will rescue them. Current situations being to resemble those of Europe in the 1930s including the growth of fascism and totalitarianism. Only World War II stopped those movements in democratic societies—until now with the rapidly growing neo-Nazi “QAon” movement using Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda to attack “globalists” and their allies.

DDT’s convention last summer matched the QAnon position of racism, devastation in violent crime in cities (the rate was falling until DDT’s most recent campaign), and nonexistent threats from fraudulent voting. The trade wars and huge corporate tax cuts made life worse for many people in the U.S. before he failed to stop the coronavirus when DDT moved from denial to quack remedies back to denial. Failing to solve any problems in the U.S., DDT created imaginary threats corresponding with his supporters’ prejudices on a foundation of their conspiracies building from fear and envy of know-it-all “elites.”

In How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, Jason Stanley, Yale philosopher and scholar of propaganda, wrote about DDT building a cult of personality within the GOP and moved the U.S. toward authoritarianism.

“Fascism is a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of supposed threats by leftist radicals, minorities and immigrants. He promises only he can save us.”

Sam Thielman compares QAnon to”a news-obsessed strain of Christian theology called premillennial dispensationalism, which takes metaphorical passages in the Bible and tries to decode them into both individual prophecies that refer directly to current events, as well as a larger meta-prophecy ending in the Rapture of believers to heaven, the coming of the Antichrist, and the battle of Armageddon.”  Will Sommer with the Daily Beast wrote:

“QAnon is always sucking in new things that have happened. There was a weird light a couple of years ago off the coast of Oregon, and people were like, ‘Oh, that was a missile trying to take down Air Force One as Trump flew to North Korea.’ ”

Dave Hayes, called PrayingMedic on YouTube and Twitter, painstakingly related John Durham (U.S. attorney for Connecticut), QAnon material, and the deaths of Frank Cali of New York’s Gambino crime family and Anthony Comello, the man who shot Cali.

Under the pseudonym “Streiff,” William B. Crews, working for Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wrote and published radical right conspiracy theories. He accused Fauci and CDC Director Robert Redfield of making COVID-19 a plot to undermine DDT. Many federal employees, forced to work in DDT’s and Fox’s “alternative reality,” are driven past the point of reason. To make sense of their world, they create their own. Parallels come from the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and other regimes with propaganda versions when people are forced to believe in their truth. The U.S. has no concentration camps if people don’t follow the fantasy, but employees can lose their jobs.

QAnon followers can begin with fighting child abuse, ignoring the fact that 90 percent of abused children know their abusers and instead obsessing about human trafficking. The result, according to USA Today writer Jessica Guynn, is growing distrust in public institutions, pandemic-fueled social isolation and a no-holds-barred online culture that can instantly propel dangerous misinformation into the mainstream. QAnon members take the moral high ground by their image of defending children.

Another reason for QAnon is a search for the cause of the virus—maybe the 5G network or Bill Gates or the way pharmaceutical companies make money from drugs. The fear of disease makes people more emotionally open because feelings of being unsafe in crises lead some to find relief in conspiracy theories. People who swallow these falsehoods don’t practice critical thinking, searching in a number of sources to see if there’s any support for them.

Q Anonymous has decided to go anonymous in September because the conspiracy theories aren’t welcome on social media. Usually in fake code, an anonymous Q account wrote, “Deploy camouflage. Drop all references re: ‘Q’ ‘Qanon’ etc. to avoid ban/termination.” Dropping the brand is also a way to get more followers such as the “antifa” setting last month’s fires in the Northwest, rumors debunked by local authorities and FBI, but believed by people who consider themselves militia members.

