You are the company that you keep. Birds of a feather flock together. Wonder what they discussed at that dinner? Where's our POOTWH defenders at? Brilliant, brilliance of brilliancy and all?
Invoking bigotry
Donald Trump claimed he did not know who Nick Fuentes was before sitting down to dinner with him and other guests at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week. But Fuentes is certainly well known to the groups that track racist and antisemitic trends in American society.
While the Justice Department has described Fuentes in court papers as a white supremacist, that barely begins to fully capture the range of inflammatory views he has expressed denigrating Black people, Jews, women, L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, Muslims and immigrants.
At age 24, Fuentes has become a star on the far right for a font of extremist statements that would have disqualified him from meeting with any other modern president. He has used a racist slur for Black people; called homosexuality “disgusting”; asserted that the Republican Party was “run by Jews, atheists and homosexuals”; said it would be better if women could not vote; compared himself to Hitler and hoped for “a total Aryan victory”; declared that “the First Amendment was not written for Muslims”; and maintained that Jim Crow segregation “was better for them, it’s better for us, it’s better in general.”
Fuentes first came to prominence in 2017 when he attended the ultraright rally in Charlottesville, Va., after which Trump asserted that there were “very fine people on both sides” even as he denounced neo-Nazis. Fuentes dropped out of Boston University after saying he had received threats stemming from his attendance at the rally and began hosting a livestream show, “America First,” that same year, generating an audience of followers called Groypers, named for a cartoon frog.
He founded the America First Political Action Conference in 2020 and hosted far-right Republicans in the House including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona. Fuentes rejects the term white supremacist because it is an “anti-white slur,” but embraces the language of white racism and antisemitism and calls himself a “reactionary” and a “misogynist.”
Trump often claims not to know much about extremists whose support he accepts, as he did with the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, the Proud Boys and followers of QAnon. But even if it were true in this case, Fuentes was brought to the dinner by Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who was invited by Trump at the very moment West was under fire for antisemitic comments of his own. And even afterward, Trump did not condemn Fuentes, leaving white nationalists to view the dinner as validation.
While news organizations are naturally reluctant to amplify hateful statements, it is important to understand just what we’re talking about when we discuss someone welcomed to the table of a former president seeking to return to the White House. So here is a summary compiled with the help of my colleague Ian Prasad Philbrick from research by the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations and news outlets. Fuentes did not respond to requests for an interview passed along through a lawyer.
Antisemitism and racism
Fuentes regularly invokes fears of a “white genocide” and echoes replacement theory, which holds that elites seek to “replace” white Americans with immigrants and other people of color. The theory has inspired a number of mass shootings in recent years, including at a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Walmart in El Paso and a Buffalo supermarket.
“Our civilization is being dismantled, our people are being genocided, and conservatives can’t think past what will play well with liberal media in the next election,” Fuentes once tweeted. He has also said, “The Founders never intended for America to be a refugee camp for nonwhite people.” And on Alex Jones’s Infowars last year, he said, “I don’t see Jews as Europeans and I don’t see them as part of Western civilization, particularly because they are not Christians.”
Fuentes has advanced Holocaust denial, or what he calls Holocaust “revision,” most memorably in a video riff in which he compared Nazi death camps to Cookie Monster baking cookies, suggesting it was not possible to have killed six million Jews during World War II. He later said the video was only a “lampoon,” while saying he does acknowledge the Holocaust, and he has said he uses “irony” to discuss taboo subjects.
Violence and politics
While again saying he was only kidding, Fuentes appeared to endorse violence against women, telling one listener on his livestream who asked how to punish a wife “for getting out of line” that he should hit her.
“Why don’t you take your hand and give her a vicious slap right across her face, right across her ignorant face?” he said. “Why don’t you give her a vicious and forceful backhanded slap with your knuckles right across her face, disrespectfully, and make it hurt?” He then disavowed violence and claimed he was joking, saying he would never strike a woman “unless she deserved it.”
Fuentes has praised the fall of the American-backed government in Afghanistan because the Taliban “is a conservative, religious force” while “the U.S. is godless and liberal,” and cheered on President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, saying, “Can we give a round of applause for Russia?” He has said that the crusades and the inquisitions were “pretty good stuff” and that he wanted the “people that run CNN to be arrested and deported or hanged.”
