Marjorie Taylor Greene asks if Republicans are ‘being bribed’ to oppose impeachment

Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a doozy of an interview with right-wing podcast host Charlie Kirk on Wednesday to commiserate about House Republicans’ failed impeachment vote Tuesday of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Greene has been big mad about the failed vote and, like many of her pro-impeachment colleagues, is looking for someone—anyone—to blame, including Democrats for trying “to throw us off on the numbers.” 

But Greene has plenty of disdain for the Republicans who voted against the bill too. When Kirk asked why Ken Buck of Colorado, Tom McClintock of California, and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin voted against impeachment, Greene seemed flabbergasted—but didn’t rule out the possibility that “they’re being bribed.”

Kirk fed the Georgia congresswoman the utterly baseless idea, asking, “Do you think these people are being blackmailed by the intel agencies? They might have had relations with certain  people and pictures and compromised. Do you think that they're currently being blackmailed?”

And Greene took the bait.

You know, I have no proof of that, but again, I can't understand the vote. So, nothing surprises me in Washington, D.C. anymore, Charlie. Literally, nothing surprises me because—it doesn't make sense to anyone, right? Why would anyone vote no? Why would anyone protect Mayorkas unless they're being bribed, unless there's something going on, unless they're making a deal. You know, because you can't understand it. It makes no sense. And it's completely wrong to vote no on impeachment.

Greene also speculated that Buck, who is retiring, is “trying to get a job working for CNN like Adam Kinzinger.” She insisted that McClintock is clearly not a real “constitutionalist.” And after listing off all of Gallagher’s military intelligence and military bonafides, she concluded, “I can't understand why he made that vote. But he did.” 

Greene might not understand it, but that doesn’t mean these Republican congressmen haven’t been clear and open about their reasons for voting against the impeachment stunt. 

Gallagher explained his opposition in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Why I Voted Against the Alejandro Mayorkas Impeachment.” 

“Creating a new, lower standard for impeachment, one without any clear limiting principle, wouldn’t secure the border or hold Mr. Biden accountable,” he wrote. “It would only pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.”

McClintock also explained his opposition in a speech on the House floor before Tuesday’s vote.

“Cabinet secretaries can't serve two masters. They can be impeached for committing a crime related to their office but not for carrying out presidential policy,” he said. “I'm afraid that stunts like this don't help."

On Wednesday, McClintock appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” to again defend his vote, and responded to Greene saying McClintock needs to “read the room.

“I suggest she read the Constitution that she took an oath to support and defend,” he said. “That Constitution very clearly lays out the grounds for impeachment,” he said. “This dumbs down those grounds dramatically and would set a precedent that could be turned against the conservatives on the Supreme Court or a future Republican administration the moment the Democrats take control of the Congress.”

Nevertheless, Greene “can’t understand” why her Republican colleagues weren’t on board with her impeachment aspirations. It must be a conspiracy.  

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MAGA mayoral candidate goes wild on election conspiracy after landslide loss

Gabrielle Hanson ran for mayor of Franklin, Tennessee—and got walloped. Incumbent Mayor Ken Moore received 80% of the votes in a landslide October victory, which the Tennessee Lookout points out was likely the result of a “significant turnout.” But according to NewsChannel5, Hanson doesn’t believe she lost. In fact, she and a few friends were able to conjure up a very broad conspiracy on the fly, proving she hadn’t lost at all!

The beleaguered MAGA candidate appeared on a podcast after her loss to talk with Lyle Rapacki—best known for his election-denial “activism” in Arizona—and antisemitic, failed Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. Both men are known for their comfort with sweeping, fact-free conspiracy theories. According to NewsChannel5, the podcast was no different as the lies, mistruths, and conspiracy theories spewed from the trio’s mouths.

Hanson claimed there was a conspiracy to print fake stories about her, including the news that she was arrested for promoting prostitution and the article detailing how she invented a group of diverse friends and claimed them as supporters in social media posts (then subsequently doubled down on the lie). Then there was the story about how she received security services and support from neo-Nazis. All of the stories were reported on by dogged NewsChannel5 reporter Phil Williams, and Hanson falsely claimed that the media outlet was paid to run the stories.

RELATED STORY: Mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson loses endorsement over white supremacist connection

Finchem, repeating the right-wing-o-sphere’s tried-and-true claim, said, “What they are doing is they're publishing bullshit, trying to make people think that it is legitimate. And then they recycle it and they recycle it and they recycle it again—and suddenly it becomes this urban legend that somehow transcends the truth.” Pot, meet kettle.

Hanson also pointed to the record turnout for the Franklin City election, saying, “We had three and a half times the normal turnout for an election.” Actually, it’s more like four and a half, ma’am. According to the Tennessee Lookout, 16,209 ballots were cast in the most recent election, compared with 3,475 in 2019. That is a 366% increase in turnout. Franklin residents were that motivated to make sure Hanson did not become mayor of their Middle Tennessee town.

Hanson also referred to Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell as a “self-described socialist” (he has not described himself as a socialist), implying he has some untoward relationship with poll watchers. She also declared that when the secretary of the Williamson County Young Democrats told her he opposed fascism, it meant he was “Antifa.”

Once again: The unofficial results of the Franklin mayoral election were 12,822 for incumbent mayor Ken Moore and 3,322 for MAGAbrielleHanson. The hardest pill for the MAGA world to swallow is the proof that shows they are solidly in the minority. On top of that, they cannot believe how abhorrent their ideas are to people who aren’t even particularly progressive, but realize that a vote for MAGA is a vote for chaos and authoritarianism.

