All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tendrin]

Pretty sure you can remember something that didn't even happen a month ago.



And you quoted me, ergo, I'm the one you accused, falsely.

Are you a big enough person to apologize for the slight that keeps being proven to be one?

Yeah, the guy talking about marching down to the capital who then stood by his as his supporters stormed it and seemed enthusiastic about it from all supporters, who clearly understood that he wanted them to do it, didn't have a hand in the storming of the capital at all.

Geeze. Mets wants us to believe that this is a conspiracy theory while also propping up rehashed anti-gay, anti-trans propaganda. Not a good day for him.

Meanwhile, the evidence continues to mount, despite what conservatives would like us to believe.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Virginia Republicans advance bill to freeze minimum-wage increases

Well, Virginians are pretty much getting what they voted for, as in the following....

[Mister Mets]

Pretty sure you can remember something that happened less than a month ago.



And you quoted me, ergo, I'm the one you accused, falsely.

Are you a big enough person to apologize for the slight that keeps being proven to be one?

So how does Tendrin's post prove that Trump planned the attack on the capitol?

Totally not an attempted coup, you guys!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” ran a profile of Pat Bertroche, a failed candidate for Congress back in the Tea Party Wave of 2010 who was a rambling, incoherent idiot for a man who went through medical school, only to be worked into a berserker frenzy by the passage of the Affordable Care Act to the point where he was lying to the public and perpetrating the myth that its implementation would lead to “healthcare rationing”. His website had a link to the issue of terrorism which began with the policy of “Kill ‘Em All”, before delving into a story about a mass suicide he claimed to personally witnessed by five Iranians in Vienna that also has no basis in reality. Bertroche was also opposed to same sex marriage, claiming that the Supreme Court was stepping out of line to rule on the subject, and just needed to “let Congress vote on the Defense of Marriage Act” which was also off-putting, because Congress HAD voted on it back in 1996, and the Supreme Court had, many years later, ruled it unconstitutional and overturned the law… which is how those two branches of government work. Anyway, what really seemed to be the moment that finished off Pat Bertroche’s hopes at heading to Washington, D.C., was his campaign trail idea to solve our immigration crisis by implanting microchips into illegal immigrants that get caught so they can be tracked and can’t sneak back over again. Sane people, of course, realize that’s not just an impractical idea, it’s a human rights violation. Needless to say, Bertroche did not win office in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, and has faded from relevance since.

