Republicans are 'an existential threat' to democracy because they are fooled by their own lies: columnist

Matthew Chapman
July 06, 2021


President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence walk with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senator Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Tuesday, March 10, 2020, upon their arrival to the U.S. Capitol for a Senate Republican policy lunch. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)

On Tuesday, writing for the anti-Trump conservative site The Bulwark, columnist and Iranian-born asylum seeker Shay Khatiri broke down how Republicans are no longer just lying about democracy and elections — they are convincing themselves their own lies are true.

"A famous German once said, 'if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,'"*** wrote Khatiri. "The case of Trump, his defenders in Congress, and their allies in conservative media is different. They told big enough lies, and repeated them so often, that they came to believe their own falsehoods."

Johnson has been one of the biggest apologists for the Capitol rioters, even suggesting their behavior wasn't violent.

One of the most blatant examples, noted Khatiri, is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has admitted he believes the left is such a threat to America that he will push Trump's "big lie" about the election or even align himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop them.

"Eliot Cohen reminds his students that the danger is not from politicians who lie. All politicians tell lies from time to time, some venal and some mortal. Your alarms should go off, however, when the politicians convince themselves that their lies are true to relieve their consciences from the guilt of lying. Because when that happens, they will be able to use the lie to justify anything, be it foolish, or self-serving, or wicked," wrote Khatiri. "Today Republicans have convinced themselves that their big lie about the existential threat of the Democratic party is true, and so they have justified a great many actions which are, at best, ignoble. They believe their own lie so deeply that they have become an existential threat to the republic themselves."

You can read more here.

*** DR. JOSEPH GOBBELS 

LOSERS VS WINNERS

Sean Spicer and far right media attack US Women’s Soccer Team

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
July 06, 2021


Sean Spicer speaks to Fox News (screen grab)


Former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer amplified a false claim exploding on conservative social media Monday evening, retweeting a video wrongly claiming members of the U.S. National Women's Soccer Team "turned their backs on 98-year old World War II veteran Pete DuPré" as he "played the National Anthem on his harmonica."

"Embarrassing and disrespectful," Spicer tweeted. "If you are embarrassed to be an American then don't play on the US team - there are plenty of people ready to take your place."

Far right wing media outlets also exploded with stories. The Daily Caller led the rabid attack with a headline that read: "U.S. Soccer Players Turn Away From National Anthem Played By WWII Veteran."

Breitbart, The Post Millennial, NewsMax, and Russian government website RT all published similar reports.

Fox News Tuesday morning jumped on board, but with a headline that read: "US Soccer denies women's team disrespected WWII veteran before send-off match."

The Daily Caller later updated their false story to read: "US Soccer Federation Says Players Weren't Protesting After Video Of National Anthem Line-Up Causes Controversy."

And unable to accept reality, Town Hall early Tuesday ran with this: "Stay Classy, Ladies: Did Some Members of the USWNT Turn Their Backs on a 98-Year-Old WWII Veteran?"

The answer is a resounding no – but if they had they absolutely would have been exercising their First Amendment rights to do so.

Video from ESPN shows several team members facing forward, and some turned facing away from Pete DuPré but they are facing the American flag, which protocol calls for. Some of those facing the flag clearly have their hands on their hearts, others bowed their heads in respect.

The U.S. Soccer communications team was forced to put out a statement correcting the right wing's false claims.

Here's video of them doing just that:

 One of the players also pushed back against the false reports:

No one, from Sean Spicer to any of the right wing media, has apologized to the players for baselessly attacking them. But they all maintain their "patriotism."

'Sponsored by Sharpie': Fox News brutally mocked as the network prepares to debut new weather channel

Matthew Chapman
July 06, 2021

CNN screenshot

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Fox News is moving ahead with plans to produce its own dedicated weather channel.

"Later this year, Rupert Murdoch is set to debut Fox Weather, a 24-hour streaming channel that promises to do for 7-day forecasts what Fox has done for American politics, financial news and sports," reported Michael Grynbaum. "Amid a waning appetite for political news in the post-Trump era, media executives are realizing that demand for weather updates is ubiquitous — and for an increasing swath of the country, a matter of urgent concern. In the past week alone, temperatures in the Pacific Northwest broke records, wildfires burned in Colorado, and Tropical Storm Elsa strengthened into a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean."

The news was greeted with mockery from commenters on social media, many of whom anticipated that Fox Weather could carry the signature right-wing bias of national Fox networks. Some noted the irony given Fox has long spread climate denial, and others wondered whether the network would support political alterations of the weather, like when former President Donald Trump infamously changed a hurricane map with a Sharpie

.