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When Republicans start saying rational things about violence, they are surely worried

The No. 3 House Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, was quick to extend best wishes to the husband of Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, who was violently attacked early Friday morning by an intruder in the couple’s San Francisco home.

"Wishing a full recovery for Paul from this absolutely horrific violent attack," tweeted Stefanik.

It's a departure from her norm. On any given week, Stefanik's twitter account is a fount of racist conspiracy theories demonizing immigrants, people of color, and Democrats.

Last year, Stefanik's social media ads accused "radical Democrats" of plotting "their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.”

“Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington," claimed the ad, funded by Stefanik's campaign committee.

In a tweet earlier this year, Stefanik referred to the White House and House Democrats as "pedo grifters," invoking an apparent abbreviation for pedophile—an obsession among QAnon conspiracy theorists who believe Democrats run a Satanic child sex-trafficking ring.

So Stefanik's awkward dance with graciousness in the wake of the savage attack on Paul Pelosi looks to be more of a political tell than heartfelt sentiment. It was accompanied by similar out-of-character pronouncements from other GOP leaders on the Hill.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's spokesperson, Mark Bednar, said McCarthy had "reached out to the Speaker to check in on Paul and said he's praying for a full recovery and is thankful they caught the assailant."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted: "Horrified and disgusted by the reports that Paul Pelosi was assaulted in his and Speaker Pelosi's home last night. Grateful to hear that Paul is on track to make a full recovery."

With some notable exceptions, Republican leaders have generally responded appropriately to the tragedy the Pelosi family is enduring, which in these fractious times begs the question: Why?

Because a racist, misogynist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist just broke into the home of one of the most well-known Democrats in the nation yelling, "Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?"

It's unclear if the assailant, David DePape, who years ago listed himself in voting records as a member of the Green Party, officially identifies as a Republican or with the Republican Party. But he appears to be a case study in online radicalization. His Facebook page reportedly included links to multiple videos produced by My Pillow guy Mike Lindell falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen. The attack was also eerily reminiscent of the seditionists on Jan. 6 roaming the Capitol hallways, calling out, "Nancy, oh, Nancy," and, "Where are you, Nancy? We're looking for you."

It's too early to know exactly what will come to light regarding Depape, but an incident like this is Republicans' worst nightmare in terms of the female suburban voters they are trying to woo back into their corner this cycle.

The last thing Republicans want is some QAnon loon reminding suburban moms what a danger the GOP is to civility across the country, particularly when Republicans premised much of their closing argument on being the party that can tackle crime and keep people safe.

Trump’s cruelty has taken over the Republican Party, but his own base is increasingly cult-like

Can we talk about how creepy and cult-like Donald Trump’s following is getting?

I mean, yes, it has been creepy and cult-like all along, what with the people traveling around to rally after rally like Grateful Dead fans and the over-the-top merchandizing and painter Jon McNaughton’s portrayals of Trump as both a towering moral figure and a physically dominant one, to say nothing of the unwavering approval through scandal after scandal, plus an impeachment, a coup attempt, and another impeachment. It’s long been clear that Trump was barely exaggerating when he said, in 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?”

Yet somehow it’s gotten creepier and more cult-like. That’s probably in part because some fraction of the Republican base has moved on from Trump, leaving the most die-hard core there to show up for events like, say, Trump’s rally in Ohio on Saturday, which was far from full.

RELATED STORY: 'This is the week when Trump became Qanon': Crowd responds with bizarre hand sign at Trump rally

That rally solidified a recent trend of Trump embracing QAnon imagery and messages more openly than in the past, with a recent Truth Social post showing himself in a Q pin along with the QAnon slogan, “The storm is coming.” (Where “the storm” is Trump arresting and even executing his political opponents.) In attendance at the rally was Vincent Fusca, the man QAnon adherents believe is John F. Kennedy Jr.

And, at the end of the rally, many in the crowd raised their arms and extended a single finger in what looked all too much like a Nazi salute as a song played that either was the QAnon anthem “Wwg1wga” or was a "virtually identical" or possibly fully identical song called “Mirrors.”

Trump's rally in Youngstown, Ohio, ends with the dramatic music playing. Strange vibes. pic.twitter.com/wMQwAJ5QfU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2022

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The people who showed up had come for the usual menu of Trump lies and bragging and hate speech and more lies. Here in late 2022, Republicans can get the hateful policies and more polished versions of the lies from lots of other politicians. Trump is jealous that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis got to get the headlines from grabbing migrants in Texas and dropping them on Martha’s Vineyard. He can claim credit for the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, but he’s not the most relevant factor in Republican-controlled states instituting harsh abortion bans. He’s not personally harming trans kids through exclusionary and abusive policies. Trump may have set the tone, but the Republicans currently in office have been ready and willing to continue carrying out the cruelty while he golfs and fumes about being under investigation.

So the audience that’s there for Trump is there because of his cult of personality. That remains frighteningly strong—he was able to drag J.D. Vance and Mehmet Oz over the Republican primary finish lines in Ohio and Pennsylvania despite their weakness as candidates, for instance, and he’s still the strongest fundraiser among Republicans (sometimes to their regret, since he doesn’t share). Trump is far from irrelevant, and not just because so many Republican leaders are competing to be more hateful than him. But the fact that so many of the people willing to show up for him on a Saturday during a major local college football game are now visibly Q-affiliated is a sign of Trump’s shifting status in his party. The thing about cult leaders, though, is they don’t get less scary when they feel their power waning.

Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.

The Qronicles: Biolabs, and JFK conspiracy is back. This time he’s moonlighting as Donald Trump!