Changing the subject: The presidential debate Thursday may be more civilized than the first one. The Commission on Presidential Debates will mute microphones to give both DDT and Biden two UNINTERRUPTED minutes for their answers. Last time the idea was tossed round, DDT said he wouldn’t attend the debate if that happened, the polling has made him desperate. Topics for the 15-minute segments, agreed on months ago, are the DDT and Biden records, Supreme Court, Covid-19, economy, race and violence in cities, and integrity of the election. An analysis of the two sides on these subjects. DDT also objects to Kristen Welker as an “unfair” moderator, and his campaign manager wants the topics changed to make foreign policy the central focus. They have fewer than three days to settle their problems.

Town Halls: Same Time, Different Locations

Why did Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) schedule his own town hall on a separate network at exactly the same time as his opponent Joe Biden? It started when DDT refused to do attend the scheduled town hall if it were  virtual. Biden asked to be separated from DDT for the second co-debate because DDT was likely contagious for the first one. He has refused to say whether he had a COVID-19 test on the day of the first debate although both campaigns agreed both candidates would be tested before the event.

DDT also said NBC came to him to do the event, but the media gives the impression DDT has asked for the exposure because he can no longer afford enough advertising. NBC should be lambasted for scheduling the town hall at the same time as Bidens whoever asked for it. The network barely saved its reputation with moderator Savannah Guthrie’s sharp questions showed DDT to be the black hole of truth. His lies, many of them from Fox and the Russians, were typically accompanied by justifications such as “people say” and “I read it someplace” and “That’s what I’ve heard.” His tacit promotion of “herd immunity,” pushing people to contract COVID-19, was demonstrated in supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory about wearing masks causing the virus. Even DDT’s friend, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, told people to wear masks he likely contracted coronavirus from DDT and spent seven days seriously ill in the hospital. 

In his first debate with Biden, DDT wouldn’t disavow his support for white supremacy; in the town hall he’s moved on to endorse the outrageously fake conspiracies of QAnon, the group believing the liberal leadership is involved in a satanic pedophilia ring. DDT’s excuse? “They are very much against pedophilia.” Guthrie pointed out DDT retweeted a QAnon conspiracy theory about Biden’s role in having the SEAL Team 6 killed because they didn’t kill Osama Bin Laden. The former Navy Seal killing bin Laden wrote the QAnon tweet, retweeted by DDT, is a lie. This exchange at the town hall:

Guthrie: “Now, why would you send a lie like that to your followers?”

DDT: “I know nothing about that.”

Guthrie: “You retweeted it!”

DDT: “That was an opinion of somebody… People can decide for themselves.”

Guthrie: “You’re the president! You’re not, like, someone’s crazy uncle who can retweet whatever.” [The “crazy uncle” meme has gone viral.)

QAnon also falsely accused President Obama of giving Iran $152 billion to cover up the fake death of bin Laden. That sum frequently appears in radical right writing because part of the Iran agreement was to permit Iran to regain the money already belonging to them. The U.S. Treasury Department reported the amount was actually about $50 billion. The U.S. was also forced by a court to give Iran $1.7 billion after Iran paid the U.S. for military equipment that was never delivered. 

Furious about being asked about QAnon, DDT wanted to know why she wasn’t asking Biden about why he doesn’t “condemn antifa.” She responded, “Because you’re here,” and he muttered, “So cute.” Two days before the town hall, DDT begged suburban women, “Will you please like me?” His poor treatment of Guthrie won’t get him women’s votes.

DDT, who still refuses to release any financial records including his tax returns, claimed the $421 million he owes is “a peanut” compared to his vast wealth. Others more in the know disagree. Forbes estimates his total debt at over $1 billion to several lending sources. (Details here.) When he tried his old lie of not being able to release his returns because he was under audit, Guthrie said he was wrong, making him angrier. As in the first debate, he constantly tried to talk over Guthrie with more lies such as his claim he has a plan for replacing the Affordable Care Act but couldn’t describe what it is.