On this date in 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of David Rivera, a former one term member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Florida’s 25TH Congressional District for one term, arriving with the Tea Party Wave in 2011 and leaving two years later in 2013. Prior to his Congressional career, he was making noise in the Florida House of Representatives, where he was good friends with, and housemates with future Senator Marco Rubio, where Rivera stacked up a HUGE cloud of ethics violations. It all started back in the 2012 elections, when Rivera’s primary opponent, Marili Cancio, happened to dig up an old police report from 1994 that showed there was a David M. Rivera (same name) who was charged with repeated acts of domestic violence against a Florida woman. The rabbit hole went deeper, though. The domestic violence storyline was something that Rivera had been trying to shake as far back as his career as a state legislator, but how he supposedly shook the stigma of abusing his girlfriend in 2002 was a bit more suspicious. Rivera’s opponent in that election had planned to release a series of fliers about the allegation of domestic abuse to stir up anti-Rivera sentiment. David Rivera just coincidentally was involved in a traffic accident with the delivery vehicle that was trying to mail out those fliers before the deadline, where he claims that he was trying to flag down the driver who also had HIS fliers, and in the process of trying to wave him down on the road, the delivery driver lost control of their vehicle (totally not his fault, right) and crashed. Which is news to the delivery company, who recall Rivera just colliding with them and running them off the road. In 2011, under the David Rivera Wikipedia page, they had a “controversies” section with both the story of accusations of domestic violence, and the bizarrely convenient traffic accident listed. That’s not uncommon for political candidates. What became a bit of a point of a contention, though, was Rivera’s press secretary, Leslie Veiga, kept logging into Wikipedia to delete any negatives about him, whenever they would be edited into his biography. Considering there were also news stories about how he and Marco Rubio’s shared home was foreclosed on in 2010 while both were running for office (and presumably were trying to paint a picture of themselves as “fiscally responsible Republicans”). There was also the fact that in all disclosure reports, David Rivera listed the U.S. Agency for International Development as his employer… even though the USAID office itself never had a record of even hiring him. Or say, after how Rivera went above and beyond in the Florida House of Representatives with Marco Rubio to help change the law in Florida so that dog racing tracks in the state were permitted to also have big-revenue drawing slot machines, a specific dog track made a $510,000 payment to a consulting firm run by Rivera’s mother. (Because that doesn’t seem like bribery, at all.) In spite of being one of the shadiest people in politics running for Congress in 2010, David Rivera managed to ride the Tea Party Wave to Washington. However, Rivera continued to have allegations of ethical misconduct dog him, yet still. FBI investigations were launched into his finances, including reimbursing himself for over $60,000 in fraudulent campaign expenses, and failing to disclose $137,000 in loans from a company owned by his mother. That investigation concluded in 2015, and a judge recommended $58,000 in fines towards Rivera for the offenses. So with all the dirt on him before he was in office, and the dirt continuing to pile up... David Rivera was facing a tough road to re-election in a presidential election year in 2012, where he would again be facing off against Joe Garcia. Rivera thought his only hope of winning would be if Garcia was badly damaged in a primary battle. And that's apparently how Rivera funded Justin Lemar Sternad, a political neophyte, as that shadow candidate in the 2012 Primary for Florida's 26th Congressional District's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives (running there because of redistricting). Sternad was running attack ads, for example, to make English the national language (in Miami), and saying that Joe Garcia had left his wife when she had contracted cancer, not unlike the stories about Newt Gingrich, from once upon a time. Another FBI investigation discovered that Sternad's campaign manager was Ana Alliegro, a self-styled "conservative bad girl", and a close personal friend of David Rivera's. Rather than be interviewed by the FBI and potentially implicate herself and Rivera, Alliegro fled to Nicaragua, where she is working as a hairdresser until presumably, the statute of limitations on any crime she or Rivera may have committed runs out. Because now that she’s there, she’s admitted Rivera’s plan to use Sternad as a proxy to smear Garcia. Needless to say, Rivera lost in 2012, only getting 43% of the vote. He attempted a comeback campaign in 2014 to again run for the seat in Florida's 26th, but couldn't even advance past the primary, only earning 7% of the vote after running what The National Journal called "The Worst Congressional Comeback Ever". Rivera tried to run for his old district in the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, and he STILL lost that race by 53 votes. Going into the 2018 elections, Rivera is still taking a crack and finding a way to regain his seat in the Florida state legislature, but is definitely having trouble campaigning as he’s on the run from federal investigators, trying to evade federal marshals looking to serve him for a federal lawsuit he’s targeted by.

[Mister Mets]

Whoopi Goldberg suspended from 'The View' for 2 weeks over Holocaust comments
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/whoopi...ry?id=82613265

The decision was dumb.

She said something stupid and apologized.

Democrats have a supermajority in California and they refused to vote on a single-payer healthcare bill because just like the national party the state Democrat parties are corrupt and controlled by corporate interests.

The Democrats have proven themselves to be a money-corrupted corporate state party for decades now.


California Dems sent a single payer bill to a GOP governor’s desk in 2008. He vetoed it.

Now this year, California Dems refused to send a single payer bill to their Democratic governor’s desk, after the CA Dem Party cashed a $1 million check from a health insurer.

Is corruption and control by corporate interests the only possible explanation a state wouldn't want single-payer healthcare for itself?

If one state has it, and the other 49 do not, that has implications beyond corporate profits.

[worstblogever]

So how does Tendrin's post prove that Trump planned the attack on the capitol?

Sorry, I don't know what I was expecting, thinking there might be some acceptance of truth, and that an appeal to reason and decency and civility might work on an avowed Republican.

Clearly, that was my mistake.