The Qronicles is a series that will collect some of the news, videos, and general mis/disinformation roiling around the conspiracy world of QAnon. You can cringe, you can laugh, but these folks are organizing and showing up at the polls!

WelQom back! (YAYYYYY!!!!!) It’s time for some Qronicles! The QAnon world is always busy because conspiracy theories need water, webs, roots, and a boatload of manure to grow. You need to trim those offshoots that didn’t work out and move the goalposts all the time. If you didn’t constantly tend to it, your massively outrageous conspiracy theory would die on the vine. Just ask QAnon toe-dipper Robert “RJ” Regan of Michigan, who blamed the media after he made a strangely triple-offensive remark concerning his daughters, the Big Lie, and sexual assault. There are benefits to keeping QAnon folks frothy with mystery and the dopamine-inducing empty epiphany. 

Related: JFK’s return didn’t materialize. Now QAnoners drink from a communal bleach punch bowl—literally

Related: JFQ Jr. announces Senate run

Related: QAnon Chronicles: Somehow, the JFK Jr. conspiracy crew got even weirder

First up is Ukraine. We discussed in the last Qronicles that QAnon’s conspiracy theories of Donald Trump and his secret war against all that is evil in the world had folded the invasion of Ukraine by Russia into the grand design. The narrative is that there are secret biolabs—wait, stop. These biolabs aren’t secret, they are well known and have published information that pretty much anyone can see. Shut up! There are biolabs, and they are secretly making bioweapons! Ukraine is making bioweapons? No, dummy! Dr. Anthony Fauci is making bioweapons with the help of Hillary Clinton and George Soros! It’s New World Order shit, daddy-o! They are going to begin controlling the new world from Ukraine!

That’s why Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine? Exactly. Remember how all of those Ukrainians and Americans in Ukraine testified and released evidence that Donald Trump attempted to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden? Totally! He was impeached for that. But isn’t this the New World Order that can control the government, make it seem like Joe Biden is the actual president while the real president is playing golf in Florida, and hold the occasional rally? Didn’t they let Hunter Biden’s laptop get into the hands of Fox News and those folks?

Yup. They’re depraved!

It’s weird how QAnon folks seem to be arrested for things like child abuse and child pornography, and the conservative party they’re tied to seems to be filled with those kinds of cretins. Forget about all of that logic! I said biolabs!

Russia’s early struggles to push disinformation and propaganda about Ukraine have picked up momentum in recent days, thanks to a variety of debunked conspiracy theories about biological research labs in Ukraine. Much of the false information is flourishing in Russian social media, far-right online spaces and U.S. conservative media, including Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.

This hogwash was recently parroted by former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard on Sunday, March 13. It has also received the now-common (and always profitable) libertarian wing of journalism’s seal of “We’re just asking questions.” Represented by folks like Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey, these are usually once somewhat respected anti-establishment journos who have found a lucrative financial niche in maintaining their anti-establishment bonafides while pretending not to notice that the right-wing-o-sphere makes up an extraordinarily large part of the media landscape. This allows them the chance to make a lot of money speaking to (mostly) men who, while they’re not against gay marriage and may even know some Black folks they call friends, do feel like capitalism has let them down. But they aren’t willing—or are too narcissistic—to put the blame on the systemic inequalities in our society and the need to make changes to deal with them. This makes them feel like they’re getting left further behind, and they’ve cornered themselves in a shame circle shaped like a penis.

Here’s an offshoot of this Ukraine conspiracy theory, care of VICE: Some QAnonites believe that Dear Leader Trump has long been telegraphing the secret mission now being undertaken by both himself and Putin! Specifically, his strange pronunciation of “China.” Even more specifically, some QAnoners believe the code-cracking is that Shpyl'chyna is the “Chy-na” Trump has been saying all these years—while also talking about the global superpower China at the same time. (12-dimensional chess and all that.)

The Ukrainian “chy-na” is in fact just part of the name of what appears to be a village on the outskirts of Lviv. In Ukrainian, it is called “Шпильчина,” but on Google Maps, it’s referred to as “Shpyl’chyna.” Unfortunately, this is a bad transliteration: The ‘y’ is meant to represent a very soft ‘i’ sound that’s hard to transliterate, because it’s rarely used in English.

English, shminglish! Let’s get back to John F. Kennedy!

After JFK, his son, and his wife failed to materialize—in fact, even Trump didn’t show up and technically he is alive—Michael Protzman, the originator of this JFK-based conspiracy theory, just dug in deeper. The people that stayed are very easily described as a cult. In fact, this Q-offshoot group has worried many of its adherents’ friends and family members

Michael Protzman aka -48 told his online followers after the rally that it wasn’t Trump on stage, It was JFK because of his height. He brings people on stage so you can see it’s not him. pic.twitter.com/Pt9VWyrz9L

— 2022 Karma 🌻🌻 (@2022_Karma) March 13, 2022

So Trump was wearing a John F. Kennedy suit? Wow. That had not occurred to me. Does this mean Donald Trump has always been dead and JFK has always been Donald Trump? Maybe it has something to do with an island. QAnon folks love a secret rich guy island where nefarious things happen. (Unless it’s Donald Trump hanging with well-known sexual predator and human sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.)

Speaking of John F. Kennedy Jr.: That guy—Vinnie Fusca, the one that some QAnon folks believe is actually JFK Jr. openly hiding at events—has decided to try and cash in on his cult celebrity. He’s looking to run for Senate in his home state of Pennsylvania. I mean, I thought he lived in Manhattan, or at least on the secret Joe Biden island with Michael Jackson and Princess Diana. It’s hard to keep up.