About the virus surging in most states and the packed hospitals, DDT repeated that the U.S. “was rounding the corner” and “we’re a winner.” Instead, the over 373,000 cases added in the past week—almost 46,000 more than the previous week—is growth not seen since July. The number of cases in the U.S. for the past 24 hours rose to over 70,000. Loudly and defensively, DDT presented a combative stance as he used falsehoods to fight Guthrie; i.e., using nonexistent voter fraud with lies of thousands of ballots thrown into garbage cans as his excuse for not accepting the election results. 

In her MSNBC show following DDT’s town hall, Rachel Maddow topped the hour with an interview with Caroline Giuliani, the daughter of DDT’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, about Caroline’s editorial for Vanity Fair. Caroline urged people to “end Donald Trump’s reign of terror” and vote for Biden and Kamala Harris. She called her father “the president’s personal bulldog” and part of DDT’s collection of corrupt “yes-men.”

U.S. intelligence told DDT that Russia used Giuliani’s interaction with its intelligence to feed Russian propaganda lies about Joe Biden. The U.S. intelligence agencies told DDT that Giuliani was the target of this influence operation through Giuliani’s interaction with Russian intelligence. National security adviser Robert O’Brien tried to protect DDT from “saying something stupid” by warning him that Giuliani’s information from Ukraine would be contaminated by Russia. DDT ignored O’Brien, and Giuliani continued to abet Russia in their propaganda interference in the U.S. election.

This week, Giuliani spread information supposedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the New York Post printed the material although it hasn’t been authenticated. In an op-ed for Hot Air, conservative Ed Morrissey called the publication of Hunter Biden’s private crossing the line and “very creepy,” possibly not even about Hunter Biden. The possibly fake details of how Giuliani obtained the laptop contents are here. Until DDT’s impeachment acquittal, he denied he sent Giuliani to Ukraine for damaging information about Biden. He reversed those lies in a podcast interview with Geraldo Rivera by telling him he told Giuliani to go to Ukraine.

Several reporters commented on the “two planets” of the two town halls, but the best may have come from Bloomberg’s Ryan Teague Beckwith:

“I just switched over from the Trump to Biden town halls and it’s like switching from Ancient Aliens to PBS NewsHour.”

Rachel Maddow spent 20 minutes discussing DDT’s dangerous lies as well as his promotion of conspiracy theories. A fact-check from the New York Times shows the overwhelming difference between DDT’s lies and Biden’s solid statements.

DDT’s town hall was supposed to have an audience of undecided voters, but the “nodding woman” immediately behind DDT is an avowed supporter of DDT who told him after the event, “We have your back! You see, you see, you are the best.”

One advantage of separate town halls, however, is Biden being able to talk with incessant interruptions from DDT seen in the first debate. Because of the difference, Biden was able to answer questions about policy, something DDT never does and tries to block Biden from doing by yelling over him.

The media was convinced before the town halls that DDT’s audience would be much larger than that for Biden. DDT lost to Biden 14.1 million on just one station to 13.1 million on three stations—NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC. NBC received only 10.6 million.

DDT’s polls are so consistently bad that at least seven senators in tight races aren’t using his name in their advertising. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) is more secure in a solidly red state so he decided to appear principled. He set up a telephone town hall with constituents with a rigged question in order to say DDT has “flirted with white supremacists,” mocks Christian evangelicals in private, and “kisses dictators’ butts.” Sasse also criticized DDT’s handling of COVID-19 and accused him of using the White House for personal business benefits. Ben Mathis-Lilley pointed out Sasse’s comments deliberately distanced himself from DDT. About Sasse, Mathis-Lilley wrote, “He got what he wanted, and now he wants to save his reputation and his party’s.” In the past, Sasse has made noises about running for president, and he marches in lockstep with other unethical GOP senators to destroy the country by putting unqualified, radical right judges in the courts.  

DDT marched on with campaigning on Friday, speaking in both Florida and Georgia. Among his other lies was an excuse for not bringing in donations: he said he “could be the world’s greatest fundraiser” but doesn’t want to work or do things for the donations. His new numbers show he’s the first incumbent in modern times to be at a financial disadvantage.