As for the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when he and other Trump supporters rallied outside the building, Fuentes has called it “awesome” and “lighthearted mischief.” On the anniversary of the riot, he revered it as “part of our new heritage,” adding that it should be a holiday. “This is a historic moment for us,” he said. “We should celebrate that it happened, absolutely.”
Related: Some Jewish Republicans who were among Trump’s staunchest supporters are backing away over concerns he is legitimizing antisemitism.
In an acknowledgment of the severity of the backlash and an effort to prevent a repeat, Trump's campaign is putting new protocols in place to ensure that those who meet with him are approved and fully vetted, according to people familiar with the plans who requested anonymity to share internal strategy. The changes will include expediting a system, borrowed from Trump’s White House, in which a senior campaign official will be present with him at all times, according to one of the people.
The decision follows the anger and handwringing from people close to Trump over how the former president became embroiled in scandal just two weeks after launching his third campaign for the White House under the cloud of numerous investigations. And it highlights their concerns about Trump's vulnerability as GOP strategists and officials increasingly conclude that new leadership is the party's best hope for winning in future elections.
“Republicans, we’re looking to 2024 and we’re looking for a winner," said New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who blasted Trump's dinner as “absolutely reprehensible."
“I think it makes him even less electable in November of 2024,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly said he did not know until after the fact that he had had dinner with Nick Fuentes, the far-right activist who has used his online platform to spew antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric. Fuentes arrived by car with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and was waved into the club by security, even though only Ye had been on the security list, according to one of the people present and others briefed on the events. (Fuentes apparently did not show his ID and the car's driver, a frequent guest at the club, got in using a credit card after misplacing her license.)
Some aides had advised Trump against meeting with Ye, who has made his own antisemitic comments. But the two have a longstanding relationship and Trump rebuffed the advice. They were supposed to meet one-on-one in the club’s library, but Trump, eager to show off his celebrity guest to his paying club members, decided to divert the group to the club’s main patio dining area. Fuentes joined the dinner at Ye's invitation.
Trump is no stranger to controversies of his own creation. His 2016 campaign was fueled by an endless cycle of outrage. Trump would make an inflammatory statement, calling for Muslims to be banned from entering the country, saying John McCain was “ not a war hero ” because he was captured in Vietnam, or asserting an Indiana-born federal judge had “ an absolute conflict ” on a case because of his “Mexican heritage." Those comments would spur days of media coverage as critics responded with outrage, keeping Trump in the news.
But the political landscape is fundamentally different now. Trump is no longer a political outsider or newcomer. He's a member of a most elite circle — the former presidents club — and a seasoned politician mounting what is now his third campaign for the office. And after nearly eight years of his dominating the news cycle, many in his party and the voting public are tired of the constant drama and chaos.
“If you have people who are constantly creating distractions and taking you off message and forcing people to answer questions like the ones that you’re asking, that’s not a good thing," South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
And While Trump has advised aides that he wants to try to recapture the energy of his first campaign, when he was the anti-establishment outsider fighting better-financed and organized rivals, the Mar-a-Lago episode revealed the limits of his threadbare operation, which has yet to hold a single public event since Trump's announcement two weeks ago.
Trump's team had planned to wait until the new year to begin building out a more robust and regimented campaign operation. But while no travel has been planned through the end of the year, aides are stepping up their efforts to ensure the people he meets with have been screened and that the former president is staffed by a rotating set of campaign aides — something that had not been expected to begin until January.
In the aftermath of the dinner meeting, several GOP senators had said those responsible for the meeting should be fired. Longtime allies not involved in the campaign questioned how Fuentes was able to access the club and why nobody seemed aware of his presence or warned Trump against meeting with him.
So far, Trump has refused to condemn the views of either visitor, despite growing condemnation from his party, including calls for an apology from his former Vice President Mike Pence.
In an interview with Fox News Digital Tuesday, Trump said again that he had “never heard of” Fuentes. “I had no idea what his views were and they weren’t expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted," he said.
On Tuesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy," and "anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the Untied States.”
“The president can have meetings with who he wants," added House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, "but I don’t think anyone should have a meeting with Nick Fuentes, and his views are nowhere within the Republican Party and within this country itself.”
Trump, who generally views backtracking as a sign of weakness, has a long history of failing to condemn bigotry and hate speech in what some have attributed to concerns about alienating parts of his base who are open to such views.