If you haven’t heard, gas prices are rising. Some people believe it’s inflation. Some people believe it’s fossil fuel interests using the invasion of Ukraine and “supply chain” issues as cover for gouging prices for higher profits, and some people think it’s President Joe Biden’s fault. However, some people in the land of Q believe that Biden is at fault for the higher gas prices but that he isn’t really president, and that Donald Trump is still in control of everything. But the gas issue, that’s Biden’s problem. Not Trump. Something about waking people up. Try to keep up.

Trump is still president but definitely don’t blame him for high gas prices. We got the news from this genius. pic.twitter.com/LuftMs2Hmd

— Davram (@davramdavram) March 3, 2022

Then there is the fear of being “digitiled.” What, you say, is that? It’s not technically a word, but as we can see in the clip, it’s a word now!

Asked a member of the trucker convoy what issues were important to her. Her answer was… interesting. pic.twitter.com/q7UDZHNxSE

— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) March 7, 2022

It kind of seems to sound like what it is. How that might happen to this lady, be it by wearing a mask or by getting an injection, is unclear. I mean, I suspect her car has Bluetooth and she has a phone that sends occasional signals to and from satellites by way of cellular towers. Hopefully she never needs a pacemaker or any other such medical monitoring device as that would surely count as being “digitiled.”

And finally, there’s this.

This woman at the Trucker Convoy explained to us what covid19 REALLY means. pic.twitter.com/6XGRK1qcFr

— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) March 14, 2022

The Gematria thing: It’s a numerology tool of sorts. Hebrew Gematria is much more involved and has the mysticism of being of “ancient” lineage. Unfortunately, Hebrew Gematria doesn’t get anything resembling the number of the beast. However, Simple Gematria does count “corona” as 66. It also counts my name as 154. According to numerology nation, this is a good sign for me! I’m in! COVID-19 is the Antichrist! Wait ... Oh, right, the surrender sheep thing. In Hebrew, “ovid” means “worker.” Ovid was a very famous Roman poet who lived from around 43 BCE to 17 CE. Maybe she meant “ovis?” “Ovis” is the Latin word for “sheep.” But this person with the very patriotic get-up must have missed the debunking of this “theory” done almost two years ago. The “19” code for “surrender” is not a thing.

So let’s fix it and call COVID-19 COVIS-surrender-in-202? I put the question mark there since we want to leave open the ongoing end of times date. Maybe it should be 20 just in case we end up in the next decade before the Clintons and Obamas finally take over the world and drink everybody’s baby blood.

Before we laugh too hard, remember: QAnon isn’t fringe. The most far flung aspects of the ideas may be fringe but they’re just the logic conclusions being reached by people who are having their ideas reflected back at them by pretend legitimate media outlets like Fox News. In turn it is the fountain from which all the right-wing news takes its propaganda cues these days. As the two views photocopy each other in an endless cycle, reality fades further and further away until the conspiracy has to be real otherwise what else will they have?

I’ll tell you one thing: People like Laura Ingraham will be richer—that’s for sure.

QAnon has a lot of funny wacky beliefs but I think important to remember the core of it is a day of the rope-style mass murder fantasy https://t.co/DdnKnykTfK

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) March 10, 2022

Sex trafficking investigation seems to be hurting Rep. Matt Gaetz’s pocketbook

If you haven’t heard, Florida Man Rep. Matt Gaetz continues to be the focus of speculation that he has done some real dirtbag criminal stuff. Since one of his best buds, Joel Greenberg, has cut a plea deal with investigators, there have been numerous reports of witnesses who seem to say Mr. Gaetz has involved himself in human trafficking, sex with a minor, illegal drug use, and possible misuse of campaign funds. This is on top of completely unrelated reports that Rep. Gaetz has received dubious campaign donations from sketchy sources. 

In the meanwhile, Gaetz has alternately hidden from the public, and then burst back into the public on what can only be called political theater events. Along with Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other MAGA diehards who may be feeling the need to find a dictator who can pardon them in the future, Gaetz continues to promote the Trumpian Big Lie that our elections were stolen and that anyone investigating what happened on Jan. 6 is probably a part of the “deep state.”

These moves have seemed desperate attempts to both provide cover for what investigators may very well discover concerning a possible conspiracy to overturn the election results in 2020, and a way to fundraise for elected officials who have voted against every single piece of popular legislation that lands on their desks.

According to ABC News, Mr. Gaetz’s most recent campaign financial disclosures show that the suspected sex trafficker seems to be having a hard time keeping up the big fundraising numbers. In the final quarter of 2021, born-rich Gaetz reportedly pulled in just over $500,000 in donations—less than a third of what the Gaetz campaign was able to fundraise in the final quarter of 2020.

According to ABC, this diminishing return for the Gaetz campaign has been a pattern since Donald Trump lost the election, and certain GOP representatives decided to hitch their train to outright support of transplanting a fascist into power. This follows with how poorly Gaetz and fellow mad king cosplayer Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attempt at fundraising together has gone. Over the summer, the Daily Beast reported that the Gaetz/Greene “joint fundraising committee” were posting “a combined loss of $342,000.” Not to get wonky here, but that’s the opposite of fundraising.

The Daily Beast is now reporting that Gaetz’s legal costs, the costs he put toward paying PR firms to spin the ongoing sex and drug crimes investigations have left his Friends of Matt Gaetz campaign committee at an almost $100,000 net loss on the year. Gaetz told the Beast that he is the only Republican that doesn’t take “lobbyist or PAC money.”

