‘They want to kill our cows’: Trump says liberals kill cows and ‘you’re next’ — forgetting where steaks come from

TAKING A LINE OF ATTACK FROM HIS OLD PAL MODI OF INDIA 

January 30, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris

President Donald Trump bizarrely proclaimed that Democrats want to kill your cows,” while at a speech in Iowa Thursday evening.

Trump, who never met a Big Mac he didn’t like, is known for frequently spending his Saturday nights at his Washington hotel eating a “well-done” steak with ketchup.

Trump then warned that if Democrats want to kill cows, then “you’re next,” threatened.

The Green New Deal talks about methane that often comes from cows, which is presumed that cows have flatulence, in fact it’s cow belches that cause methane emissions. One of the greatest producers of methane, far surpassing that of cows, are termites, who eat and expel massive quantities of wood.

It’s unclear whether Trump actually believes that Democrats want to kill humans as part of the Green New Deal, but he provided no proof of it.

Aside from vegetarians, many Democrats, like hamburgers and steaks. Former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke made Whataburger one of the key campaign stops during his Senate race.



You can watch the video below — and see some of the tweets:

Trump: "They want to kill our cows. That means you're next."

Me: [unironically chomping into a Farmer Boys burger]
 

#TrumpRallyIA pic.twitter.com/53rTSbANHV
— Santa Claus, CEO (@SantaInc) January 31, 2020

“That’s a real beauty,” says Trump of @aoc.
Goes on to summarize the Green New Deal as “they want to kill our cows.”
— Niall Stanage (@NiallStanage) January 31, 2020

Trump mentions @AOC at his rally, the mention of her name generates boos. He brings up the Green New Deal.
“They want to kill our cows, that means you’re next,” he said.
— Jake Webster (@JakeDaveWebster) January 

Trump rifts on @AOC's GND: "They want to kill our cows. You want to know why?…Want to know why? They want to kill your cows–that means your next."
— Philip Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) January 31, 2020

Jeeze, he's in Iowa, he should be saying "They want to kill our cows. You know why?"
A. Bacon
— J Hougen (@HougenJ) January 31, 2020

@SenJoniErnst
Just wanted you to know who you're playing political suicide for Joni.
"They want to kill our cows. That means you're next." — Donald Trump, just now, in Iowa.
Are you really going to stand behind these comments?
— Gemini Ginger (@ICanBeAHandful) January 31, 2020

Trump is losing what little mind capacity he had!!! This is as dumb a statement as any that has ever come from anyone in the oval office!!!

‘They want to kill our cows’: Trump says liberals kill cows and ‘you’re next’ — forgetting where steaks come from https://t.co/ASnuHwytuT
— Bad Karma – #ProudToBeScum (@BadKarmaIn2020) January 31, 2020

@realDonaldTrump Dumbest jackass on the planet. Are those burgers from McDonalds he eats all the time plant based? Even his crowd thought he looked stupid. https://t.co/0aI3FDo3RV
— Shirley Little (@ShirleyLittle51) January 31, 2020

Trump: "They want to kill our cows. You know why?"
A: Steaks. https://t.co/BCSU3qsgln
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 31, 2020

‘You can’t make this up!’: Senate erupts in laughter when Adam Schiff reveals DOJ lawyers just completely contradicted Trump’s impeachment defense

January 30, 2020 By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet - Commentary


To defend against Democratic allegations of an illicit cover-up, President Donald Trump’s lawyers have argued fervently that the second article of impeachment in the Senate trial charging him with obstructing Congress is completely unwarranted. Instead of charging Trump with obstructing Congress, they’ve argued, Democrats should have taken the president to court to enforce subpoenas of his aides and requests for documents.

But on Thursday, a Justice Department attorney — who, ostensibly, works for the president — completely contradicted this argument.

There’s long been a tension in the president’s impeachment defense and his administration’s position in court, as many have pointed out. Trump’s impeachment attorneys have argued that Congress shouldn’t have charged Trump with obstructing their investigation but instead worked out disputes in the judicial branch. But when Congress has taken the administration to court to enforce its subpoenas, Justice Department attorneys have argued that judges can’t resolve the dispute between the legislative branch and the executive.

Basically, combining these two arguments, Trump’s lawyers are saying Congress should go to court to enforce its subpoenas, and then it should lose in court — essentially implying that lawmakers should have no power at all to compel evidence from the executive branch. If this were true, the power of impeachment would essentially be nullified.