Amid pressure to denounce David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who endorsed his 2016 campaign, for instance, Trump was heard assuring former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie “that he would get to it, but that it didn't have to happen too quickly," reporter Maggie Haberman recounted in her book, “Confidence Man.” "A lot of these people vote,” Trump reportedly said.
“Mr. Trump isn’t going to change, and the next two years will inevitably feature many more such damaging episodes," The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on Sunday. “Republicans who continue to go along for the ride with Mr. Trump are teeing themselves up for disaster in 2024.”
___ Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report from Washington.
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
i think a dna test of don jr would reveal his dad to be Cocaine Bear.
That also could have probably been a nickname for Daddy Trump in the 1980s.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Trump probe: Court halts Mar-a-Lago special master review
By ERIC TUCKER
2 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday ended an independent review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate, removing a hurdle the Justice Department said had delayed its criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret government information.
The decision by the three-judge panel represents a significant win for federal prosecutors, clearing the way for them to use as part of their investigation the entire tranche of documents seized during an Aug. 8 FBI search of Mar-a-Lag o. It also amounts to a sharp repudiation of arguments by Trump's lawyers, who for months had said that the former president was entitled to have a so-called “special master” conduct a neutral review of the thousands of documents taken from the property.
The ruling from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had been expected given the skeptical questions the judges directed at a Trump lawyer during arguments last week, and because two of the three judges on the panel had already ruled in favor of the Justice Department in an earlier dispute over the special master.
The special master litigation has played out alongside an ongoing investigation examining the potential criminal mishandling of national defense information as well as efforts to possibly obstruct that probe. Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed Jack Smith, a veteran public corruption prosecutor, to serve as special counsel overseeing that investigation.
It remains unclear how much longer the investigation will last, or who, if anyone, might be charged. But the probe has shown signs of intensifying, with investigators questioning multiple Trump associates about the documents and granting one key ally immunity to ensure his testimony before a federal grand jury. And the appeals court decision is likely to speed the investigation along by cutting short the outside review of the records.
The conflict over the special master began just weeks after the FBI’s search, when Trump sued in federal court in Florida seeking the appointment of an independent arbiter to review the roughly 13,000 documents the Justice Department says were taken from the home.
A federal judge, Aileen Cannon, granted the Trump team’s request, naming veteran Brooklyn judge Raymond Dearie to serve as special master and tasking him with reviewing the seized records and filtering out from the criminal investigation any documents that might be covered by claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.
She also barred the Justice Department from using in its criminal investigation any of the seized records, including the roughly 100 with classification markings, until Dearie completed his work.
The Justice Department objected to the appointment, saying it was an unnecessary hindrance to its criminal investigation and saying Trump had no credible basis to invoke either attorney-client privilege or executive privilege to shield the records from investigators.
It sought, as a first step, to regain access to the classified documents. A federal appeals panel sided with prosecutors in September, permitting the Justice Department to resume its review of the documents with classification markings.
The department also pressed for access to the much larger trove of unclassified documents, saying such records could contain important evidence for their investigation.
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Because of course he did and does. Yea, don't discuss this, just go outside and play!
Trump expresses solidarity with Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol
Former president Donald Trump expressed solidarity with the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, sending a video of support to a fundraising event Thursday night hosted by a group called the Patriot Freedom Project that is supporting families of those being prosecuted by the government.
“People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said in the video, which appeared to have been shot at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. “It’s the weaponization of the Department of Justice, and we can’t let this happen in our country.”
Trump, who last month announced a 2024 White House bid, pledged that in coming months, he would take a close look at what he characterized as “a very unfair situation.”
The Patriot Freedom Project advertises itself as “a non-profit organization providing legal, financial, mental-health, and spiritual support for individuals and their families — including young children — who are suffering at the hands of a weaponized justice system.”
House Democrats reviewing Trump's tax returns split into publish-everything and there-are-rules camps with GOP takeover looming
House Democrats who recently gained access to some of former President Donald Trump's federal tax filings are wrestling with how to make the most of the sensitive data before incoming GOP leaders inevitably shut down the budding investigation next month.
Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal, who will have to hand the gavel over to Republicans in January after their narrow midterms victory, met with Democratic tax writers late Thursday to talk strategy.