This may be true [once again, see the strange money contributions story about Matt Gaetz]. It may also be true that the money Matt Gaetz has taken for his campaign was used both illegally and for illegal things. But kissing the ring of a wannabe dictator is also costly, according to the Daily Beast.

As is customary for MAGA fixtures like Gaetz, the campaign paid its tributes to Donald Trump, tithing more than $2,200 to Trump properties in 2021. More than half of it came during the final months—$729 on Nov. 2 for lodging at Mar-a-Lago, and $445 for a late-October meal at Trump International Hotel in D.C.

Recently Matt Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend reportedly reached an immunity deal with investigators in exchange for her cooperation in the investigation of the Florida official. Gaetz has steadfastly said that all reports of illegal activities on his part are lies, and that the investigation is a witch hunt of sorts. Does this sound familiar?

These Trump-loving false prophets spread dangerous lies, but social media companies won’t act

Donald Trump left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in the history of American opinion polling. His average approval rating at FiveThirtyEight never topped 45%. And yet, he was able to remain standing in part because the religious right remained firmly in his corner.

From the time Trump locked up the Republican nomination in 2016, the nation’s so-called moral guardians peddled a false narrative to their flocks. Most of the nation saw a candidate who plastered a news anchor’s private cell phone number on social media, mocked the disabled, condoned violence at his rallies and against the media, and reveled in degrading women. They also saw a president who knowingly spewed racial slurs at lawmakers of color, forced taxpayers to foot the bill for his golf outings, lied over 30,500 times, and utterly mishandled the worst peacetime crisis in our nation’s history.

But the religious right portrayed Trump as a guy whom God himself chose to not only make America great again, but make America Christian again. After all, pro-Trump ministers and evangelists insisted, what really mattered was that Trump opposed abortion and marriage equality, and intended to stack the courts with line-drawing conservatives.

They also saw a guy who openly promised that under him, “Christianity will have power,” while choosing to ignore that in the same breath he claimed he could turn Fifth Avenue into a bloodbath and still keep his support. For good measure, those who opposed him were branded as opposing the Almighty himself.

This all-out bullying campaign is a big reason why 76% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2020. That’s pretty sobering—until you consider that 81% of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016. Given that Trump made virtually no effort to reach out to those who didn’t vote for him, any downtick in his base, no matter how small, would have been lethal. Indeed, one can argue that when Trump lost 5% of his white evangelical support from 2016, it was enough to pull Joe Biden out of the danger zone where he could have won the popular vote and still lost the Electoral College.

Unfortunately, recent months have seen elements of the religious right ramp up a false narrative that may be even more insidious and dangerous than the one they peddled for five-plus years. As Politico noted in February, these elements have taken the Big Lie to a very logical extreme. Supposedly, God himself knows that Trump really won, and is so determined to right that wrong that he is going to pull out all the stops to restore his Chosen One to power.

The main promoter of this narrative is Elijah List, a website that distributes “words from the Lord” from some of the charismatic Christian world’s most prominent “prophets.” Its founder and publisher, Steve Shultz, sees his task as “delivering fresh prophetic ‘manna’ from the Lord, regarding the days in which we live.” Much of this manna comes from “those with whom we have a relationship, who are most likely to be speaking the true and current heart of the Father in this hour.”

Among those with whom Shultz has a “relationship” is Johnny Enlow, a so-called prophet from Franklin, Tennessee—a suburb of Nashville—who figured very prominently in Politico’s deep dive into these rabidly pro-Trump prophets. Back in January, Enlow sat down with Shultz and claimed that Biden’s inauguration “doesn’t really mean anything,” since any discovery of fraud voids the entire election even after a new president is sworn in. For that reason, Enlow said, he believed we were on the verge of “great celebration, great joy” when Biden would be dumped from his position of “pretend power.”

What extraordinary evidence did Enlow offer for this extraordinary claim? None whatsoever. And Shultz didn’t demand any. Actual journalists have a name for this—malpractice.

A month after that interview, Enlow hit the ceiling when the Supreme Court rejected a raft of 11th-hour challenges to five states narrowly carried by Biden. He took to Facebook to call for a military coup, arguing that the Supreme Court’s “failure” to recognize that Trump had won gave the military a “green light for defense of the constitution, electoral integrity, and the nation’s very foundations.” Earlier, Enlow had told his Facebook followers that with so many elements of the government failing to recognize that Trump had a second term stolen from him, there were only three forces that could potentially right this terrible wrong—“the Supreme Court, the Military, and We the People.”

This sent a chill down my spine. Remember, we were only two months removed from the Jan. 6 insurrection, which was sparked by this very kind of talk. But apparently Shultz didn’t mind. On March 11, he invited Enlow back. What ensued was more seditious wingnuttery. 

Enlow claimed that Trump was still president. How’s that, you ask? Well, in Enlow’s telling, this country was secretly and illegally converted into a corporation in 1871—and Biden actually presides over this corporation. Trump, on the other hand, restored the “republic” when he took office in 2017, and still presides over that republic—and hence still controls “the essential machinery of the economy and the military.”

Is your head spinning yet? Well, it turns out that Enlow is a full-on QAnon kook. In September 2020, he told fellow “prophets” Allen and Francine Fosdick that he believed QAnon dovetailed perfectly with his long-standing promotion of the “Seven Mountains Mandate:”

Enlow and others are of the mind that if Christians take over the seven forces, or “mountains,” that influence our culture—business, education, entertainment, media, family, religion, and especially government—they can bring about the Second Coming. Enlow told the Fosdicks, who also drink the Q-Aid by the barrelfull, that by focusing solely on the “mountain” of religion, the church hasn’t applied “salt and light to the other sectors of society.” As a result, it’s allowed “multi-generational deep darkness” to take hold—including the nest of pedophiles that Trump was supposedly out to expose.