Previously, some Trump administration lawyers have been reluctant to say in court whether Congress could or should use the impeachment to enforce its subpoenas, instead urging that lawmakers could withhold funds from the administration to exert pressure for compliance. But on Thursday, in an ongoing fight over the 2020 Census, Justice Department lawyer James Burnham said that the House can legitimately use its impeachment powers to respond to a president who defies subpoenas, as CNN reported.

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow has argued, however, that the proper place to resolve the dispute over subpoenas is courts and not impeachment, according to Politico.

“The president’s opponents, in their rush to impeach, have refused to wait for judicial review,” Sekulow argued to the Senate.

And legal scholar John Turley, who testified on behalf of Republicans in the House impeachment proceedings, warned against “making a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts.”

House impeachment manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) pointed out the glaring inconsistency and hypocrisy on Thursday in his remarks to the Senate, drawing laughter from the audience.

“Today, while we’ve been debating whether a president can be impeached for essentially bogus claims of privilege, for attempting to use the courts to cover up misconduct, the Justice Department in resisting subpoenas is in court today … because, as we know, they’re in here arguing Congress must go to court to enforce its subpoenas, but they’re in the court saying ‘Congress, thou shalt not do that,’” he explained. “So the judge says: ‘If the Congress can’t enforce its subpoenas in court, then what remedy is there?’ And the Justice Department lawyer’s response is ‘Impeachment! Impeachment!’”

At that, the Senate chamber burst into laughter.

“You can’t make it up!” Schiff said. “What more evidence do we need of the bad faith of this effort to cover up?”

SCHIFF: "While we've been debating whether POTUS can be impeached for bogus claims of privilege, the DOJ is resisting subpoenas in court today… the judge says 'if Congress can't enforce its subpoenas, what remedy is there,' & DOJ's response is impeachment! You can't make it up" pic.twitter.com/Tim1HHDgBO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2020

Trump’s lawyers have tried to suggest that the House manager’s position is itself similarly contradictory because they’ve tried to enforce their subpoenas through both the courts and through impeachment. But there’s nothing incongruous about believing that House subpoenas can be enforced through two different avenues.

What’s so duplicitous about the Trump lawyers’ position is that it means that House subpoenas would be entirely unenforceable, not even worth the paper they’re printed on — but they refuse to admit this outright.

Senate stunned as Schiff reveals DOJ just argued in court that defying subpoenas is an impeachable offense

January 30, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


President Donald Trump’s Justice Department appeared in court Thursday as part of the Houses’ ongoing attempt to enforce subpoenas for information they’ve sought in other cases.

Schiff quoted the DOJ legal team’s argument in court that judges “have no place to enforce subpoenas because of the impeachment power.”

It’s a point that Schiff has pointed is in constant contradiction with the case the White House has made in the impeachment proceedings. The White House lawyers have said that the House impeachment investigation needed to play out in court. They claimed that subpoenas for witnesses and documents must take place in the courtroom because the judicial branch is an essential check on the legislative branch.

Yet, in court, they claimed that the judicial branch has no place.

“Schiff stunned the room just now when he informed senators that JUST TODAY, as Trump’s lawyers argue in the Senate the House should’ve gone to court to enforce subpoenas, DOJ lawyers argued in COURT that judges have no place to enforce subpoenas because of the impeachment power,” Crooked Media Brian Beutler.

Schiff stunned the room just now when he informed senators that JUST TODAY, as Trump’s lawyers argue in the Senate the House should’ve gone to court to enforce subpoenas, DOJ lawyers argued in COURT that judges have no place to enforce subpoenas because of the impeachment power
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) January 30, 2020


SCHIFF: "While we've been debating whether POTUS can be impeached for bogus claims of privilege, the DOJ is resisting subpoenas in court today… the judge says 'if Congress can't enforce its subpoenas, what remedy is there,' & DOJ's response is impeachment! You can't make it up" pic.twitter.com/Tim1HHDgBO
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2020

 GIG CAPITALISM MONOPOLY IN AMERICAN HEALTHCARE GROWING

MEET THE NEW BOSSES

The FBI is reportedly probing a notorious Israeli spyware company that was linked to the Jeff Bezos phone hack

NSO has also been accused of supplying software used to surveil Jamal Khashoggi before his murder by Saudi Arabia in October 2018.