In addition to running short on time to comb through several years of the embattled former president's finances, Neal and whoever he taps to actually pore over the US Treasury documents must be mindful of disclosure laws designed to keep tax records confidential — though some of Neal's colleagues maintain that everyone deserves to know about any conflicts of interest Trump kept hidden while in office.
"I want them all released," Ways and Means Committee member Bill Pascrell told MSNBC ahead of Neal's group-wide meeting. The New Jersey Democrat added that any corresponding probe wouldn't be about "one man," but about accountability for all.
House Democrats reviewing Trump's tax returns split into publish-everything and there-are-rules camps with GOP takeover looming
House Democrats who recently gained access to some of former President Donald Trump's federal tax filings are wrestling with how to make the most of the sensitive data before incoming GOP leaders inevitably shut down the budding investigation next month.
Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal, who will have to hand the gavel over to Republicans in January after their narrow midterms victory, met with Democratic tax writers late Thursday to talk strategy.
In addition to running short on time to comb through several years of the embattled former president's finances, Neal and whoever he taps to actually pore over the US Treasury documents must be mindful of disclosure laws designed to keep tax records confidential — though some of Neal's colleagues maintain that everyone deserves to know about any conflicts of interest Trump kept hidden while in office.
"I want them all released," Ways and Means Committee member Bill Pascrell told MSNBC ahead of Neal's group-wide meeting. The New Jersey Democrat added that any corresponding probe wouldn't be about "one man," but about accountability for all.
Isn’t POOTWH on the record as saying he’d release his tax returns as soon as the audit was completed? And since there was no audit and the dems have them, shouldn’t they or can’t they release the same information that all previous candidates released since it became a thing? Sources of Income and amounts, liabilities, taxes due, refunds and charitable giving? No big whoop unless you’ve been misrepresenting yourself for decades.
Trump calls for himself to be reinstated as president by falsely claiming fraud overrides Constitution
Donald Trump is calling for himself to be reinstated as president or for the 2020 election to be run again.
In a Saturday morning post on Truth Social, the twice-impeached former president claimed that alleged “massive and widespread fraud and deception” by Democrats and big tech companies undermined the results.
Trump calls for himself to be reinstated as president by falsely claiming fraud overrides Constitution
Donald Trump is calling for himself to be reinstated as president or for the 2020 election to be run again.
In a Saturday morning post on Truth Social, the twice-impeached former president claimed that alleged “massive and widespread fraud and deception” by Democrats and big tech companies undermined the results.
Trump calls for himself to be reinstated as president by falsely claiming fraud overrides Constitution
Donald Trump is calling for himself to be reinstated as president or for the 2020 election to be run again.
In a Saturday morning post on Truth Social, the twice-impeached former president claimed that alleged “massive and widespread fraud and deception” by Democrats and big tech companies undermined the results.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
At this point GOP if they have any political decor should just tell him there’s no way he will be the nominee but as we all know they are deathly afraid of him and his cult!
At this point GOP if they have any political decor should just tell him there’s no way he will be the nominee but as we all know they are deathly afraid of him and his cult!
For sure. It's just maddening to me to think that so many republicans still stand behind the biggest fool in the history of the U.S. government. It just doesn't make sense that so many would support a man with zero redeeming qualities.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Comments
Invoking bigotry
Donald Trump claimed he did not know who Nick Fuentes was before sitting down to dinner with him and other guests at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week. But Fuentes is certainly well known to the groups that track racist and antisemitic trends in American society.
While the Justice Department has described Fuentes in court papers as a white supremacist, that barely begins to fully capture the range of inflammatory views he has expressed denigrating Black people, Jews, women, L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, Muslims and immigrants.
At age 24, Fuentes has become a star on the far right for a font of extremist statements that would have disqualified him from meeting with any other modern president. He has used a racist slur for Black people; called homosexuality “disgusting”; asserted that the Republican Party was “run by Jews, atheists and homosexuals”; said it would be better if women could not vote; compared himself to Hitler and hoped for “a total Aryan victory”; declared that “the First Amendment was not written for Muslims”; and maintained that Jim Crow segregation “was better for them, it’s better for us, it’s better in general.”