Biden and DDT have their third and final debate on October 22—if DDT shows up.

DDT Foments Violence in His America for Personal Benefit

Today, Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) visited Kenosha (WI), site of police shooting an unarmed Black man seven times in the back in front of three of his small children. Jacob Blake, the injured man, is lying in a hospital bed, paralyzed from the waist down. Public backlash caused the police to remove his handcuffs and leg restraints.

DDT didn’t go to Kenosha to comfort anyone or bring unity. He wanted to talk to law enforcement and survey damaged property. He has already defended a 17-year-old teenager from another state who shot three people, killing two of them and injuring the third. The teen could not legally possess the gun in Illinois because a parent or guardian didn’t sign off for his owning the gun, and he couldn’t legally carry it in Wisconsin. He went to Kenosha to fight protesters, but DDT said he killed the people out of self-defense. The first unarmed man who the teen killed had thrown a plastic bag at the teenager and then chased him to take his gun. DDT lied about saying the teen was attacked when he killed the first man. [Right: police face off protester.]

State and local officials—the governor, the attorney general, and the town’s mayor—asked DDT to not come to the town in an attempt to keep the peace. Only a former alderman, who co-founded the Kenosha Guard attacking protesters, wanted DDT present. While in Kenosha, DDT called police abusing Black people “some bad apples,” denied any systemic racism in law enforcement and the U.S., and attacked anyone who disagreed with him “all Democrat.” Although there were few fight in the city today, the mood was tense. DDT also falsely took credit for the National Guard deployments authorized by the state governor.

DDT claimed he went to Kenosha because he had “such success” in other cities where sending in his personal militia “shut down [the violence] immediately.” Presumably he was talking about Portland (OR) where DDT agents caused such large protests that they had to leave in a month. The protests calmed down until caravans of white supremacists—mostly from out of state—invaded Portland. Last Saturday one of them was killed after Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and American Guard drove over 1,000 vehicles throughout the city and fired paint balls at demonstrators. DDT said protesters “shot a young gentleman and killed him—not with paint, but with a bullet. And I think it’s disgraceful.” [Left: Paintball guns carried by the radical right could appear to be real guns in a stress situation.]

Last Sunday, Joe Biden condemned violence “whether on the left or the right.” Six hours later, DDT denounced Biden for not criticizing what he called “the Anarchists, Thugs & Agitators in ANTIFA,” leading his supporters to also accuse Biden of ignoring the violence. This timeline shows Biden’s condemnation of the violence—on both sides—for a week. Meanwhile, DDT lied, “Portland has been burning for many years, for decades it’s been burning.” He repeatedly assert that protesters there wanted to kill Mayor Ted Wheeler while he praises his radical right supporters’ violence as he always has.

Cops continue to kill unarmed Blacks in the United States of Dictator Donald Trump (DDT). While 29-year-old Dijon Kizzee was riding his bicycle, Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies stopped him for an unspecified traffic violation. He dropped his bike and began to run away. A block away, he punched a deputy in the face and dropped clothing with a semi-automatic handgun. Officers shot Kizzee at least five times; witnesses heard more bullets fired. One witness saw him put his hands in their air after dropping the clothing and gun.

Last night, DDT went off the rails during an interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham, despite her attempt to protect him. In one piece of the session, DDT compared police who kill unarmed Black men and use other excessive force to golfers. He said, “They choke. Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot putt.” Ingraham responded, “You’re not comparing it to golf,” but DDT didn’t deny he wasn’t making that comparison.

In another segment, he repeated a QAnon conspiracy as if it were fact. DDT tried to prove Joe Biden is “weak” with his claim Biden was “controlled like a puppet” by “people you’ve never heard of. People that are in the dark shadows. They’re people that are in the streets, they’re people that are controlling the streets.” Protesters in Portland are paid by this shadow group, according to DDT—and QAnon. He continued by saying funding for a “revolution” is coming from “very stupid rich people that have no idea that if their thing ever succeeded, which it won’t, they would be thrown to the wolves like never before.” These funding groups are “a Marxist organization,” DDT said.