'Get the hell out of our great country': Marjorie Taylor Greene says she speaks 

for all of (WHITE) America in rage-filled rant

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
July 06, 2021

Marjorie Taylor Greene (Screen Grab)

In an Independence Holiday Monday evening rant Georgia Republican QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, an anti-Semitic, conspiracy-theory promoting, anti-vaxxer, anti-masker, anti-science, anti-LGBTQ, "Big Lie" pusher and white supremacy-purveyor served up a lengthy diatribe in which she claimed to speak for the American people in "a message from America to the Swamp."

Green kicks off her rant by attacking the mainstream media, including Fox News, saying, "People have stopped watching the news [because] they are sick & tired of the fake news media, including Fox News. People feel like the mainstream media is the most destructive dividing force in our country. They know the media only reports what they want you to see. It's sad."

She parrots recent news stories saying Republicans will attack Democrats on crime, defunding the police, and the border – most of which are essentially right wing media click bait that bear, for the most part, little resemblance to reality.

According to Greene, racism is over:

Clearly, homophobia and transphobia are not only not over, she is encouraging anti-LGBTQ hate:

While she accuses Democrats of hating America because we are working to help America live up to its ideals and because we don't all drive around with American flags on our cars.

Doing Donald Trump's dirty work Greene again suggests the 2020 election was stolen, and appears to invoke a Rasmussen poll that claims 51% of all voters think there was sufficient fraud to move the election to Joe Biden – despite countless studies and lawsuits and reports from the Trump administration definitively finding there was no significant fraud.

Many Republican voters want the 2020 election "fixed before '22 & even democrat voters admit there was fraud with absentee ballots," she claims.

But possibly the most dangerous part of her diatribe is this anti-mask, anti-vaxx science denying support of herd immunity – which could lead to yet another pandemic wave in some parts of the country – primarily the parts she draws her support from.

Greene goes on to attack U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in yet another disturbing look into her AOC obsession. She also goes after Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Ilhan Omar and "the Progressive Squad aka Communists":

Here's how Greene concluded her rant:

And here's a video she posted on July 4th. Notice anything?

  

444444444444444444444444444444444

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM

Trump's 'big lie' was enabled by years of Americans being 'force fed' ​lies from religion: columnist​

Matthew Chapman
July 06, 2021

www.rawstory.com
On Tuesday, writing for The Daily Beast, columnist David Rothkopf outlined how American culture, and in particular religion, primed Trump supporters from birth to embrace the former president's "big lie" that the election was stolen from them.

"One of the key reasons we buy into so many small lies is that we have been force fed so many big ones. I mean really big ones. I mean ones that make the current Big Lie look like one of those low-calorie snacks that is actually a high-calorie treat shrunk to a smaller size and repackaged," wrote Rothkopf. "Many of these lies were created out of necessity. Life is finite. (OK, I'm sorry. It is. Take a deep breath if you need to and then continue reading.) ... According to a 2011 poll from the Associated Press, nearly eight out of 10 Americans believe in the existence of angels and a 2015 poll showed 72 percent of Americans believe in Heaven and 58 percent believe in the existence of Hell."

Large swathes of the population appear to be abandoning organized religion, but it remains a highly influential force in American politics. At this point, even faith leaders are having a hard time trying to properly educate their congregants against falsehoods like QAnon and anti-vaccine propaganda.
Chris Matthews talks to Raw Story: Who would you bet on in 2024, Trump or Kamala?

Making the problem worse, noted Rothkopf, is that lies both religious and secular are enforced by social structures that make it difficult to push back on them.

"All these lies are aided and abetted by the fact that simply believing in what you are told to believe is much easier than actually figuring out the truth," wrote Rothkopf. "What is more, if your family and friends believe in a lie, challenging that lie might make you an outcast, might alienate those with whom you have or wish to have a bond. With the advent of social media, where like-minded friends become 'editors' and select the news their followers see, lies spread among audiences inclined to believe and thereby endorse them. We live in an age of media 'echo-systems', ecosystems that reinforce disinformation spreading it from dubious sources like QAnon to Facebook to TV propaganda networks to you."

You can read more here.

PAYWALL

Fox News is just as much to blame for the Jan. 6 insurrection as Trump: columnist

Travis Gettys
July 06, 2021

DonaldTrump and Lou Dobbs

Former president Donald Trump was impeached for an unprecedented second time for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection with his election lies, but none of that could have happened without Fox News.

The ex-president started stoking the violence to come hours after polls closed Nov. 3, when he complained that any early leads that evaporated as more votes were counted could only be explained by fraud -- and both Trump and his allies pushed that false narrative on Fox News and later in losing court battles, reported the Washington Post.