Rosie Perper

Samantha Lee/Business Insider


The FBI Israel's NSO Group over the use of its software for hacks of US citizens and companies, according to Reuters.

The Israeli spyware company has been linked to several high-profile hacks, most recently to an attack on the phone of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

NSO has also been accused of supplying software used to surveil Jamal Khashoggi before his murder by Saudi Arabia in October 2018.

The FBI is probing the use of spyware from the Israeli company NSO Group, which has been linked to hacks on Saudi dissidents and US companies, according to the Reuters news agency.

The investigation began in 2017, when FBI officials wanted to work out whether NSO possessed code which could infect people's phones, according to a source who was interviewed by the FBI.

News of an FBI investigation into the company follows reports that the iPhone of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was hacked by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Guardian first reported earlier this month that bin Salman helped steal data from Bezos' phone after sending an unsolicited video that contained a malicious file in 2018.

The hack is believed to have happened after the two men spoke on WhatsApp on May 1, 2018, weeks after meeting at a dinner in Los Angeles.

Saudi Arabia has denied that bin Salman was involved, and called the allegations "absurd."

Last week, a United Nations report said that bin Salman likely was involved in hacking Bezos' phone. It said that a forensic analysis of the phone said it was "likely" to have been carried out with the sort of software NSO has.

NSO Group did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for more information.

The spyware firm has been linked to several high-profile hacks in recent years.

Researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School identified 36 operators that used NSO Group's technology on targets in 45 countries.
In May 2019, WhatsApp was hacked, and, according to The Financial Times, the hackers installed sophisticated NSO spyware on an unknown number of phones.

In June 2018, Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi activist in exile in Canada, had his phone targeted with NSO spyware by Saudi agents.

Abdulaziz said in a lawsuit filed in December 2018 that the same spyware was used to target Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered by Saudi agents in October 2018.

And on Tuesday, New York Times Beirut bureau chief Ben Hubbard reported that his phone had been targeted by Saudi agents. He said technology researchers determined the attack was also likely carried out with NSO technology.

---30---

SET PHASERS TO STUN

CHILE 2020 LASER PENS AGAINST THE POLICE

A TACTIC ALSO USED BY HONG KONG PROTESTERS

MELANIA AT IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS

GOATS IN TREES MORROCO

Jimmy Carter declares that Trump’s plan for Israelis and Palestinians violates international law

 January 30, 2020  By Agence France-Presse

Jimmy Carter said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan would violate international law and urged the United Nations to stop Israel from annexing Palestinian land.

“The new US plan undercuts prospects for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” the former US president said in a statement.

“If implemented, the plan will doom the only viable solution to this long-running conflict, the two-state solution,” said Carter, who brokered the landmark 1978 Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt.

He urged UN member-states “to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions and to reject any unilateral Israeli implementation of the proposal by grabbing more Palestinian land.”

His office said in a statement that Trump’s plan, unveiled Tuesday, “breaches international law regarding self-determination, the acquisition of land by force, and annexation of occupied territories.”

“By calling Israel ‘the nation-state of the Jewish people,’ the plan also encourages the denial of equal rights to the Palestinian citizens of Israel,” it said.

Trump presented his long-awaited plan Tuesday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his close ally, who shortly afterward signalled he would seek to annex a large part of the West Bank.

Trump’s plan recognizes Israeli sovereignty over most of its West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley, as well as an undivided Jerusalem.

The plan also backs a Palestinian state with a capital on the outskirts of Jerusalem but says the Palestinian leadership must recognize Israel as a Jewish homeland and agree to a demilitarized state.

The 95-year-old Carter, the longest-living president in US history, has frequently spoken out since losing re-election in 1980 and has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.

In his recent years, he has frequently faced criticism from pro-Israel supporters for his views on the conflict, especially his use of the word “apartheid” to describe the Jewish state’s potential future without a peace deal.


© 2020 AFP

God put Trump in White House, says US ambassador to Israel

David Friedman calls Israeli control of occupied Palestinian territory an ‘opportunity for Biblical tourism’

Alex Woodward New York

Friday 31 January 2020 

The US ambassador to Israel believes Donald Trump was sent by God to occupy the White House, following the president’s proposal to cement Israeli rule over Jerusalem and end a decades-long conflict with Palestinians.