Again, Ingraham tried to divert him by saying, “That sounds like a conspiracy theory.” DDT failed to pick up the cue he sounded crazy and kept on going about a planeload of “thugs” flying to an unspecified location to cause trouble.

“We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that. A lot of the people were on the plane to do big damage.”

When Ingraham asked for details, he said he couldn’t tell her right now, but he would “sometime.” Today, DDT repeated his conspiracy theory to the press, and QAnon members used his comments as proof that a shadowy group of elites works to undermine DDT. Conspiracy theory researcher Travis View tweeted:

“He’s a hairsbreadth away from just pushing Illuminati, Freemasonry, and Rothschild conspiracy theories. Trump kept the identity of the ‘shadowy’ enemy vague, so conspiracy theorists can fill it with their favorite villain. Some choose China, the Deep State, or ‘Elites.’ Though some prefer the stronger antisemitic twang of ‘banking families.’”

Avowed conservative Bill Kristol noted this morning, “When Laura Ingraham is amazed by something Donald Trump has said, and tries to save him from himself, Donald Trump has jumped the shark.” 

DDT’s craziness followed with the 89 tweets and retweets from Sunday morning, one retweet from OAN blaming “this coup attempt” on “a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.”

Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, agrees with DDT’s retiring counselor that increasing violence will help DDT in his reelection campaign. And radical right Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) supports DDT in defending the teenager’s killing two people in Kenosha. DDT is doing nothing to stop the problems except threaten everyone who may not be his followers with attacks by his militia and the National Guard. Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein questioned whether “suburban voters look at these pictures and say, ‘yes, where I belong is in the same political coalition as men who crowd into pickup trucks w/guns, as in Bosnia 1998 or a Third World dictatorship?’”

In 2019, DDT said in an interview with Breitbart:

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

Two years earlier, he told police, “Please don’t be too nice.” DDT is pushing them to this “certain point.”

At the convention, DDT promised a wonderful life would begin on November 3. Why not now?

“Law and order” without law also has no “order.” DDT doesn’t want “law” for the perpetrators of violence, whether civilians or police. He couldn’t even follow the law in his own convention last week. Instead of trying to bring “law and order” through peace, he escalates the rage with praise for white supremacists and rage for everyone else, including a call for jailing New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the Democrat who finally quelled the COVID-19 surge in his area. In addition to demanding imprisonment of political foes, which he’s done for a half-decade, he encourages violence for his personal benefit from private mobs and undermines civil authorities.

Like all good authoritarians, DDT uses his party members to manipulate investigations and smear his opponent, tells everyone in his administration to refuse to cooperate with Congress, invites foreign election interference for his benefit, stops vote by people who might oppose him, dismisses competent nonpartisan government officials to replace them with loyalists, uses agents from the Executive Branch as his personal militia, packs the courts, makes money off laws and rules he creates and changes, allows the Russians to put bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers, and increases civil disorder as a campaign strategy.

As of today, September 1, 2020, another 1,164 deaths from COVID-19 brought the U.S. total to 188,900 after another part of DDT’s campaign strategy allowed the virus to continue unabated, thus making Democratic states look bad. The 41,9479 cases in the past day brought the U.S. total to 6,257,571. The U.S. still has no national testing program, and the death rate per capita is higher than any other advanced countries. That’s life in DDT’s America.