Now, let’s move back to March 2021. Enlow was peddling a line that was very popular among those who were still “trusting the plan” even with Biden in the White House. Supposedly, on March 4, Trump was slated to return to the White House as the 19th president—the first lawful occupant of the office since Ulysses S. Grant. In the meantime, Enlow said, Trump was “ruling and reigning” in a way that would not be possible if he were still in the White House.

Did Shultz shut Enlow down? Did he demand extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim? No! He simply referenced an earlier “word” from late “prophet” Kim Clement about people complaining that Trump wasn’t talking enough.

This would be enough by itself to prove that Shultz has no qualms about condoning outright sedition on his platform. But there’s more. Another so-called prophet who continues to peddle this dangerous and seditious corollary of the Big Lie is Jeff Jansen, a pastor from another Nashville suburb, Murfreesboro. Back in February, Jansen told Shultz that even though Biden may think he’s president, Heaven still recognizes Trump as president—and that’s the only vote that really counts.

In Jansen’s telling, the military—“the last line of defense in our Constitution”—knows it too, and was preparing to throw Biden out and restore “power and order back to the people” by putting Trump back in the White House.

Later in March, Jansen put a precise date on Trump’s return—by the end of April.

It looks like Shultz has deleted those videos from all of Elijah List’s platforms—but not before one of my earliest online friends “loved” Jansen’s call for a coup on Facebook. Fortunately, Right Wing Watch got receipts.

But why is he still promoting Enlow? And why did he see fit to blast out a “word” from central Florida-based “prophetess” Donna Rigney declaring that Trump was a “righteous leader” who had been “misrepresented and portrayed as evil,” and would be restored to office? And why is he promoting Irish-based evangelist Veronika West, who claimed to have seen a vision of the letters T-R-U-M-P written in gold on a stairway and saw it as a sign that God was going to bring him into “the fullness of his destiny”? And why is he hosting weekly “intelligence briefings” with Robin Bullock, an Alabama-based “apostle” who has declared Biden is not really president and demanded that Biden “repent” for stealing the election from Trump?

All things considered, one has to wonder—are Shultz, Enlow, Jansen, and their compatriots so loyal to Trump and so great a need for more donations that they are willing to erode trust in our democracy? Given their willingness to keep churning out this nonsense, that’s more than a fair question.

A deep dive into these outfits may make some people inclined to think I’m making a fuss over nothing. After all, Elijah List’s main Facebook page has just under 390,000 followers, while its video streaming page, Elijah Streams, has 24,000 followers. By comparison, Sean Hannity has over four million Facebook followers.

But there are a lot of reasons why we should be concerned. For one thing, poll after poll since the Jan. 6 insurrection has shown alarming majorities of Republicans still believe the Big Lie. Most recently, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 60% of Republicans believe Trump was the victim of election fraud. It cannot be stated enough—a large majority of a major political party believes this nonsense.

The Survey Center for American Life, a project of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, drilled down further and looked at how white evangelicals saw the Big Lie. The results are disheartening—74% of white evangelicals believe the election was tainted by fraud, and only 27% believe Biden’s election was legitimate. We’re talking about a substantial component of the GOP base. Now, consider that much of Elijah List’s constituency consists of the most diehard of diehard Christian conservatives. This can’t be dismissed as the ravings of a small fry.

Moreover, many of Elijah List’s followers believe that God himself is speaking through Enlow, Jansen, and other “prophets.” For them, all that matters is that God told them Trump would win a second term—and everything else be hanged.

Unfortunately, it appears that the desire to deliver what Shultz sees as God’s voice for this hour has taken precedence over basic human decency. After all, it simply defies belief that Shultz isn’t aware that these false claims about voter fraud resulted in election officials being harassed and trolled, and caused an executive at Dominion Voting Systems to go into hiding. And what of the police officers who were injured in the Jan. 6 insurrection, including two who committed suicide soon afterward? Or the lawmakers who had to flee for their lives as these sans-culottes flooded into the Capitol? Is Shultz so determined to keep his followers bowing and praying to the orange god he helped make that he has no regard for the safety of those who had to endure the horror of Jan. 6? Judging by the content he has shared, the answer to that question, unfortunately, is no.

One may think this sounds harsh. But I’m reminded of a message Republican strategist Scott Jennings sent to Senator Josh Hawley in the wake of Hawley’s misguided championing of the effort to overturn Biden’s win even after the insurrection. Jennings wondered, “Once the Capitol had been occupied, how can you give quarter to the viewpoint that caused the occupation?” While he was directing that question at Hawley, it applies in equal measure to anyone who would continue to peddle the Big Lie when it is clear beyond all doubt that it caused an insurrection.

When you look at this from a Christian perspective, it’s no less outrageous. It’s pretty clear that Shultz, Enlow, Jansen, and friends have forgotten Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Like it or not, gentlemen—a term that I use in its loosest possible sense—these election officials, voting systems workers, and lawmakers are your neighbors.

One also has to wonder if Facebook and YouTube really understand the harm of this content. I have reported numerous videos and posts from Elijah List, as well as from Enlow and Jansen. These reports have passed without so much as a response. It looks like Facebook may be making the same error it did with its handling of Trump’s more incendiary posts. By carving out exceptions to its community standards for “newsworthy political discourse” in an apparent effort to avoid Trump’s wrath, it allowed Trump’s blatantly false claims about voter fraud to gain credence they didn’t merit. There’s no question about it—had Facebook dropped the hammer sooner, this nonsense about voter fraud wouldn’t have gained nearly the traction that they did. In all likelihood, there would have been no insurrection.