"Trump could have come out that night and offered a cautious wait-and-see to the results, but he chose not to," wrote Post columnist Philip Bump. "Two months and three days later, his supporters, animated by that decision, stormed the Capitol and sought to confront legislators or Vice President Mike Pence."

But Fox News shares much of the blame for that violent assault by repeatedly promoting the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the Capitol breach, and by inviting guests on to repeatedly push Trump's lies about his election loss and even coordinating with them to push the dishonest claims.

"NPR obtained a memo delineating an appearance by Republican Party chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, including how the pair would discuss the fraud claims that McDaniel and the GOP were elevating on Trump's behalf," Bump wrote. "Fox aired anonymous claims about explicit voter fraud, claims that were never substantiated in any credible way. Host Tucker Carlson raised claims about dead people voting — only to have to backtrack when a local news station spoke with several of the 'dead' voters. Host Maria Bartiromo offered extensive airtime for Trump to spread dishonest claims, offering only nods of her head in response."

Trump got impeached and Fox News has been sued by Dominion Voting Systems over the election lies it broadcast.

"Fox — and in particular Fox Business host Lou Dobbs — earned their place among Dominion's targets," Bump wrote. "On Nov. 21, Dobbs claimed that what had occurred a few weeks prior was 'a cyberattack on our election, those voting machines and software,' an obviously indefensible claim. It was also one of his last; the network axed him in early February."

Before he was shown the door, Dobbs was among the Fox News and Fox Business personalities who urged viewers to descend on the Capitol to pressure lawmakers not to certify Joe Biden's electoral win right up until the night before the insurrection.

"Trump planted the seed, but a lot of people had or developed a vested interest in its germination," Bump wrote. "It would have been far simpler to tell the truth about the election, even if it was not easier to do so and even if the payoff would have been far smaller. But for varying reasons, a lot of folks — Trump, Republicans, Fox News, others on the right — invested heavily in the idea that some wrong had occurred that demanded a correction. Jan. 6 was the result."

Fascists March In, Get Chased Out Of Philadelphia
Screenshot/Twitter,@mgouldwartofsky
By Matt Shuham
TPM
July 5, 2021 

Members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marched in Philadelphia Saturday night, leading to scuffles with bystanders and, at one point, a quick retreat into rental box trucks.

Patriot Front is known for these sorts of events: Members mask up, scurry into town, set off some smoke bombs, wave flags bearing fascist symbols and then scurry away.

But theirs plans in Philadelphia were interrupted by heckling and the occasional shove from residents.

Photos from The Philadelphia Inquirer showed the group being confronted by locals and retreating to two rental box trucks, and separately exiting the trucks with their hands up after being stopped, and then briefly detained, by police. (Penske, the rental truck company the white supremacists were seen using, was none too happy about the situation.) The Inquirer reported that the men were searched by police and then released.

Law enforcement told ABC affiliate WPVI that none of the group were from Philadelphia.

“An NBC10 photographer had his cellphone taken from him by members of the group, before recovering it,” Local NBC affiliate WCAU reported.

“They started engaging with citizens of Philadelphia, who were none too happy about some of the things they were saying,” Philadelphia Police Office Michael Crum told WPVI. “Apparently, these males felt threatened, and at one point, somebody in their crowd threw a type of what we believe is a smoke bomb, to cover their retreat, and they literally ran away from the people of Philadelphia.”

Pictures and video from the scene showed the group receiving a warm welcome from the City of Brotherly Love.

Trump Demanding Release of Jan 6 Insurrectionists

SARASOTA, FL - JULY 03: Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves after a rally on July 3, 2021 in Sarasota, Florida. Co-sponsored by the Republican Party of Florida, the rally marks Trump's further support of the MAGA

By Josh Marshal

TPM
July 6, 2021 

Yesterday I noted ex-President Trump’s vainglorious recital of events at his two recent rallies in Ohio and Florida. But there were a string of comments he made at his Sarasota, Florida rally that I only learned about after the fact. They are highly important going forward and particularly in the context of the 2022 election. The comments aren’t terribly surprising coming from Trump. They’re perhaps implicit in things he’s said before. But they represent something new. In short, he now seems to be demanding the release of the various insurrectionists facing charges for storming the Capitol on January 6th. “How come so many people are still in jail over Jan. 6?” he asked the crowd.

He also went further and began to suggest or demand (the ambiguity is a central feature of all Trump incitement) the lynching of the Capitol Police officer who shot insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt.