Fuentes first came to prominence in 2017 when he attended the ultraright rally in Charlottesville, Va., after which Trump asserted that there were “very fine people on both sides” even as he denounced neo-Nazis. Fuentes dropped out of Boston University after saying he had received threats stemming from his attendance at the rally and began hosting a livestream show, “America First,” that same year, generating an audience of followers called Groypers, named for a cartoon frog.
He founded the America First Political Action Conference in 2020 and hosted far-right Republicans in the House including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona. Fuentes rejects the term white supremacist because it is an “anti-white slur,” but embraces the language of white racism and antisemitism and calls himself a “reactionary” and a “misogynist.”
Trump often claims not to know much about extremists whose support he accepts, as he did with the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, the Proud Boys and followers of QAnon. But even if it were true in this case, Fuentes was brought to the dinner by Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who was invited by Trump at the very moment West was under fire for antisemitic comments of his own. And even afterward, Trump did not condemn Fuentes, leaving white nationalists to view the dinner as validation.
While news organizations are naturally reluctant to amplify hateful statements, it is important to understand just what we’re talking about when we discuss someone welcomed to the table of a former president seeking to return to the White House. So here is a summary compiled with the help of my colleague Ian Prasad Philbrick from research by the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations and news outlets. Fuentes did not respond to requests for an interview passed along through a lawyer.
Antisemitism and racism
Fuentes regularly invokes fears of a “white genocide” and echoes replacement theory, which holds that elites seek to “replace” white Americans with immigrants and other people of color. The theory has inspired a number of mass shootings in recent years, including at a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Walmart in El Paso and a Buffalo supermarket.
“Our civilization is being dismantled, our people are being genocided, and conservatives can’t think past what will play well with liberal media in the next election,” Fuentes once tweeted. He has also said, “The Founders never intended for America to be a refugee camp for nonwhite people.” And on Alex Jones’s Infowars last year, he said, “I don’t see Jews as Europeans and I don’t see them as part of Western civilization, particularly because they are not Christians.”
Fuentes has advanced Holocaust denial, or what he calls Holocaust “revision,” most memorably in a video riff in which he compared Nazi death camps to Cookie Monster baking cookies, suggesting it was not possible to have killed six million Jews during World War II. He later said the video was only a “lampoon,” while saying he does acknowledge the Holocaust, and he has said he uses “irony” to discuss taboo subjects.
Violence and politics
While again saying he was only kidding, Fuentes appeared to endorse violence against women, telling one listener on his livestream who asked how to punish a wife “for getting out of line” that he should hit her.
“Why don’t you take your hand and give her a vicious slap right across her face, right across her ignorant face?” he said. “Why don’t you give her a vicious and forceful backhanded slap with your knuckles right across her face, disrespectfully, and make it hurt?” He then disavowed violence and claimed he was joking, saying he would never strike a woman “unless she deserved it.”
Fuentes has praised the fall of the American-backed government in Afghanistan because the Taliban “is a conservative, religious force” while “the U.S. is godless and liberal,” and cheered on President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, saying, “Can we give a round of applause for Russia?” He has said that the crusades and the inquisitions were “pretty good stuff” and that he wanted the “people that run CNN to be arrested and deported or hanged.”
As for the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when he and other Trump supporters rallied outside the building, Fuentes has called it “awesome” and “lighthearted mischief.” On the anniversary of the riot, he revered it as “part of our new heritage,” adding that it should be a holiday. “This is a historic moment for us,” he said. “We should celebrate that it happened, absolutely.”
Related: Some Jewish Republicans who were among Trump’s staunchest supporters are backing away over concerns he is legitimizing antisemitism.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump is betting he can win his way back to the White House by reviving the outsider appeal that fueled his success in 2016.
But his dinner with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and a rapper who has spewed antisemitic conspiracies is demonstrating the risks of that approach. It underscores the dangers of his limited campaign operation and leaves the former president subject to stinging criticism from fellow Republicans who increasingly see him as a liability for their party after a lackluster showing in this year's midterm elections.
In an acknowledgment of the severity of the backlash and an effort to prevent a repeat, Trump's campaign is putting new protocols in place to ensure that those who meet with him are approved and fully vetted, according to people familiar with the plans who requested anonymity to share internal strategy. The changes will include expediting a system, borrowed from Trump’s White House, in which a senior campaign official will be present with him at all times, according to one of the people.
