Month: January 2021

CNN’s Brian Stelter: ‘Responsible Networks’ Shouldn’t Air Trump’s Visit To Border Wall Live And in Full

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

CNN reporter Brian Stelter, who produces a newsletter called ‘Reliable Sources,’ claims “responsible TV networks” shouldn’t air President Trump’s visit to the border wall.

The President is scheduled to visit Alamo, Texas today to check on the progress of the wall on the U.S. southern border.

In the latest iteration of his newsletter, Stelter dismissed Trump’s appearance as a “stunt” and tried to shame other networks into not airing the event for fear that the President could make controversial comments.

“There’s a lot of concern about what he’ll say and how he’ll say it,” the CNN reporter said. “Let me just reiterate what I said on CNN Monday morning: Responsible TV networks will not air Trump live and in full. Not after his incitement last week.”

He then claimed his network and other far-left outlets would be more responsible in airing the event than say, Fox News.

“But I think we’ll see a repeat of last Wednesday’s rally coverage, meaning that Fox and other pro-Trump networks will air Trump live, while other outlets will exercise editorial judgment and ingest what he says, then decide if any of it is newsworthy,” surmised Stelter.

RELATED: WH Official: Trump To Visit Texas To See Border Wall Construction – A ‘Promise Kept’

CNN’s Brian Stelter Wants to Censor Trump’s Visit to the Border Wall

It’s bad enough that Big Tech companies are actively doing everything in their power to suppress news and statements made by the President, but now CNN, a supposedly mainstream outlet, is rallying their liberal peers to join in.

Think about what he is essentially saying in that message.

We, the arbiters of truth at CNN, will watch President Trump’s visit to the border wall first, and only then will we decide if you, the viewer, have a right to know what happened.

Glenn Greenwald, a co-founder of The Intercept, slammed Stelter for a very similar interpretation.

“Silicon Valley defenders: Censoring Trump from all the monopolistic platforms is no big deal. He still has a press room,” Greenwald mocked.

He added, “The press: we should censor what Trump says and only broadcast and report the parts we want the public to hear, concealing the rest.”

RELATED: Hillary Clinton Calls Capitol Riots ‘Result Of White-Supremacist Grievances,’ Agrees Trump Should Be Impeached

The Media is the Most Corrupt Institution in America

Greenwald also highlighted a New York Times columnist who he says is perfectly content with Big Tech censorship “as long as they use that power to censor her adversaries, not her allies.”

“That is the authoritarian mindset in its purest expression, right there,” he added. “As long as Silicon Valley monopoly power is harnessed to silence those who think differently than I, I support it.”

Greenwald points out that there hasn’t been a single voice of opposition to silencing Trump and his supporters, with many media outlets actually cheering the Big Tech monopolies on.

Back to Stelter, the reality here is that he doesn’t want CNN to cover a story that might put President Trump in a positive light, like a visit to the border wall.

Do you think for one moment CNN wouldn’t cover the event “live and in full” if Trump were to discuss the ongoing impeachment effort or if he were to make a statement of resignation?

Instead, he’s there to celebrate an American achievement, as one White House official put it: “The completion of more than 400 miles of border wall — a promise made, promise kept.”

That’s what they really don’t want you to hear about. And it just might work, now that the President is unable to share videos of his speech or his accomplishments on social media.

What kind of country do we live in where the one man who can’t speak to the American people directly right now is the President of the United States?

The post CNN’s Brian Stelter: ‘Responsible Networks’ Shouldn’t Air Trump’s Visit To Border Wall Live And in Full appeared first on The Political Insider.

GOP aide resigns while lashing ‘congressional enablers of this mob’

Posted on by By Andrew Desiderio

A top Republican congressional aide is resigning over his party’s support for President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election after it fueled deadly riots at the Capitol.

In a scathing resignation letter obtained by POLITICO, Jason Schmid, a longtime senior House Armed Services Committee staffer, slammed the GOP members of the panel who objected to President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win, particularly after a mob incited by Trump stormed the Capitol last Wednesday and left five people dead.

“Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms,” Schmid wrote in a letter addressed to the committee’s top Republican. “Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the republic.”

That included 13 members of the Armed Services Committee, where Schmid has worked for four and a half years as a top policy staffer. The panel’s incoming top Republican, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, was also among that group.