Indeed, if you strip the Christian veneer away, Enlow and Jansen’s screeds are no different from the kind of incendiary rhetoric that ultimately led Facebook to lock Trump out of his Facebook and Instagram feeds. Facebook’s reasoning for this was simple—it was necessary to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. And their spirit is the same as that of numerous tweets from Trump that were so egregious Twitter was forced to ban anyone from retweeting or replying to them—a prelude to his permanent ban from Twitter.

YouTube banned QAnon in October, and Facebook followed suit around the same time. And yet, by not taking action against Elijah List, it is continuing to let Enlow have a forum to normalize QAnon lunacy. Past history suggests that this won’t end well.

One would have thought that Jan. 6 would have awakened Facebook and YouTube to the dangers of allowing the words of these false and seditious prophets to be written on their walls. Apparently, they don’t see it. Hopefully it won’t take another violent episode to change their minds.

Meghan McCain Says The ‘Only Way To Become A Good Republican Is To Become A Democrat,’ According To The Media

On Tuesday’s episode of “The View,” Meghan McCain lashed out at the media, saying that according to them, “the only way to become a good Republican is to become a Democrat.”

Sunny Hostin Rants Against Republicans 

McCain said this in frustration after her cohost Sunny Hostin went on yet another outrageous rant against Republicans.

“This is the Republican party today,” Hostin said. “It’s the MAGA party. It’s the QAnon party. It’s the Confederate flag, statue-loving party. It’s the Trump party. That’s the party of today.”

“Those who refuse to be that type of party get censured, get nasty letters from their families, get ostracized,” she added. “That’s what our country is looking at today, the party of white supremacy, the party that carries swastikas into the Capitol.”

That’s when McCain went off.

McCain Fires Back

“It’s easy to say that the Republican Party is only the party of QAnon and all these things,” McCain said. “If that’s the truth, the Democratic Party is the party of socialism and cancel culture and no responsibility and ramifications for any of your actions. You can burn down cities like Kenosha, and it’s fine. These are broad-stroke platitudes.”

“As much as the Left wants to act like Republicans are only QAnon supporters, part of the problem is when I hear that, I automatically get very tribal and say I don’t want the left,” she added.

Related: Meghan McCain Attacks Nikki Haley For Asking For Trump To Be Given A ‘Break’

“To me, I’m the most intensively pro-life person that I know of, particularly on mainstream TV,” McCain added. “I believe that abortion is murder. I know that the opposite party says there are some people that don’t agree with me, think that abortion should happen up to late-term.”

McCain Doubles Down

“I think the idea that the Republican Party is just one swath it’s just not nuanced,” McCain concluded. “The problem I have is the only way to become a good Republican is to become a Democrat, according to the media. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

McCain is a Republican who was against Donald Trump during his presidency. She regularly clashes with her cohosts, however, as they are all liberals who are against many of her conservative values.

Read Next: Meghan McCain Unleashes On Biden, Fauci, And Amazon Over Hypocrisy – ‘I Was Lied To’

This piece was written by James Samson on February 17, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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The post Meghan McCain Says The ‘Only Way To Become A Good Republican Is To Become A Democrat,’ According To The Media appeared first on The Political Insider.

Bill Maher Claims Christianity Is To Blame For Capitol Riot

During Friday’s episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher blamed Christianity for the Capitol riots last month.

Maher Blames Christianity For Capitol Riots

Maher, 65, claimed that a belief in Christianity is comparable to a belief in conspiracies like QAnon, and he said this led in part to supporters of former President Donald Trump storming the Capitol last month.

“As long as we’re going to go to the trouble of another impeachment trial, we might as well be honest about what it’s really about: The events of Jan. 6 were a faith-based initiative,” he said.

Not stopping there, Maher alleged that Trump supporters who believe in a “Christian nationalist movement” are firm in their beliefs that God “literally sent [Trump] from heaven to save them.”

He cited comments made by Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who once said that God personally chose Trump for president of the United States of America.

“There’s a lot of talk now in liberal corners about how Republicans should tell their base who still believe the election was rigged that they need to grow up and move on and stop asking the rest of us to respect their mass delusion,” Maher said.

“And, of course, it is a mass delusion. But the inconvenient truth here is that, if you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you’ve already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad,” the HBO host continued. 

Related: Bill Maher Panics Over Trump’s ‘Radio Silence’ After Leaving White House. – ‘Does That Not Alarm You A Little?’

Maher Compares Christianity And QAnon

He then directly compared Christianity and QAnon.

“It’s fun to laugh at QAnon, with the baby-eating lizard people and the pedophile pizza parlors, but have you ever read the book of [Revelation]? That’s the Bible,” he said. “That’s your holy book, Christians. And they’ve got seven-headed dragons and locusts that have the face of men and teeth of lions and other stuff you see after the guy in the park sells you bad mushrooms.”

Maher went on to say that “magical religious thinking,” such as faith in Jesus’ resurrection, is not dissimilar to a “current mutation” of the QAnon “virus.”

“All the armies of the world will gather and Jesus will come down on a flying horse, shooting swords out of his mouth, and have a thousand-year cosmic-boss battle with Satan, the Beast, and the antichrist. … It’s like 10 ‘Avenger’ movies plus 10 ‘Hobbit’ movies plus a night out with Johnny Depp,” Maher said.