DDT’s Claims False But He’s the GOP Agenda

After Day One of the GOP convention, party lawmakers and strategists asked for more vision and less doom, but the RNC has no values in its platform. It’s sole agenda is Dictator Donald Trump (DDT)—whatever he wants—“the Party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration.” His campaign page does list 50 points divided into ten categories beginning with new jobs and businesses while cutting taxes and giving more money to large companies. It finishes with hiring more police, being more punitive on immigration, and creating more military strength both here on Earth and in space. Nothing about anti-abortion, religious freedom, or the U.S. Constitution—nothing that DDT used to woo the evangelicals.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) concluded last night’s convention by falsely claiming “our side is working on policy”—unlike the Democrats. The GOP non-platform of 2020 using only catch phrases and no debating or writing proves Scott wrong. Annie Lowrey wrote in The Atlantic, the GOP is “the party of no content,” which has grown “remarkably quiet on how they would govern” and “moved into a queasy post-policy space.” Follow Scott’s claim with questions, What policies? And where are they?”

The four-night production speaks only to DDT’s base. Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), who lost his district in 2018, said that parties only “about the cult of personality don’t so well in the long term.” After his narrow loss to a Democrat in 2018, the two-term Curbelo said DDT wasn’t the future for “a small government, free enterprise party.”

The GOP has the advantage of spinning off the Democrats’ convention. Speakers last night stressed what a lovely person DDT is: kind, compassionate, empathetic, just downright sweet. Certainly not racist, despite references to “Chinese virus,” and much better than his opponent, Joe Biden. Other rosy views included how well DDT did in handling COVID-19—with no numbers of deaths or infections—and his humanitarian treatment in criminal justice. These perspectives, as well as the sunny view of the economy, erased the past seven months. [A round-up of commentary from the Daily Kos.]

Tonight, Eric Trump who professed his love for his father, touted peace in the Middle East, (eradicating any notice of Palestinians), and cited his father’s love for law and order, (ignoring the many arrests of his associates and Eric’s subpoena to appear in a fraud investigation regarding the Trump Organization). If Eric wants to claim the Fifth Amendment, he must appear in court and give that response to every question.

Also discordant was the naturalization ceremony for five people in the White House while DDT is blocking all other naturalizations throughout the U.S. because they must appear in person. For purely partisan purposes, DDT used the White House to present people as props from places he called “sh*thole countries.” 

Another speaker allowed to speak, Abby John, praised the police of being “smart” if they racially-profile her biracial son, saying, “Statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.” 

The speech drawing the biggest controversy was the one from Pompeo who bragged about giving a possibly illegal, and definitely unethical, partisan speech from Jerusalem, where he is on official business. U.S. policy is that the U.S. speaks with one voice overseas and not for one political party. According to updated memos, approved by Pompeo, give this instruction:

“Senate-confirmed Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention or convention-related event.”

Pompeo is not exempted, and restrictions are more strict for U.S. diplomats overseas. Last month, he sent the directive to all people on diplomatic and consular posts. State Department employees expressed disappointment in Pompeo, but many were not surprised because of his past partisan activities. Left-learning pro-Israel organizations expressed opposition to Pompeo’s choice of backdrop for his speech because of the partisan U.S.-Israel relationship. Yet he needs DDT’s support for a 2024 presidential run.

My favorite message from many of the speakers is that people in the United States need to think for themselves—as long as they think the way that these same speakers tell them to do.

One of the speakers for the second night of the Republican National Convention was scrubbed from the program for her QAnon tweet telling her 40,000+ followers to investigate an evidence-free Jewish plot to enslave the world. On the same night that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke from Israel, Mary Ann Mendoza, a DDT campaign advisory board member, was supposedly going to speak about her son’s 2014 death caused by a drunk driver illegally in the U.S. The anti-Semitic tweet related lying smears about Jewish banking forces determined to enslave non-Jews and promote world wars as well as Nazi hoaxes. Her tweet described Hillary Clinton as a “Satanic High Priestess” and the smell of sulfur in Barack Obama’s Washington home, relating him to the devil and Hell. Former Utah GOP legislator Sheryl Allen has called for the RNC to remove House candidate Burgess Owens, another Qanon believer, from speaking tomorrow night.