Ultimately, 138 House Republicans — more than half the GOP Conference — voted against certifying Biden’s Electoral College votes from Arizona, Pennsylvania or both states based on unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud that were parroted for months by Trump and his allies.

In his letter, Schmid said the GOP lawmakers “harmed the ability of every service member, intelligence officer, and diplomat to defend the nation and advance American interests.” He said they “disregarded” American democratic ideals “for cynical political purposes.”

“Regardless of the motivations behind the vote, these members bear the consequences that the men and women in harm’s way will face for many years to come,” Schmid wrote. “I cannot imagine any series of events more damaging to the already fragile US led post-World War II order that has brought more peace and prosperity to the world than at any other time in history.”

He added: “Congressional enablers of this mob have made future foreign conflict more likely, not less.”

His resignation also comes as the House is on track to impeach Trump this week for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol. Several Republicans are considering signing onto the impeachment effort, and Trump’s support on Capitol Hill has taken a major hit in recent days as more GOP lawmakers have called for him to step down and others have slammed his conduct as reckless.

Trump has falsely claimed that the presidential election was “stolen” from him, a contention that inspired his supporters to violently storm into the Capitol building last week while Congress was certifying Biden’s Electoral College votes. Ahead of the riots, Trump addressed the crowd in front of the White House and urged them to “fight like hell.”

Before working on Capitol Hill, Schmid did two tours of duty in Iraq as an Army intelligence analyst. He was wounded there while embedded with an Iraqi infantry battalion.

He later worked as chief of congressional affairs for the Defense Department’s Special Programs Office. As an Armed Services Committee staffer, he has advised lawmakers on some of the Pentagon’s most sensitive capabilities and operations.

Schmid expressed particular outrage over the fact that the insurrection at the Capitol included members of the military, and he urged the committee to ensure that the Pentagon pursues those individuals.

“These extremist influences are a grave threat to our ability to defend the nation, and they must be expelled from the force immediately,” Schmid wrote. “I deeply regret some members may no longer have the credibility needed to accomplish this work.”

Top administration officials, including three Cabinet secretaries, have stepped down in the days following the riots at the Capitol, saying Trump’s instigation of the mob was a turning point for them.

Even though most House Republicans supported Trump’s bid to overturn the election results, only eight GOP senators objected last week. That number was set to be higher before the riots at the Capitol, but a few Republicans pulled back.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered an impassioned plea against the Trump-inspired objections to Biden’s victory, warning that Congress would “hasten down a poisonous path where only the winners of an election actually accept the results.”

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell said.

Posted in Uncategorized

Congress sees signs of Covid-19 spike following Capitol riots

Posted on (Updated by By Nick Niedzwiadek

At least three Democratic members of Congress have tested positive for Covid-19 since sheltering with GOP colleagues who refused to wear masks as the U.S. Capitol was overrun with a Trump-supporting mob last week.

Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) announced this week they have tested positive, joining Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, who announced her positive test on Monday.

Democratic lawmakers and staffers have been bracing for a rash of new positive cases in Congress — which has scores of older members and people with underlying medical conditions that put them at greater risk of serious Covid-19 complications — and are furious at Republicans who have repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by the virus. Watson Coleman, for example, is a 75-year-old cancer survivor.

“Today, I am now in strict isolation, worried that I have risked my wife’s health and angry at the selfishness and arrogance of the anti-maskers who put their own contempt and disregard for decency ahead of the health and safety of their colleagues and our staff,” Schneider wrote Tuesday on Twitter after announcing his diagnosis.

The growing case count threatens to further escalate partisan tensions amid a breakneck impeachment push led by Democrats to deliver a final blow to President Donald Trump over his role in the riot, which left five people dead and imperiled Vice President Mike Pence as he presided over a joint session of Congress that afternoon.

Jayapal said she supports a burgeoning effort to impose stricter penalties on those who do not wear masks while working in the capitol, including fines and prohibiting them from being on the congressional floor.

“This is not a joke. Our lives and our livelihoods are at risk, and anyone who refuses to wear a mask should be fully held accountable for endangering our lives because of their selfish idiocy,” she said in a statement.

Schneider similarly called for stiffened enforcement against those who refuse to wear masks.

Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Anthony Brown (D-Md.) on Tuesday introduced legislation to impose a $1,000 per day fine on members of Congress who refuse to wear masks on Capitol grounds for the duration of the pandemic, and later Tuesday Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that there will be fines levied against members who don’t wear masks on the floor. They will be fined $500 for first offense and $2,500 for second.

Several Republicans were seen, in a video first published by Punchbowl News, not wearing masks in the secure room and rejecting an entreaty by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) to cover their faces. The mask-less contingent "absolutely" put lives at risk, Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) said Tuesday.

"Even if there wasn't a domestic terror attack underway, it's more than clear at this point that you have to wear a mask to protect people around you," he said on CNN. "So, of course they did, and they chose to do it anyway."

Over the weekend, all House members and their staff were instructed to get tested following possible exposure to the virus as they shielded themselves from the mob of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.

Several members, including Jayapal, had preemptively sequestered themselves following the event.

Members of Congress and their staff had access to Covid-19 vaccinations, a much-criticized allocation that arrived as doses remain in short supply, but it is unclear how many have gotten the second shot in the two-dose regimen.

President-elect Joe Biden received his second dose on Monday after receiving the first shot in the days leading up to Christmas.

An incoming member of Congress, Luke Letlow, died of coronavirus complications in late December before he took his oath of office, and dozens of sitting members of Congress have tested positive since the pandemic started last year.

Posted in Uncategorized

Trump to end presidency the same way he kicked off run, by attacking immigrants

Posted on by Gabe Ortiz

Soon-to-be-twice impeached Donald Trump is ending his white supremacist presidency the same way he started his campaign more than five years ago: racist, anti-immigrant fearmongering. Having basically gone into hiding after inciting a violent mob of seditionist supporters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results—and resulted in numerous deaths, including of a police officer—Trump is traveling to Texas on Tuesday to bluster about the border wall that Mexico never did end up paying for.

The Associated Press reports that missing from the visit will be unlawfully appointed acting DHS Sec. Chad Wolf, who resigned Monday. But following the D.C. attack (nice job securing the “homeland” there, Chad), elected officials, editorial boards, and border communities are demanding Trump stay away too. "Normally we would welcome a presidential visit to our state. Not now,” the American-Statesman Editorial Board wrote. “Not by a president who is unhinged and unrepentant for the violent mob he sent last week to the Capitol."

“The stated reason for Trump’s visit to Alamo is to tout his administration’s work on the border wall and immigration,” the American-Statesman Editorial Board continued. “Indeed, Trump is wrapping up his term on the same note that he launched his political career, stoking fear about immigrants and exaggerating his accomplishments.”

June 16, 2015, will always live in infamy as the day he launched his presidential campaign by descending the escalators at Trump Tower to call Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. ”When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

His comments were blatantly racist and disqualifying, but too many in the mainstream media were afraid to say so and instead merely labeled them “controversial.” Worse yet, others dismissed them as a joke. It wasn’t a joke or “controversial” to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans like me. He was talking about us. He talking about my parents and two older sisters, all born in Mexico. He was talking about me, the son of Mexican immigrants.

“Trump acts as if his legacy along the border will be construction of a ‘beautiful’ wall,” American-Statesman continued. “In truth, his legacy is one of destruction: Crying children pulled from their parents’ arms as part of his shocking family separation policy, with hundreds of kids still waiting to be reunited. Migrant kids dying in U.S. custody for lack of proper care. A shameful humanitarian crisis just south of the border as the U.S. turned its back on those who are lawfully seeking asylum. A degradation of America’s values and standing in the world.”

Now having incited a violent mob that my colleague David Neiwert writes was “intent on taking hostages and murdering them” and is now leading to an unprecedented second impeachment, Trump is returning to what he always goes to when desperate or in need of an ego boost: attacking immigrants (and doing it as likely his final trip in office).

“Rather than spend his last days in the Oval Office addressing the pressing Covid-19 pandemic and ensuring an orderly transition, Trump is doubling down on his xenophobic, white supremacist agenda,” Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) executive director Fernando García said in a statement received by Daily Kos. Indeed, the City of Alamo said in a statement it hasn’t even been contacted about Trump’s visit.