Related: Bill Maher Hits Biden Campaign For Blaming 254,000 U.S. Coronavirus Deaths On Trump

“Please, magical religious thinking is a virus and QAnon is just its current mutation,” he insisted. “That’s why megachurches play QAnon videos. It’s the same basic plot. ‘Q’ is the prophet and Trump is the messiah. There’s an apocalyptic event looming, ‘The Storm.’ There’s a titanic struggle of good versus evil, and if you want good to win, just keep those checks coming in.

“We need to stop pretending there’s no way we’ll understand why the Trump mob believes in him. It’s because they’re religious! They’ve already made space in their heads for s**t that doesn’t make sense,” Maher concluded. “When you’re a QAnon fanatic, you’re also a fundamentalist Christian. They just go together like macaroni and cheese.”

This piece was written by James Samson on February 8, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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The post Bill Maher Claims Christianity Is To Blame For Capitol Riot appeared first on The Political Insider.

Republicans ‘big’ tinfoil tent transformation is the gift that will keep on giving to Democrats

"I've been freed," bragged QAnon Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Friday, the day after House Democrats forced a vote to strip the reality-adjacent, pugnacious provocateur of her committee assignments because her GOP counterparts refused to do so.

Greene—whose momentary show of near-contrition Thursday melted away by Friday—blasted Democrats as "morons" for elevating her platform, or giving her "free time," as she put it in a tweet. "Oh this is going to be fun!" Greene declared—an apparent threat, now that the shackles of decency are off and she's done pretending she's anything other than a menace to society, not to mention the republic itself.

But Greene isn't the only one who has been freed. After nearly two months of witnessing Republicans spit in the face of democracy, Democrats watched the GOP's depravity sink to a new low this week. Not only are Republicans the party of sedition, by circling the wagons around Greene they have refashioned their so-called "big tent" to include everyone from traditional fiscal conservatives to loathsome Nazis and white supremacists, fanatical militia members and extremists, and wackadoodle conspiracy theorists. In short, the GOP is now a big tinfoil tent—an explosive experiment that could detonate at any moment. 

And guess what—many of those traditional fiscal conservatives are fleeing the tent as fast as humanly possible. In fact, ever since the November election, tens of thousands of conservative voters across the country have been defecting from the Republican Party, a trend that spiked in the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In Colorado, for instance, the GOP lost about a half a percent of its registered voters in the single week following the riot, according to NPR. Similar trends are taking place in multiple states, including some that will be central to the 2022 battle for control of the Senate, such as Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania—where nearly 10,000 Keystone State voters dropped out of the Republican Party in the first 25 days of the year, according to The Hill.

The House Democratic campaign arm is already on it, moving aggressively to rebrand House Republicans as the Q-caucus. As Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the new chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told POLITICO, Republicans "can do QAnon, or they can do college-educated voters. They cannot do both."

But as Republicans transform into a tinfoil tent community, Democrats are experiencing an equal and opposite reaction of sorts—an unrestrained clarity of vision and purpose. After all, why bother listening to a party so toxic it just rallied around someone calling for executions of your own members? Not only did House Democrats move without equivocation to strip Greene of her power, House impeachment managers put Donald Trump on the spot by inviting him to testify under oath for his impeachment trial. Trump, ever the coward, quickly declined, but that conversation may not be over, since the Senate could potentially subpoena him. 

And as long as we're on the subject of Trump, President Joe Biden told CBS News he thinks Trump should be stripped of his intelligence briefings, citing his “erratic” behavior. "What value is giving him an intelligence briefing?" Biden said. "What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?"

Democrats also greased the legislative skids this week for passage of President Biden's American Rescue Plan by a simple majority vote in the Senate, sidelining the necessity of winning GOP votes. Democrats might still lamentably trim back who is eligible for the $1,400 direct payments, but overall, this is the relief package Biden and Democrats promised on the campaign trail. And despite an incessant drumbeat of questions from reporters about the quaint notion of bipartisanship, Biden hasn't blinked.

"If I have to choose between getting help right now to Americans," Biden said Friday, "and getting bogged down in a lengthy negotiation or compromising on a bill that's up to the crisis, that's an easy choice. I'm going to help the American people who are hurting now." Biden also invoked the Defense Production Act and mobilized more than 1,000 active duty troops to help increase the rate of vaccinations and make 61 million more coronavirus tests available by summer. 

Overall, Biden's White House and Congressional Democrats have taken a muscular no-nonsense approach to getting the nation back on its feet and providing quick relief to the Americans who need it most.

In some ways, progressives owe a debt of gratitude to Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell, who burned the bridge of good will beyond recognition in the last Democratic administration, and Kevin McCarthy, who has turned the GOP into a haven for the dangerous and unmoored. Democrats will spend the next several weeks making that transformation abundantly clear to the American people during a vivid recreation of the deadly Capitol riot that was inspired by Trump and underwritten by his GOP enablers. 

And just as soon as Trump’s Senate impeachment trial concludes, Democrats will likely be in position to punctuate the differences between the two parties by delivering a desperately needed relief bill to the American people.

It's a promising start—a foundation from which to build. Success begets success. But the stickier issues are yet to come. Even Biden admitted to CBS that he doesn't think his $15 minimum wage proposal will "survive" in the rescue package given the Senate rules on reconciliation. At some point, the rubber is going to have to meet the road on eliminating the filibuster so Democrats can continue delivering results at a time when Americans need their government to go to bat for them. But building momentum is at least a good place for Democrats to start.