Stay classy, Mets. I hope you find help with your radicalization, and determining how conspiracy theories work and what's real and what's not.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2017, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Jennifer Carroll, the former Florida state legislator and Lieutenant Governor of Florida. Back in 2004, when Carroll was still a state legislator, she was appointed to the National Commission on Presidential Scholars. She was forced to resign, however, when it was discovered in an investigation by CBS News that many Bush administration appointees were slotted for positions using degrees from phony diploma mills. Carroll herself had "attended" Kensington University and received a degree from them, and the Bush Dept. Education picked her based on those credentials. Amidst the controversy, she was forced to resign. After keeping her head down for six years, Carroll ended up winning the office of Lieutenant Governor in 2010, albeit with 48% of the vote even with the Tea Party momentum behind her. Then again, maybe her mediocre victory was because of reports she may have falsified documents to take advantage of a government program, but whatever. Carroll again began to try and seek out the limelight, perhaps thinking of a future run for Governor of Florida or other office for herself, when she gave a terrifying speech before the Faith and Freedom Coalition in 2011 where the ranted, “Today unfortunately many in the media would like nothing better to ridicule Christians: they promote ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ they place doubt in the public’s mind that Christ was not risen and they condemn the ‘Passion of Christ,’ yet they sensationalize stories that call for the end of prayer in school and removing the name of God from our country’s pledge. Ladies and gentlemen, these are very sad times when we allow the minority to poison the minds of the majority. This is exactly what dictators and socialist rulers did.” But then again, is only gives us the pleasure of pointing out the hypocrisy of the fact that the God-fearing' Carroll, and her anti-gay stances was embroiled in a sex scandal in July of 2012, right around the time she became a member of Mitt Romney's election campaign. Carroll was allegedly caught engaging in a lesbian affair with one of her aides. Now, the smart way for Carroll to have dismissed that rumor would have been to say she was married for 29 years, or cite her supposedly strong Christian beliefs. She opted instead to mention that "Black women that look like me don’t engage in relationships like that", which only sparked more outrage and forced her to apologize for her insensitive remarks. Only six months after that controversy, Jennifer Carroll's career was over after she was implicated in a $300 million multistate racketeering investigation into a nonprofit veteran's charity organization she formerly ran, Allied Veterans for the World. The charity itself was running illegal online "Internet Sweepstakes cafes" that were actually just online gambling. Even more shocking was that out of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Allied Veterans of the World was pulling in, the investigation found they were lying about how much they were donating to Department of Veterans' Affairs charities, and had only had sent 2% of its earnings to them, pocketing the rest. Carroll had actually introduced a bill briefly in 2010 while a state legislator to legalize internet gambling cafes, but after her connection to Allied Veterans of the World was mentioned, she quickly yanked the legislation, and blamed it as a mistake by one of her aides. With Gov. Rick Scott already furious that she was embroiled in a variety of scandals, including another that her travel budget had increased thirty-fold and now was somehow $300,000 a MONTH, so Scott made Carroll fall on her sword and resign, also signing an executive order to force her pay a (GASP) $1000 fine. She had the nerve to whine about it and say she felt "betrayed" by the fine, but when you consider the guy running Carroll's organization ended up being sentenced to six years. Perhaps the best epitaph for her political career was the New York Times' summary that her tenure as lieutenant governor was “marred by scandal and poor judgment” and she was “increasingly viewed as an embarrassment to the man who chose her for the job.”

On this date in 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Brandon Hixon, a former three term member of the Idaho House of Representatives who was first elected back in 2012, at the age of only 30. Compared to a lot of Idaho Republicans we’ve profiled, Hixon was practically mellow, with his only moments that seemed even somewhat radical included him voting for bills to try and nullify federal firearms regulations, or his bill to attempt to allow the Bible to be used as an educational reference in public schools. But the reason why Brandon Hixon got a FRED profile has more to do with his resignation, and the tragic end to his story. Hixon abruptly resigned in October of 2017, and while at first, the details were murky, the local press soon got law enforcement to confirm Hixon was under investigation for sexually abusing multiple young girls. During the investigation, police noted he was more concerned that the accusation would “ruin his career” than much else. Hixon was divorced (his ex-wife is on record saying she knew nothing about her husband’s crimes), and during what had to have been a depressing holiday season for him, what with being alone and looking at a prison sentence where he would not be treated well by others while incarcerated (child molesters not being popular behind bars), began to try and drink his sorrows away. Which led to a DUI arrest where his blood-alcohol level was twice the limit. A few weeks later, and Hixon was busted for DUI a second time. In early January of 2018, Hixon got his gun, and took his own life with it to avoid going to jail.