The decision follows the anger and handwringing from people close to Trump over how the former president became embroiled in scandal just two weeks after launching his third campaign for the White House under the cloud of numerous investigations. And it highlights their concerns about Trump's vulnerability as GOP strategists and officials increasingly conclude that new leadership is the party's best hope for winning in future elections.
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“Republicans, we’re looking to 2024 and we’re looking for a winner," said New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who blasted Trump's dinner as “absolutely reprehensible."
“I think it makes him even less electable in November of 2024,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly said he did not know until after the fact that he had had dinner with Nick Fuentes, the far-right activist who has used his online platform to spew antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric. Fuentes arrived by car with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and was waved into the club by security, even though only Ye had been on the security list, according to one of the people present and others briefed on the events. (Fuentes apparently did not show his ID and the car's driver, a frequent guest at the club, got in using a credit card after misplacing her license.)
Some aides had advised Trump against meeting with Ye, who has made his own antisemitic comments. But the two have a longstanding relationship and Trump rebuffed the advice. They were supposed to meet one-on-one in the club’s library, but Trump, eager to show off his celebrity guest to his paying club members, decided to divert the group to the club’s main patio dining area. Fuentes joined the dinner at Ye's invitation.
Trump is no stranger to controversies of his own creation. His 2016 campaign was fueled by an endless cycle of outrage. Trump would make an inflammatory statement, calling for Muslims to be banned from entering the country, saying John McCain was “ not a war hero ” because he was captured in Vietnam, or asserting an Indiana-born federal judge had “ an absolute conflict ” on a case because of his “Mexican heritage." Those comments would spur days of media coverage as critics responded with outrage, keeping Trump in the news.
But the political landscape is fundamentally different now. Trump is no longer a political outsider or newcomer. He's a member of a most elite circle — the former presidents club — and a seasoned politician mounting what is now his third campaign for the office. And after nearly eight years of his dominating the news cycle, many in his party and the voting public are tired of the constant drama and chaos.
“If you have people who are constantly creating distractions and taking you off message and forcing people to answer questions like the ones that you’re asking, that’s not a good thing," South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
And While Trump has advised aides that he wants to try to recapture the energy of his first campaign, when he was the anti-establishment outsider fighting better-financed and organized rivals, the Mar-a-Lago episode revealed the limits of his threadbare operation, which has yet to hold a single public event since Trump's announcement two weeks ago.
Trump's team had planned to wait until the new year to begin building out a more robust and regimented campaign operation. But while no travel has been planned through the end of the year, aides are stepping up their efforts to ensure the people he meets with have been screened and that the former president is staffed by a rotating set of campaign aides — something that had not been expected to begin until January.
In the aftermath of the dinner meeting, several GOP senators had said those responsible for the meeting should be fired. Longtime allies not involved in the campaign questioned how Fuentes was able to access the club and why nobody seemed aware of his presence or warned Trump against meeting with him.
So far, Trump has refused to condemn the views of either visitor, despite growing condemnation from his party, including calls for an apology from his former Vice President Mike Pence.
In an interview with Fox News Digital Tuesday, Trump said again that he had “never heard of” Fuentes. “I had no idea what his views were and they weren’t expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted," he said.
On Tuesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy," and "anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the Untied States.”
“The president can have meetings with who he wants," added House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, "but I don’t think anyone should have a meeting with Nick Fuentes, and his views are nowhere within the Republican Party and within this country itself.”
Trump, who generally views backtracking as a sign of weakness, has a long history of failing to condemn bigotry and hate speech in what some have attributed to concerns about alienating parts of his base who are open to such views.
Amid pressure to denounce David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who endorsed his 2016 campaign, for instance, Trump was heard assuring former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie “that he would get to it, but that it didn't have to happen too quickly," reporter Maggie Haberman recounted in her book, “Confidence Man.” "A lot of these people vote,” Trump reportedly said.
“Mr. Trump isn’t going to change, and the next two years will inevitably feature many more such damaging episodes," The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on Sunday. “Republicans who continue to go along for the ride with Mr. Trump are teeing themselves up for disaster in 2024.”
___ Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report from Washington.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
If Milo is telling the truth that is hilarious...tRump is a fucking moron
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
attention whore
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/politics/house-ways-and-means-committee-now-has-donald-trumps-federal-tax-returns/index.html
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
DECLASSIFY the TAX RETURNS
I think the attention whore should come up with another fake name and start over.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
it would be hilarious if tRump responded with a "oh no you didn't...I called this meeting"
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday ended an independent review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate, removing a hurdle the Justice Department said had delayed its criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret government information.
The decision by the three-judge panel represents a significant win for federal prosecutors, clearing the way for them to use as part of their investigation the entire tranche of documents seized during an Aug. 8 FBI search of Mar-a-Lag o. It also amounts to a sharp repudiation of arguments by Trump's lawyers, who for months had said that the former president was entitled to have a so-called “special master” conduct a neutral review of the thousands of documents taken from the property.
The ruling from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had been expected given the skeptical questions the judges directed at a Trump lawyer during arguments last week, and because two of the three judges on the panel had already ruled in favor of the Justice Department in an earlier dispute over the special master.
The special master litigation has played out alongside an ongoing investigation examining the potential criminal mishandling of national defense information as well as efforts to possibly obstruct that probe. Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed Jack Smith, a veteran public corruption prosecutor, to serve as special counsel overseeing that investigation.
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It remains unclear how much longer the investigation will last, or who, if anyone, might be charged. But the probe has shown signs of intensifying, with investigators questioning multiple Trump associates about the documents and granting one key ally immunity to ensure his testimony before a federal grand jury. And the appeals court decision is likely to speed the investigation along by cutting short the outside review of the records.
The conflict over the special master began just weeks after the FBI’s search, when Trump sued in federal court in Florida seeking the appointment of an independent arbiter to review the roughly 13,000 documents the Justice Department says were taken from the home.
A federal judge, Aileen Cannon, granted the Trump team’s request, naming veteran Brooklyn judge Raymond Dearie to serve as special master and tasking him with reviewing the seized records and filtering out from the criminal investigation any documents that might be covered by claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.
She also barred the Justice Department from using in its criminal investigation any of the seized records, including the roughly 100 with classification markings, until Dearie completed his work.
The Justice Department objected to the appointment, saying it was an unnecessary hindrance to its criminal investigation and saying Trump had no credible basis to invoke either attorney-client privilege or executive privilege to shield the records from investigators.
It sought, as a first step, to regain access to the classified documents. A federal appeals panel sided with prosecutors in September, permitting the Justice Department to resume its review of the documents with classification markings.
The department also pressed for access to the much larger trove of unclassified documents, saying such records could contain important evidence for their investigation.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Trump expresses solidarity with Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol
Former president Donald Trump expressed solidarity with the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, sending a video of support to a fundraising event Thursday night hosted by a group called the Patriot Freedom Project that is supporting families of those being prosecuted by the government.“People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said in the video, which appeared to have been shot at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. “It’s the weaponization of the Department of Justice, and we can’t let this happen in our country.”
Trump, who last month announced a 2024 White House bid, pledged that in coming months, he would take a close look at what he characterized as “a very unfair situation.”
The Patriot Freedom Project advertises itself as “a non-profit organization providing legal, financial, mental-health, and spiritual support for individuals and their families — including young children — who are suffering at the hands of a weaponized justice system.”
Trump expresses solidarity with Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol (msn.com)
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
House Democrats reviewing Trump's tax returns split into publish-everything and there-are-rules camps with GOP takeover looming
https://www.businessinsider.com/house-democrats-wrestle-with-publicizing-donald-trumps-tax-returns-2022-12
Hillary released 20 years of her returns.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Trump calls for himself to be reinstated as president by falsely claiming fraud overrides Constitution
Donald Trump is calling for himself to be reinstated as president or for the 2020 election to be run again.
In a Saturday morning post on Truth Social, the twice-impeached former president claimed that alleged “massive and widespread fraud and deception” by Democrats and big tech companies undermined the results.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-2020-election-fraud-constitution-b2238305.htmli hereby demand that i get instated as the rightful king president of the usa.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
www.cluthelee.com
www.cluthe.com
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
go on.....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I would, but just not in the mood. Been a rough couple of days & don't want to waste my time on him.
www.cluthelee.com
www.cluthe.com
For sure. It's just maddening to me to think that so many republicans still stand behind the biggest fool in the history of the U.S. government. It just doesn't make sense that so many would support a man with zero redeeming qualities.