“By the way, who shot Ashli Babbitt? Who shot Ashli Babbitt? We all saw the hand. We saw the gun … Now they don’t want to give the name, but people know the name. People know where he came from. Now if that were on the other side, the person who did the shooting would be strung up and hung. Now they don’t want to give the name. Who shot Ashli Babbitt? It’s got to be released.”

Making a martyr of Babbitt, who was shot trying to rush the Speaker’s Lobby while members of Congress were being evacuated, has become a staple on the far-right since January 6th. Rep. Paul Gosar, who has become notorious for his work with various white supremacist advocates, claimed Babbitt had been “executed” by an officer who had been “lying in wait” for her while questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Trump says all sorts of wild things. Given the response he got, it seems highly likely this will become a staple of his rally speeches going forward. But what we can see from these comments is that he is focusing on the release of arrested insurrectionists and retribution against the unnamed shooter as leverage points to organize and maintain his hold on the GOP.

Total and explicit fealty to Donald Trump remains a sine qua non for participation in GOP politics, as JD Vance’s abject apology over the weekend makes clear. But there’s a different contest for control going beneath this unity. Republican leaders want to fight what we might call a “traditional” culture war campaign for the mid-term elections — BLM, the crime spike, the “border crisis,” Critical Race Theory along with spending, taxes and debt cued up in case the economy is weak in the fall of 2022. This overlaps with Trump’s rhetoric and vice versa.

Certainly grassroots Republicans and new candidates running for office as Republicans are solidly behind the Big Lie. But there’s an important difference in emphasis. Trump wants to re-litigate the 2020 election and get payback to the various forces and persons he feels betrayed him. That means among other things constant attacks on “RINOs,” the GOP in general, Mitch McConnell and various others who have been insufficiently loyal. Needless to say this isn’t welcome ground for McConnell or the various Republicans on Trump’s enemies list. But more generally it is at best divisive in the context of GOP politics. The whole point of off year or midterm elections is that the out party gets united and pumped because whatever their divisions they can all agree that they hate what the governing party is doing. In a sense it becomes a replay of the 2020/21 Georgia Senate races in which litigating the Big Lie and Trump’s grievances against fellow Republicans pushed to the center of the story and possibly led to twin GOP defeats.

More broadly Trump is leading the way in the slow, creeping GOP embrace of the January 6th insurrection. Last week Kevin McCarthy threatened to revoke the committee assignments of any Republican member who agreed to sit on the Jan 6th investigative committee. Mainstream Republicans aren’t yet endorsing the insurrection. And they are quick to take the safe harbor of insisting that those who committed specific crimes should certainly be prosecuted. They generally portray it as not ideal but the kind of things your over-eager friends do. Not ideal but certainly understandable and a product of a salutary enthusiasm. Trump wants to go further. He clearly wants the insurrectionists vindicated. He wants their prosecutions to stop. He rightly sees that their actions cannot be separated from the Big Lie. And that’s what he wants the 2022 election to be about.

Six Months After Jan. 6, Paul Gosar Demands Charges Against Cop Who Shot Ashli Babbitt

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) attends a House Oversight and Reform Committee business meeting on January 29, 2019. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

By Josh Kovensky
TPM
July 6, 2021 1:0

Days after former president Trump demanded to know the name of the police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt during the Capitol insurrection, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) cheered and welcomed the support for the far-right cause célèbre.

“Six months ago today, Ashli Babbitt, a 110-pound woman with nothing in her hands, not a rock, not a stick or a bat, was shot dead by a still unknown Capitol Hill police officer,” reads a press release issued by Gosar’s office. “And now President Trump has joined me in seeking the truth.”

Gosar has taken a lead role in stoking rage on the right-wing fringe about Babbitt’s death. A Capitol police officer shot and and killed Babbitt on Jan. 6 as she, backed up by a mob of rioters, climbed through a doorway into the House Speaker’s Gallery, where members of Congress were evacuating.

A DOJ inquiry did not find evidence to support charges against the officer; Babbitt’s family have sued D.C. for records on the officer.

But Gosar, who has ties to the far-right, has taken a lead role in pushing the idea that the federal government “executed” Babbitt. When DOJ officials have come before the House Oversight Committee, on which Gosar sits, to testify about Jan. 6, Gosar has used it as an opportunity to ask who “executed” Babbitt.

In the statement, Gosar restated his mantra of the past few months, demanding to know the identity of the officer who killed Babbitt while claiming the existence of a shadowy “effort to cover up the full circumstances of this homicide and the American people won’t stand for it.”

He once again referred to Babbitt’s death as an “execution,” saying that “we do not allow the execution of citizens by street ‘justice’ in our country.”

He went on to ask in the statement “why have no charges been brought against the shooter for negligent homicide or more?”