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Trump Just Got Even Cozier With QAnon

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Two major QAnon influencers were given official press credentials to the latest Trump rally held in Sarasota, Florida over the weekend, signaling a new level of acceptance of the QAnon conspiracy theory by the former president and his team.

In the build up to last November’s election, Trump repeatedly failed to directly condemn QAnon, instead calling them “people that love our country” and who “like me very much.”

Now Trump, who QAnon supporters—and much of the Republican party—believe is still the rightful president, appears willing to embrace QAnon even further, by handing two of the movement’s most influential voices official press passes to his rally. Continue reading.

Damning CNN Supercut Reveals Who Tucker Carlson Really Sounds Like Now

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The Fox News host sounds a lot like America’s most notorious conspiracy theorist.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is starting to sound a lot like right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. 

CNN on Sunday played a supercut of Carlson’s rhetoric matching that of the Infowars host — Both think the government is spying on them, both have pushed conspiracy theories about the coronavirus vaccines, and both have claimed the FBI was behind the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was carried out by pro-Trump insurrectionists. 

The network’s Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy also found a clip that suggests the two may be coordinating: Continue reading.

Trump is already roadtesting his defense for a possible NY indictment — but there’s a big problem

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One section of former President Donald Trump’s rally speech on Saturday night in Florida stood out to many observers: his response to last week’s indictment of his company and its CFO Allen Weisselberg.

Weisselberg and the Trump Organization were hit with a 15-count indictment from the Manhattan DA, Cy Vance, alleging a scheme to defraud the government and avoid paying required taxes on more than a million dollars worth of non-salary compensation the CFO has received for over a decade.

Trump himself was not charged in the scheme, though many argue it’s hard to believe he wasn’t aware of this allegedly criminal conduct — and indeed, it’s hard to believe this kind of criminality wasn’t widespread under his leadership. But if Vance ever chooses to try and bring a case against the former president, Trump will likely try to claim he was unaware that these crimes were occurring, or that he was unaware that what was being done was illegal. On Saturday, he started roadtesting this type of defense — which, if true, would undermine the case that he had the criminal intent required to be found guilty of the crimes in question — for his fans: Continue reading.

Trump has cut off Rudy Giuliani, and is annoyed that he asked to be paid for his work on challenging the election, book says

Donald Trump’s family has cut off Rudy Giuliani, and the former president has been irked that the lawyer asked to be paid for his work challenging Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, a new book says.

On Sunday, The Times of London published an excerpt from “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” the coming book on the Trump presidency from the author Michael Wolff.

In the extract, Wolff delves into Trump’s postpresidential life at his Mar-a-Lago resort and describes Trump as frustrated by the lack of progress in his quest to overturn the 2020 election result. Continue reading.

Pew’s Validated Post-Election Poll Details Biden’s 2020 Win

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Overall participation in the 2020 election among U.S. adults rose seven points from 2016 to reach 66 percent last year. A new analysis of validated voters from Pew Research Center (which provides a bigger, more reliable sample than exit polls) built on several of the 2020 trends that have already been reported. Here’re some of the key takeaways:

New 2020 Voters

One in 4 voters in 2020, or 25 percent, had not voted in 2016. About six percent of those new 2020 voters turned out in 2018, spiking participation in that midterm election. And voters who turned out in 2018 after skipping the 2016 presidential election were about twice as likely to back Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020.

But the 19 percent of new voters who came out in 2020 after skipping both 2016 and the midterms divided up almost evenly among Biden and Trump, 49 percent-47 percent. However, what was most notable about that group of new 2020 voters was the age disparity, writes Pew: Continue reading.

‘The epitome of hypocrisy’: 17 Tennessee Republicans accepted PPP loans — but want to slash unemployment benefits

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, liberal economists such as Robert Reich (former secretary of labor in the Clinton Administration) and the New York Times’ Paul Krugman have applauded enhanced unemployment benefits as good for the U.S. economy — stressing that those who receive that money are likely to spend it immediately. Republicans, however, have been claiming that enhanced unemployment benefits from the CARES Act of 2020 or the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 encourage Americans not to look for work. But in Tennessee, according to reporter Jackie DelPilar, some of the same Republicans who now rail against unemployment benefits received payments from the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program.

Reporting for Fox 17 Nashville, DelPilar explains, “A FOX 17 News investigation found 17 state lawmakers who supported the unemployment cuts also accepted PPP loans for their businesses. They accepted a combined $12.4 million.”

Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat who serves in the Tennessee House of Representatives, is calling out the hypocrisy of those lawmakers. DelPilar quotes Johnson as saying, “That’s wrong on so many levels…. It is the epitome of hypocrisy to say ‘I’m going to get this federal help, but you don’t deserve it. You need to go back to work.'” Continue reading.

A former Fox exec blasted the network for peddling Trump’s election-fraud claims and airing anti-mask comments, saying he knows Rupert Murdoch doesn’t buy into its coverage

A former Fox executive has blasted Fox News, saying that not even the network’s longtime proprietor Rupert Murdoch believes its coverage.

In an op-ed published Sunday by The Daily Beast, Preston Padden, who served as president of network distribution at the Fox Broadcasting Company for seven years, wrote that Fox News is a TV channel “that no reasonable person would believe.”

Padden wrote that Fox News had perpetuated former President Donald Trump’s “wild and false claims” that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that Fox’s decision to question masks had contributed to “the unnecessary deaths of many Americans” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson says the NSA is spying on him. Is that even plausible?

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It’s highly unlikely, but it’s possible if the Fox host was speaking, knowingly or not, to foreigners under surveillance.

WASHINGTON — Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said this week that the National Security Agency is spying on him as part of a plan to knock his show “off the air.”

The NSA promptly denied the allegations, saying it focuses exclusively on “foreign targets.” Critics dismissed Carlson’s claim as a cynical attempt to rile up his conservative viewers who have made him the most watched host on cable news.

But is there any way that Carlson’s allegations are true, or partially accurate? Continue reading.

‘Inherently un-American mindset’: Sen. Josh Hawley’s home state paper has a dire warning about the GOP’s path

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In honor of Independence Day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board, known for its deep criticism of its own Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), published a piece warning the Republican Party about the dangers of its path. 

While many people have different perspectives on the true meaning of patriotism and independence, the publication aimed to stress the importance of preserving the nation’s “fundamental principles”; the same principles Republicans are eroding with their partisan policies.

“For all their faults (particularly on matters of race), America’s founders were able to look past the authoritarian systems of monarchy and empire in their time, and envision a form of government in which the people ruled themselves, via their elected representatives. Inherent in that radical idea was the expectation that citizens whose preferred candidates failed to win elections would accept the judgment of the constitutional process. Democracy may well be, as Winston Churchill put it, the worst form of government except for all the others, but it is the only legitimate form of government, warts and all.” Continue reading.

Try and try again: GOP tests out myriad attacks on Biden

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Republicans are testing out a myriad of attacks against President Biden, trying to turn public opinion against a popular president among key sectors of the electorate in hopes of boosting their chances in the 2022 midterm elections and beyond.

Republicans have blamed Biden’s economic agenda for rising inflation and criticized him over the flow of migrants at the southern border. They have also recycled attacks from the 2020 election, raising questions about Biden’s mental fitness and trying to tie him to the “defund the police” movement and the left wing of the Democratic party.

The approach has prompted criticism among some who say Republicans need to adopt a more unified message. Republicans also fret that some of the criticisms of Biden aren’t believable and say the party needs to focus on more credible attack lines. Continue reading.