Asked by the Christian Broadcast Network whether the president was “heaven-sent for you guys”, David Friedman said he believed that “God runs the world, and that would apply to the president”.

He added: “The president supports Israel because I think it fits with his essential understanding of who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s surviving against the odds, who’s creating democracy in a sea of challenges around it.”

Mr Brody asked whether Mr Friedman, who is Jewish, believed that “God puts people in certain places in certain times, for such a time as this”.

He replied: “I think God puts persons in places for certain times, at all times.”

Palestinian protests against President Trump's Middle East peace plan

“And Trump is exhibit A of this?” Mr Brody asked.

Mr Friedman said: “He sure is.”

The diplomat said Mr Trump had ”surrounded himself” with supporters of Tel Aviv’s agenda, describing the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, one of the architects of the Israeli plan, as well as Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, as “Israel’s best friends.” Mr Kushner is Jewish while Mr Pence and Mr Pompeo are both hard-line evangelical Christians.


“But above them all,” Mr Friedman said, “the president has really been Israel’s best friend.”
The 181-page plan effectively caters to demands Israel has made under Benjamin Netanyahu, and has been roundly rejected by Palestinian leaders. The plan would carve out a fractured Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank and would allow Israel to annex the Jordan Valley and all occupied territory, including areas containing settlements that are illegal under international law.

In line with White House policy introduced in 2017, Jerusalem would be recognized as Israel’s capital and would be under Israeli control, with a Palestinian capital created in the eastern outskirts of the holy city

The plan also would deny Palestinian refugees the right to return to lands they had fled or were forced from decades ago that are now inside Israel.

Asked how the US Christian evangelical community influenced the plan’s drafting, Mr Friedman said he had an “enormous amount in common” with the community, which his boss has courted assiduously. “They’re believers. They believe in the divinity of the land of Israel.”

Since his 2016 campaign, Mr Trump has cultivated the support of right-wing American evangelical groups and pastors, boasting of his administration’s anti-abortion stance and conservative judicial appointments. The president also launched an “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign this year as he seeks re-election.

Mr Friedman said Israeli control over Palestinian land would open a massive tourism industry for Christian evangelicals.

Benjamin Netanyahu says Donald Trump has been ‘the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House’

The ambassador claimed that Jewish and Christian holy sites that are currently within Palestinian territory - including Shiloh, Hebron and Al-Bireh – were “completely neglected” and that the US would help assert Israeli control over them. Those areas also contain Muslim holy sites.

Israel “has not obtained sovereignty over those territories”, he said. ”Our plan contemplates that Israel will.”

“You’re talking about opening up the Bible and bringing it back to life,” said Mr Friedman, who called the Trump plan ”an opportunity for biblical tourism that will grow and flourish in profound ways”.

Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ is so absurd and banal, it’s impossible to take it seriously

Trump says Jerusalem will be Israel's 'undivided capital' under Middle East peace plan

Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ is so absurd and banal, it’s impossible to take it seriously

Truly, all must read these 80 pages. And every reader should go through them twice – in case, first time round, they missed some extra egregious indignity inflicted upon the Palestinians

Robert Fisk@indyvoices

With the two old political fraudsters emerged at the White House this week with the most deranged, farcical tragi-comedy in Middle East history, it was difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.

The 80-page “peace” plan from the White House contained 56 references to “Vision” in its first 60 pages – and yes, with a capital V on each occasion to suggest, I guess, that this “deal of the century” was a supernatural revelation. It was not, though it might have been written by a super-Israeli.

It said goodbye to Palestinian refugees – the famous/infamous “right of return” and all who now rot in the camps of the Middle East; farewell to the old city of Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital; adieu to UNRWA, the UN relief agency. But it welcomed a permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the total annexation of almost every Jewish colony built there against all international law.

It’s a given, of course – and has been for days – that this nonsense might just cast some magic dust over the travails of the leaders of America and Israel. As the two rogues, Donald Trump under impeachment and Benjamin Netanyahu charged with corruption, grinned to the applause of their supporters in Washington, it became clear at once that this mendacious document – containing absurdity, burlesque and dreary banality in about equal measure – destroyed forever any hope of an independent Palestinian state of any kind. That’s not what it said, but you only had to glance at the verbiage – where Israel’s occupation, the longest in modern history, was described as a “security footprint” and where the Oslo accord was trashed as an agreement which produced “waves of terror and violence”.

