A new report from Roll Call details some of the many challenges facing the Republican Party as it looks to an uncertain future following former President Donald Trump’s electoral defeat. As the party turns its focus to the 2022 midterms, it remains “divided over Trump, their midterm prospects and the state of the GOP itself,” Roll Call’s Bridget Bowman, Kate Ackley, and Stephanie Akin report.
Donald Trump incited this riot and his supporters carried out his orders. That is a fact, in spite of all the denials floating around Trumpworld and Republicans in denial. Anyone who doubts it as a fact should spend the 10 minutes to watch the video above, compiled by Just Security.
At Mother Jones, we’ve corrected countless Trump falsehoods over the past four years, from his bull about the stock market and hooey about global warming to disinformation about the legitimacy of the election and bunkum about the coronavirus pandemic. It was exhausting. And numbing.
The sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – chief executives and their army of lobbyists.
Reading RT convinces me that Trump was definitely a Russian asset in the USA. Russian troops numbers, not disclosed, have arrested 1000s of it’s citizens. Mostly the youth of Russia for simply protesting the jailing of a political opponent of Putin’s. But more so like Oliver Twist asking for more. Believe me Russia has a far greater domestic police force than America.
If you thought a president who needs 25,000 troops to safeguard his inauguration from threats that appear to have been manufactured would at least treat his praetorians with some gratitude and respect – well, you’d be wrong.
A new bombshell emerged: the Trump Administration unfounded accusation of China for spreading the ‘Wuhan virus’ worldwide. It did not matter that such infamy had been questioned by both Japanese and Chinese reports. A report from a Japanese TV station which suspected some of the 14,000 Americans died of influenza may have unknowingly contracted the COVID-19 went viral on Chinese social media, stoking fears and speculations in China that the new virus may have originated in the United States. The report, by TV Asahi Corporation of Japan, suggested that the United States government may have failed to grasp how rampant the virus had gone on the United States soil. (Japanese TV report sparks speculations in China that COVID-19 may have originated in US, Global Times, February 23, 2020).
Nor did the presence of suspected similar cases had occurred in Italy in late 2019 and elsewhere, as will be seen.
On 12 March 2020, in a statement to the House Oversight Committee of the United States Congress the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert R. Redfield candidly admitted that: yes, some cases diagnosed as seasonal flu could have been COVID-19.
As to exactly when that occurred, in October?, in November?, he could not be precise.
China’s Foreign Ministry reacted to Dr. Redfield’s statements intimating that the virus could have originated in the United States.
Pariah-in-Chief: Donald Trump is $1bn in debt, an impeachment trial is due next week, criminal charges are possible – and he’s being abandoned by banks, cronies and even his Mar A Lago neighbours
Before Donald Trump began his run for president, there was a war against journalism in the United States. President George W. Bush used the Espionage Act and sought to jail reporters who refused to give up their sources, not to mention killing journalists in war zones. When President Barack Obama, a constitutional law scholar, came to power, he did so claiming that he and Joe Biden would represent the most transparent administration in history. But then reality set in. During his eight years in power, Obama’s Justice Department used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers more than all of Obama’s predecessors combined. They continued the Bush Justice Department’s war on journalists, including threatening to jail then-New York Times reporter James Risen if he did not testify against his alleged source.
Heavy Fossil Fuel investor Rupert Murdoch Director of Genie Oil continues his anti- climate change campaign on his Corporate Media
Morano is not a climate scientist and his climate lies have been repeatedly debunked, but he has been a longtime guest of Fox News shows. Later, on Fox & Friends, discredited contrarian Bjorn Lomborg downplayed the severity of the climate crisis
President Trump has been constantly referring to COVID-19 as ‘made in China’; in recent times Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has been referring to it as ‘Wuhan coronavirus.’ That there be no proof of it does not matter. As far as President Trump is concerned, his credibility has been punctiliously examined by the fact checkers of The Washington Post. They estimated that during the four years of his term of office President Trump uttered some 25,000 false or misleading statements. As far as COVID-19 President Trump must be held responsible for a very ‘Big lie’.
[Trump] just basically took the lid off Pandora’s box and all the demons came out. Right now, we’re hoping at least to try to get the lid back on, but we’re going to be dealing with all those demons that came flying out for many years afterwards.David Neiwert
“We now face the real danger that even as vaccines bring hope to some, they become another brick in the wall of inequality between the world’s haves and have-nots.” —Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO
“The price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.”
Whether Trump is ultimately convicted or not in the Senate, the system that produced him will be acquitted—by Congress, by the new president, by Wall Street, by the corporate media. It is we who will pay the price.
Corporate America is frantically distancing itself from Donald Trump in the dying days of his presidency after spending four years financing him, enjoying his tax giveaways, his attacks on workers and gutting of regulations to fatten corporate profits. Elizabeth Minter reports on the rank hypocrisy, even extending to Scott Morrison’s top adviser on Covid-19 economic recovery.
That ABC lead with the impeachment of Trump while Ch9 and The Daily Telegraph see the need to tell us Trump has called for peace. No mention of the threat he made “Better be careful what you wish for” That’s your NEWS Australia. Save the ABC Save our Democracy.
Key points: The Senate Majority Leader blocked a quick Senate impeachment trial for Mr Trump Ten Republicans voted in favour impeachment Mr Trump watched the proceedings on TV from the White House
Fox executives seem committed to ensuring that trend continues long after Trump leaves office. The network belongs to the Tucker Carlsons and Sean Hannitys. And with Fox unwilling to reform from within, only its advertisers and the cable providers who carry it can exert enough influence to get it to behave responsibly.