On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Rob Schaaf, a now former Missouri State Senator who made the jump from the Missouri House of Representatives after four terms in that body in the 2010 Tea Party Wave, and served four terms in the State Senate. What set Schaaf out from the rest of the pack in the Missouri GOP for us was when back in 2012, he was involved in debate on a bill that, if passed, would monitor the amount of painkillers being distributed to individuals more closely, as a way to prevent overdoses during our country’s current opioid crisis. While a lot of Republicans might just regurgitate the same lie they tell where they say they believe in smaller government, and that’s why they would be against creating such a database… Rob Schaaf isn’t that subtle. No, he straight up admitted that he sees opioid overdoses as a way to remove patients “from the gene pool”. Schaaf also supported a bill to allow public prayer in schools that obviously is a violation of the separation of church and state, a bill to begin the unconstitutional and failed conservative policy of drug testing welfare recipients, voted for Missouri’s insane attempt at blocking the United Nations’ Agenda 21 Environmental Treaty from being enacted, a bill that bans the enforcement of “foreign laws” aimed at stopping Sharia Law in the United States, and a bill aimed at nullifying federal firearms laws. Schaaf’s career was brought to an end in 2018 thanks to term limits.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Enrique Tarrio, a guy who ran for U.S. House of Representatives in Florida’s 27th Congressional District in 2020, but whom was far more known as the leader of the white nationalist hate group known as the Proud Boys. Yes, he's the CEO of the Proud Boys, the Florida state director of Latinos for Trump, and has a criminal record for repeated instances of theft, being sentenced to 30 months in prison, of which he only served 16 of them. Once released, he returned to Miami, where he was recruited by noted white nationalist Milo Yiannopolous to join the Proud Boys, rising quickly up their ranks. Tarrio was identified as one of the many Proud Boys who terrorized Charlottesville in August of 2017, and within about a year, he had risen to become to new chairman of the group after personally carrying out physical attacks on “Antifa” agents in Portland, Oregon in June of 2018. This had a lot to do with the Proud Boys looking to gaslight the American people that they weren’t a fascist, white nationalist hate group because their leader was of Cuban descent. Tarrio managed to get in the background behind a Trump MAGA hate rally in February of 2019, wearing a “Roger Stone did nothing wrong” T-shirt. He began associating with the same utter-piece-of-s*** Roger Stone throughout his trial for coordinating efforts between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian hackers to steal Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. By March of 2019, Tarrio was banned from Twitter, and in August 2019, Tarrio again led the Proud Boys to terrorize Portland. Enrique Tarrio thought this all made him a viable candidate for Florida’s 27th Congressional District prior to the GOP Primary. Because apparently leading a hate group is not something that helps on your resume. Undeterred, he resumed being a hatemonger and plotting to reinstall Donald Trump for a second term in office. On December 12, 2020, Tarrio posted selfies from within the gates of the Trump White House, leading to confusion as to how someone with a criminal record got in there. The Trump administration denied inviting him, but it is interesting given how the Proud Boys were expected as a part of the Capitol Attack only a few weeks later. But in December, he made it a point to lead the Proud Boys to specifically attack historical black churches in our nation’s capitol, even boasting that he was the one who yanked a Black Lives Matter off the front of one. That made it pretty easy for law enforcement to arrest this fascist twat on January 4th, 2021, making sure he wasn’t on the ground to storm the Capitol as part of Donald Trump’s coup attempt two days later, as he almost definitely planned to given his lawless activities in DC only days earlier. Enrique Tarrio is currently in jail, facing potential hate crime charges, and is already stated he will plead guilty to some charge related to that incident. Whatever he is charged with, we hope he ends up going away for a long, long time.


On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Laura Loomer, an anti-Muslim hatemonger, conspiracy theoriest, and general example of what would happen if you fed a cave full of bats Chipotle and Ex-Lax. More importantly, we’re profiling this bigot because she was also a Republican candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Florida’s 21st Congressional District in 2020, looking to challenge Democratic Congresswoman Lois Frankel.