“His presence at the borderland is a provocation, and an act of violence in and of itself,” García continued. “Border communities are calling for the dismantlement of the wall of shame, racism and white supremacy. The wall and all it represents have no place in our society, and Trump must be held accountable.”

President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and our wins in Georgia provide an opportunity to take both executive and legislative action to protect undocumented communities attacked by the outgoing administration. I hope Trump has the time of his wretched life at his precious wall Tuesday because Biden has also pledged to not build another foot of it—and because it was built using swindled funds and has caused “incalculable” harm in the borderlands, there’s a strong case for knocking the motherfucker down. The human costs of Trump’s racism, however, the fomenting of violence and the unleashing of white supremacist forces, will not be so easy to scale back. That’s the “legacy” he’s leaving us. 

“It is a presidency that has prioritized sowing division, undermining our institutions and norms, and working tirelessly to marginalize the ‘other,’” American Immigration Council policy counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick writes. “For Trump, there were no people more “other” than those who came to our border and asked for our help.” He writes that that to truly “defeat Trumpism, as a nation we must embrace a more humane approach toward those who are different from us, one that respects the law and our obligations to the most vulnerable.”

“The Biden administration can start by restoring humanitarian protection, and finally moving away from the deterrence-based mindsets of the past decades and create a truly welcoming process at the border,” Reichlin-Melnick continued.

House convenes to begin process of impeaching Trump for the second time

Posted on by Joan McCarter

The House of Representatives will vote Tuesday evening to tell Vice President Pence to "convene and mobilize the principal officers of the executive departments of the Cabinet to activate section 4 of the 25th Amendment to declare President Donald J. Trump incapable of executing the duties of his office and to immediately exercise powers as acting President." Knowing that Pence will not do so, they will vote on Wednesday at 9 AM ET to charge Trump with "inciting violence against the government of the United States" and will impeach him.

They could be joined by some Republicans. Republican leadership is not whipping votes against it. Members will be advised to "vote their conscience." Which is a strange thing to assume 139 of them who voted to throw out the results of a free and fair election, including leaders Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, even have. There will be a single impeachment article for "incitement of insurrection."

"In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government," the resolution says. "He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States." Trump, as always, remains belligerent and defiant and again threatened his opponents with further violence. "For Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to continue on this path, I think it's causing tremendous danger to our county and it's causing tremendous anger. I want no violence," he told reporters Tuesday.  

That of course will not stop the process. But what happens on the Senate side remains uncertain because it's absolutely unprecedented. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, importantly, has advised Democratic senators that impeachment hearings are going to happen and to not even discuss censure as a possible alternative. They are exploring ways of moving forward. One includes an obscure emergency authority that would allow him and current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to end the recess, which is now set to end on January 19, and reconvene immediately after the House transmits the articles of impeachment. That requires McConnell's cooperation and thus far no one in his office is answering calls from reporters, so no one knows whether this is really an option.

Another option Democrats are exploring is moving forward on parallel tracks, by referring the impeachment to the Senate Judiciary Committee for hearings and bypassing the floor for long enough to get critical nominations through. Another option is appointing a commission to investigate and produce a report the full Senate would then act on. Another possibility Biden has raised, that is potentially possible, according to experts the Washington Post's Greg Sargent talked to is "[a] half-day on dealing with impeachment, and [a] half-day getting my people nominated and confirmed," in Biden's words.

Scholar Norman Ornstein told Sargent that the the Constitution allows the Senate to set its own rules and procedures on impeachment, "So in theory it is possible to move forward with other actions even as they’re doing a trial." Adam Jentelson, a former senior adviser to Harry Reid and all around Senate procedural wonk, agrees. "The Senate can conduct this trial however it wants, so the bifurcation path is entirely doable,. […] Procedurally, it's basically a matter of conducting a two-track approach." It could, however, require unanimous consent giving the insurrectionists in the Senate a chance to make mischief.

Trump won't leave voluntarily. Pence won't force the issue. McConnell "ignored Trump's calls before Wednesday’s siege and now has no plans to call him back, according to one official," so he too is refusing to fulfill his oath and obligation to protect the country. The next week is going to be as fraught as the last, because the entire Republican Party sold its soul to Donald Trump five years ago, and sold out the country in the process.