Few Australian politicians have public Parler accounts under their own names. Nationals MP George Christensen is a regular user, as is Senator Malcolm Roberts, while One Nation leader Pauline Hanson occasionally posts on her profile.
Hidden away in my ‘To read’ file I found a piece written by former Liberal Party leader John Hewson. I shall have to clean my list out more often in the hope of finding more gems. Hewson’s piece is important and I’m not sure how I missed it because I have witnessed him going through a Fraser-like conversion in his approach to politics in the past few years. The piece was written almost 12 months ago and spoke to a favourite subject of mine. How to clean up our politics to make for a better democracy for all Australians. John Hewson proposes six Rules of engagement.
“President Trump is a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is he will soon be as irrelevant as an old Tweet.”
Yesterday I reported that an insurrectionist at the Capitol on Wednesday had repeated Steve Bannon’s call to put federal bureaucrats’ “heads on pikes.”
In reaction to Twitter’s announcement that it will be permanently suspending Donald Trump’s account, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America issued the following statement:
Keilar mopped the floor Friday with Carlson’s effort to downplay the insurrection at the Capitol as “a political protest that got out of hand” and his attempt to make those who rightly labeled the insurrection as sedition the real villains. She also exposed Carlson’s racism with a devastating comparison of his tolerance for the MAGA violence with his condemnation of Black Lives Matter protests.
Meteorological services around the world have embraced climate attribution science, which ascertains the effect of climate change on extreme weather events. Not so Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, which is remarkably coy about its work in this field. Sandi Keane and Tasha May report.
I felt that I should make sure that I didn’t resort to the echo chambers of my own like minds, so I did the unthinkable and I watched Fox News for a while.
Supporters of President Donald Trump, following his encouragement, stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, disrupting the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Waving Trump banners, hundreds of people broke through barricades and smashed windows to enter the building where Congress convenes. One rioter died and several police officers were hospitalized in the clash. Congress went on lockdown. While violent and shocking, what happened on Jan. 6 wasn’t a coup. This Trumpist insurrection was election violence, much like the election violence that plagues many fragile democracies.
A British judge has rejected a Trump administration bid to extradite Julian Assange to face charges relating to WikiLeaks’ publication of classified diplomatic cables a decade ago, saying that he would be a suicide risk.
With the U.S. Election approaching, President Trump seems to be agitating his country into a frenzy of violence and hate crime, writes Dr Martin Hirst.
Fox News wrecked the U.S. pandemic response, used protests for racial justice to spread white supremacist propaganda, and waged an assault on democracy
That’s what Fox News did this year. The right-wing network has promoted coronavirus misinformation an estimated 13,551 times on its weekday programs over the course of the pandemic. And its lies had a deadly impact.
This year was a lot. Especially in the field of politics. That’s why we decided to distill it down for you in an easy-to-remember, alphabetised format.
We’ve brought you A to M and as sure as day follows night, and pivot follows unprecedented in the most-used words of the year list, here is N to Z.
Senator Bernie Sanders blasted Trump’s refusal to sign the negotiated COVID relief plan because ‘we have a pathologically narcissistic in the White House.”
we present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you’ll remember about this year we’d rather forget (and probably a few things you’d managed to put out of your mind already). Whet your whistle with the first half.
Meanwhile, Trump has thrust Republicans into the ninth circle of political hell. No matter which way they turn, a large segment of the base will be unmercifully pissed. If they back Trump, then their assurances of fiscal frugality will tank; if they oppose him, well, you know.
Notwithstanding the delightfulness of all this Republican infighting, the totality of urgent relief legislation is now in doubt. And that alone ain’t so delightful.
It was the first time Liberal government had lost a vote in the house since Peter Gutwein took over as Premier in January this year. Sue Hickey is often described as “maverick Liberal MP”. Maverick or not, it is highly unusual for parliamentarians to cross the floor, to side with their political adversaries rather than their colleagues, and Hickey’s decision spoke volumes about the subject matter at hand.
Senator Rand Paul rose up in rebellion against his own party Tuesday, objecting to the idea of helping people with their bills with a pittance of a payment to help with the pain of a pandemic they didn’t cause. “If free money was the answer… if money really did grow on trees, why not give more free money?” Rand mused. “Why not give it out all the time? Why stop at $600 a person? Why not $1,000? Why not $2,000?” “Maybe these new Free-Money Republicans should join the Everybody-Gets-A-Guaranteed-Income Caucus?” he snarked. “Why not $20,000 a year for everybody, why not $30,000? If we can print out money with impunity, why not do it?”
Donald J. Trump will exit the White House as a private citizen next month perched atop a pile of campaign cash unheard-of for an outgoing president, and with few legal limits on how he can spend it.
Democrats refused to seize a rare opportunity to outmaneuver Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. They settled for a COVID relief bill that skimps on benefits, provides tax breaks to the rich, and pulls us toward austerity extremism.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt ploughed ahead with a “beach nourishment” project in his electorate even though the Victorian government had decided that such short-term fixes were a case of throwing away good money. Dr Sarah Russell reports.
U.S. President Donald Trump used his abilities as a conman to win over the public and key political figures during his time in office, writes Paul Begley.
Pence is a serial science denier. He says smoking cigarettes does not cause cancer. He has called the human-caused climate emergency “a myth.” The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine involves science and Muslim immigrants, so why is he getting it?
The workplace abuses of the 18th and 19th centuries have returned under the guise of the gig economy. The Morrison government has now proposed sweeping changes to labour laws that will cut wages, entrench precarious work, cripple unions and hand absolute power to bosses. But the assault on casual workers is just the beginning. If the IR bill becomes law, permanent workers will also be affected. Alison Pennington reports.