Now, if her name sounds familiar, that might be because you remember she’s vile enough in her opinions that she has been banned from virtually every social media platform, including Twitter, which is a TALL order in today’s world. And yet, she managed to pull of that achievement after repeatedly defending Islamophobia as “rational” and that Islam is “cancer”, before she finally sealed her ban by harassing Congresswoman Ilhan Omar with Islamophobic posts (among them accusing her of marrying her own brother to gain citizenship), and responded to her Twitter ban by marching on the company’s headquarters, handcuffing herself in a door while wearing a Star of David like what the Nazis would have put on Jews during the Third Reich, and comparing her treatment to “the Holocaust” while also accusing Twitter of carrying out a double-standard for banning people like Alex Jones (deranged conspiracy theorist), Milo Yianappolous (white nationalist that advocated for pedophilia), and Roger Stone (convicted felon and general right wing nut job) that showed they supported Sharia Law (she is bugs*** crazy, don’t try to make sense of that). While Loomer thought this would be a great inconvenience to Twitter, they ignored her and went about their workday. Having been determined enough in her silly idea of a “protest”, Loomer forgot to bring a key to her own handcuffs and soon realized she had trapped herself, and nobody was coming to get her. The NYPD showed up and just put a barricade around her and let her know they weren’t removing her until Twitter asked to press charges, and they said they had no plans to. At that point, Loomer started listing her demands to the police which amounted to, ”I’m not saying people shouldn’t be banned but why are they banning me? ... I think there’s a double standard. It’s egregious, Dorsey thinks I’m a terrorist. I’m not a terrorist If I have to, I’ll pee on myself. I haven’t eaten or drunken today.” Of course, that’s sillier and far less scary when she threatens suicide over being banned from social media platforms.

This is the sort of idiocy and faux victimhood you would expect from someone who once worked for alt-right provocateur James O’Keefe at Project Veritas, and who got suspended from Barry University for trying to start a “Humanitarian Club” that supported ISIS. (They got caught trying to create the thing that they would be outraged at the university for “creating”, as is often the case with James O’Keefe funded “journalism”.) Meanwhile, she has compared CNN to ISIS.

Loomer has denied being a white nationalist because she’s Jewish, but she repeatedly defends other white nationalists and their policies, and can, in the same sentence, use her background in defense and then immediately go into spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about George Soros being a Nazi collaborator. Loomer files frivolous lawsuits against people who have the nerve to ban her from their social media platform or mock her deranged behavior online.

Terrifyingly, Loomer actually won the GOP Primary for Florida’s 21st, but only got 39% of the vote in the general election against Lois Frankel. Post-election, Loomer of course spent the rest of 2020 leaning into the narrative that there was massive voter fraud that somehow made her lose by 20 points, adding fuel to the fire that was Donald Trump and Republicans’ “Big Lie” would eventually engulf the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th. Perhaps then it should be little surprise that when Trump finally put out the video to his supporters to tell them, “It’s over. Life is about to get very hard for conservatives in America.”

And yet… she still is reappearing to ambush the CEO of Twitter to accuse HIM of “election meddling” and further that conspiracy theory. She’s still allied with several people implicated in the planning of January 6th, including being close enough to Roger Stone to have him claim… and hold your lunch for this… he was “freezing my sperm for Laura Loomer”.

In January of 2021, Loomer also started to dig in hard on anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, and downplay the threat of Covid-19. The most damning quote was, far and away:

”I hope I get COVID so I can prove to people I've had bouts of food poisoning that are more serious and life threatening than a hyped up virus," she posted on December 30, 2020. "Have you ever eaten bad fajitas? That will kill you faster than COVID.”

Spoiler alert, nine months later, she got Covid-19, and a case bad enough to hospitalize her because she believes her own bulls*** and refused to get vaccinated. Which may have been why she claimed she was being treated with hydroxychloroquine, even though it was known as not an effective treatment for Covid-19 for months. She did insist that she would not be getting vaccinated, because in her warped mind, it was unsafe and ineffective”.

Truly, a veteran of Project Veritas.

Well, here’s our update… Laura Loomer will not go away, and has decided to carpet-bag her way over to Florida’s 11th Congressional District for a 2022 challenge Republican Congressman Daniel Webster, who has held onto his own very red seat for some time now. While we have no love for Webster, we have to think that the choice between him and Loomer being in Congress is like having the choice between being shot with a gun, or shot with a cannon. Keep your fingers crossed that he chooses to run for re-election, because if he doesn’t… it might line up for Loomer to head to DC to party with Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

[Zauriel]

Whoopi Goldberg suspended from 'The View' for 2 weeks over Holocaust comments
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/whoopi...ry?id=82613265

First Robert Kennedy Jr. and now Whoopi Goldberg? Who will be the next idiot to make an insensitive comment about holocaust?

Both of them apologized. Hopefully they learn from their mistakes.

[Zauriel]

The decision was dumb.

She said something stupid and apologized.

Is corruption and control by corporate interests the only possible explanation a state wouldn't want single-payer healthcare for itself?