Truly, all must read these 80 pages. And every reader should go through them twice, in case, first time round, they missed some extra egregious indignity inflicted upon the Palestinians.
Palestinian protests against President Trump's Middle East peace plan

The document wasn’t just a gift to Israel. It embodied every Israeli demand ever made to Washington (plus a few more) and effectively destroyed every effort made by the United Nations Security Council; every UN resolution on Israeli withdrawal; every effort of the EU and the Quartet on the Middle East to produce a just and fair resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli war.

In short, Israel will – under this wretched “deal”, doomed though it was within seconds – get all of Jerusalem forever, most of the West Bank, own almost every Jewish colony in occupied land and dominate a disarmed, truncated, neutered Palestinian people who must promise to call Israel the “nation state of the Jewish people” (albeit almost 21 per cent of its people are Arabs), censor its own schoolbooks, arrest and interrogate anyone daring to oppose the Israeli occupier, and who will have a cluster of villages outside Jerusalem’s walls to call a capital.

True, this is a unique and historic document that the Trump menagerie (especially son-in-law Jared Kushner) has produced, since its belief that the Palestinians would dream of accepting such a deranged, farcical set of political demands is without precedent in the western world. But when should we journalists take all the stops out, I asked myself when I’d finished reading the 56 “Visions” – there are others, by the way, in lower case, and several “missions” – and the list of prohibitions imposed upon the Palestinians? These included, we should note, the instruction that “the State of Palestine may not join any international organisation if such membership would contradict commitments of the State of Palestine to demilitarisation and cessation of political and judicial warfare against the State of Israel”. So goodbye as well to the protection of the International Criminal Court.

Some of my colleagues lapsed into apoplexy, like Marwan Bishara of Al Jazeera. Farce, fraud, fury, surrealistic, opportunistic, populist and cynical. He used all these descriptions – but surely he was mincing his words. Gideon Levy, my hero from the Israeli daily Haaretz, was not so apoplectic. He was apocalyptic. It was “the final nail in the coffin of that walking corpse known as the two-state solution”, he wrote, and created a reality “in which international law, the resolutions of the international community and especially international institutions are meaningless”.

There is no Palestinian state, quoth Levy, and there never will be. It’s got to be one democracy between the Jordan and the Mediterranean – equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians – or Israel is going to be an apartheid state. Trump had created “a world in which the US president’s son-in-law is more powerful than the UN General Assembly. If the settlements are permitted, everything is permitted.” Quite so.

But do we writers and journalists and “experts” and analysts still possess the tools to deal with this mumbo-jumbo? Is this not a moment – not just the end of morality, justice, integrity, dignity – to ask an ever-more important question: when will journalists have to stop taking this stuff (and themselves) seriously? Merely to write about this Trump ballyhoo as if it is real or workable or even discussable is somehow demeaning, humiliating, preposterous. Not just for media rabbits, but for those who must suffer the consequences of this dreadful document; the Palestinians and all who have faithfully supported their perfectly reasonable demands for freedom and fairness.

Watch more
Israelis don’t want to be America’s pawns in the Middle East any more

I realised a few hours after reading it that, for every anti-Israel Muslim who believes in the fantastical, crazed verbiage of the “Zionist conspiracy”, these 80 pages of White House notepaper would only reinforce those mind-boggling beliefs. In cases like this, perhaps we should invite our comedians to become reporters. Or ask our cartoonists to write the story. Or maybe I should turn to that fine old Ripley’s Believe It or Not feature to get the message across. Believe it Or Not: a US president gave a foreign power the right to eternally occupy someone else’s land. To me, that captures the story in 15 words.

But let’s not forget that in return for their abject surrender, the Palestinians will get cash, cash and more cash – millions of greenies set out in pages of graphs and funding plans, and “fast-track” tourism (that phrase is actually used in the document) and massive investment, “social betterment” (sic), “self-determination” (sic again, I guess), and “a path to a dignified national life, respect, security and economic opportunity…”.

And didn’t our Boris Johnson tell Trump it was “a positive step forwards”? And didn’t our Dominic Raab call it “a serious proposal” worthy of “genuine and fair consideration”?

Believe it or not, indeed.