In a disastrous press conference, DDT rolled out  his convention the day before with a “breakthrough” for his new COVID-19 miracle cure. He pushed an emergency use authorization (EUA) of the convalescent plasma transfusion treatment with antibodies with the claim of 35 percent mortality reduction. HHS Secretary Alex Azar said “we dream” of this statistic, and FDA commissioner Steven Hahn glowed about “a 35 percent improvement in survival,” even defending it to a reporter who questioned whether he was over-selling the treatment.

The truth emerged about the “breakthrough” being only hype from incomplete data by a subgroup of hospitalized patients. A scientist from the Mayo Clinic study didn’t know the source of DDT’s figure he attributed to the study. It wasn’t in any material. Dr. Walid Gellad, leader of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh, added, “For the first time ever, I feel like official people in communications and people at the F.D.A. grossly misrepresented data about a therapy.”

In addition, the study, lacking a placebo group, was not a randomized clinical trial,  Duncan Young, a professor of intensive care medicine at the University of Oxford, UK described problems with the EUA:

“We will not know if it works, as the EUA essentially causes clinicians to give the treatment rather than entering patients in clinical trials. There may also be a rationing problem as it may be in short supply.”

Hahn said the criticisms are “entirely justified”; DDT and Azar are keeping mum.

Lawmakers have written Hahn about concerns of politicization. The day before Hahn’s erroneous comments, DDT tweeted an evidence-free accusation of the FDA being part of the “deep state” and creating difficulties in testing “vaccines and therapeutics … hoping to delay the answer until after November 3^rd.”  The letter cited the announcement as the latest example of politicizing science since the pandemic, i.e., the hydroxychloroquine debacle, criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the White House coronavirus task force sidelining the CDC. Hahn also refused to answer a question about DDT’s evidence-free claim about 99 percent of virus cases being “totally harmless.”

The letter requests information about future vaccine reviews and FDA’s safeguards against political pressure by September 4.

Although the White House denies the information, DDT is considering a EUA to avoid regulatory procedures for vaccines so he can get a vaccine out by Election Day. U.S. health agencies require a trial of 30,000 people; an experimental virus vaccine is being tested in the UK on 10,000 people. HHS stated the FDA won’t issue an EUA before the election, hoping the vaccine will be developed by early 2021. We’ll see: DDT said Sunday, “You’ll be hearing about [vaccines] very soon.” Russia and China bypassed large clinical trials, but only 24 percent of Russian doctors said they would take the vaccine.

Yesterday was another disaster for DDT with the testimony of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy before the House Oversight Committee. Although he felt that DDT’s war against mail-in ballots was “not helpful,” he thinks his only job with the USPS is making the trucks run on time. According to DeJoy, he isn’t responsible for removing the sorting machines, cutting overtime, and slowing down delivery. He doesn’t know who is, and he doesn’t care. And he won’t change them. He doesn’t know how much anything costs in the postal service except for a first-class stamp. He lied about delayed deliveries before he took over, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said she will subpoena his calendar for information about his secret meetings after he said he’d check with counsel to see if he has to submit a public record to Congress. To a question from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) about his Senate testimony, he said he couldn’t remember what he told them—a problem for a person who lies.

According to internal USPS not available to members of the Senate when DeJoy lied to them, steep declines began when DeJoy started and not in April or May with the pandemic.  He took over in early June; priority mail was delivered over 90 percent of the time in early July but dropped to under 80 percent within a month. Marketing mail experienced an 8.42 percent decline and periodical deliveries, 9.57 percent. DeJoy did not share these documents with Congress. DeJoy said anyone who blamed him for the changes in USPS is lying. Walter Einenkel describes questioning by 30-year postal employee, Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI).  answer—democracy and rights.

For the first time in two days of hate-filled monologues, Melania Trump expressed sympathy for the families and friends of the 182,404 people (or more) who have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. All the hugging, kissing, and closeness of people at the convention may add to the 5,955,728 people in the U.S. known to contract the disease. That figure will top six million before the convention ends.