If one state has it, and the other 49 do not, that has implications beyond corporate profits.

Here is the source..
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSt...ornia-82573398

A bill that would have created the nation's only government-funded universal health care system died in the California Assembly on Monday as Democrats could not gather enough support to bring it for a vote ahead of a legislative deadline.

The bill had to pass by midnight on Monday to have a chance at becoming law this year. Democrats needed 41 votes for that to happen, a threshold that did not seem impossible given that they control 56 of the 80 seats in the state Assembly and universal health care has long been a priority for the party.

But intense lobbying from business groups put pressure on more moderate Democrats, who face tough reelection campaigns this year in newly-redrawn districts. Plus, Democrats were missing four lawmakers from their caucus — including three of their more liberal members — who had resigned recently to take other jobs.

[Tendrin]

Sorry, I don't know what I was expecting, thinking there might be some acceptance of truth, and that an appeal to reason and decency and civility might work on an avowed Republican.

Clearly, that was my mistake.

Stay classy, Mets. I hope you find help with your radicalization, and determining how conspiracy theories work and what's real and what's not.

Back at the White House, advisers were trying to get Mr. Trump to do something, but he rebuffed calls to intercede, including those from people wanting to see the National Guard deployed. The president, several advisers said, was expressing pleasure that the vote to certify Mr. Biden’s win had been delayed and that people were fighting for him.

These are not the actions of a man who didn't expect his incendiary speech about 'not having a country anymore' and how the election was stolen and how we're going to 'march down to the capitol' to have an impact, least of all when he's reportedly pleased by it happening. Mets keeps wanting to shout 'it's just a conspiracy theory!' as a means to dismiss that there were, in fact, multiple conspiracies at work to overturn the election. If anything, Trump's recklessness in provoking the crowd, knowing full well that groups like the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys were present, might be the actual thing that prevented the Eastman plan from going into effect and in fact *they have admitted that*.

It's pretty clear Trump wanted them to 'fight'. The rioters understood their orders just fine, as they had understood them just fine at all his other rallies where he called for 'war'.

Here's a pre riot article:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...tic-terrorism/

It's pretty obvious Trump knew what he was doing.

[worstblogever]

These are not the actions of a man who didn't expect his incendiary speech about 'not having a country anymore' and how the election was stolen and how we're going to 'march down to the capitol' to have an impact, least of all when he's reportedly pleased by it happening. Mets keeps wanting to shout 'it's just a conspiracy theory!' as a means to dismiss that there were, in fact, multiple conspiracies at work to overturn the election. If anything, Trump's recklessness in provoking the crowd, knowing full well that groups like the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys were present, might be the actual thing that prevented the Eastman plan from going into effect and in fact *they have admitted that*.

It's pretty clear Trump wanted them to 'fight'. The rioters understood their orders just fine, as they had understood them just fine at all his other rallies where he called for 'war'.

Here's a pre riot article:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...tic-terrorism/

It's pretty obvious Trump knew what he was doing.

I mean, they had a Power Point laying it out, right?

[worstblogever]

I'll note that my update on the 2/2 profiles also mentions that Enrique Tarrio, head of the Proud Boys, somehow visited the White House in spite of being a convicted felon and photographed himself there... which means someone in the Secret Service is bad at their job or Trump gave the thumbs up to that. Because nobody else could have permitted him to be present but Trump. Not Mark Meadows, not any other person implicated by the Jan. 6th committee. TRUMP.

This would be the leader of one of the organizations who participated in the attack, and the only reason Tarrio wasn't there on 1/6 is he got arrested in the days before for what he did in December of 2020 in DC.

But, y'know, it's in no way suspicious that a domestic terrorist leader of a group of white nationalists who helped storm the Capitol somehow had business at the White House in between Election Day and the coup attempt.

[CaptainEurope]

Do not click that link, even the Republicans on this thread. It's like a malware site, I reported it to the mods.

[Dalak]

I don't think the subtitle is nuanced, although I wouldn't really look for nuance in a subtitle.

Do I have a habit of failing to answer questions that are directly put to me?

I'm fairly sure my next post (A few down) showed that I was interested in the nuance you saw in the book as a whole and was just using it's subtitle to accentuate the point of it. So Yes, yes I think you do.

Do not click that link, even the Republicans on this thread. It's like a malware site, I reported it to the mods.

Well I hope the lack of any link other than a MotherJones one means it was taken care of.