Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Former White House aides speculate 'leverage' was part of the motivation for Trump's stolen documents

The stolen government documents discovered at Donald Trump's golf course Mar-a-Lago continue to prompt questions about the former president's motivations for stealing the information.

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, former communications director and chief of staff to the first lady, Stephanie Grisham said that she's not surprised that all of the folders were mixed in with mementos and gifts.

"That is exactly what his filing system was," she explained. "It was just boxes of things randomly placed together. When I saw the picture, though, and I saw the sheer volume of classified materials and now we're hearing some could be missing, I just don't know how that amount could be put in those boxes and not be seen and not be noticed."

It was one of the pieces of information that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin spoke to the FBI about the stolen documents, the New York Times reported last month. They were both nominated by Trump to serve as the representatives to deal with the National Archives for the transition ahead of Jan. 20, 2021. Mark Meadows was another.

The National Archives knew that there were documents "lingering" in the White House residence as Trump was packed to move out. Given those men were tasked with returning the documents, it's likely one of the main reasons that Cipollone and Philbin have been so forthcoming with the Justice Department about their handling in the final weeks. Trump ally Kash Patel also told right-wing streaming channels that the act of taking the documents to the residence from the Oval Office "declassified" them. Trump also claimed that he had a "standing order" to declassify anything he wanted. Both claims are false.

Patel also said at one point that he aimed to post the documents on his personal website.

"My thought is, as Alyssa [Farrah Griffin] said earlier, is I think it's some kind of leverage," Grisham told CNN on Sunday. "I do believe that some of it he thinks was cool. And I do think he thinks he owns it, which he did not. And the fact he did not give things back when asked over and over over the course of a year, I think there's something behind it. But as Alyssa also said, it's the million-dollar question to know exactly what it was."

Farrah Griffin said that the Justice Department has an obligation to the American people to explain some of the details about what was in the documents, whether they were nuclear related or military equipment as well as letters from leaders or intelligence on world leaders. It was revealed last week that Trump had intelligence on the love life of French President Emmanuel Macron.

Former Homeland Security aide to Mike Pence, Olivia Troye explained that had she done what Trump did she would be in jail.

"I would be answering questions afterwards, to be honest," she said about the seriousness the national security takes classified information. "Honestly, even when finding classified information outside of where it should be stored, there was a responsibility to actually report that, to turn it in and self-report. That is how seriously we take this. So, if anything like this were to be the case, anyone would be walked out. I saw people get walked out of the Pentagon for much less, you know, greater efforts like this. I mean, it is — it is mind-blowing to think about the fact that these documents were down there."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

MAGA Republican fascists are indeed a danger to democracy.

MAGA Republican groups go from attacking teachers and librarians to target children's hospitals: expert warns



MAGA Republicans have spent the last two years going after teachers and librarians for teaching about slavery or highlighting Black leaders like Marin Luther King, Jr. and Harriet Tubman.

Speaking to MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan, reporter Brandy Zadrozny explained that the recent bomb threats called into Boston Children's Hospital are just more of the same from the right-wing that has been going after anyone helping to treat transgender children. The Washington Post reported that a right-wing digital group is behind attacks on a Washington, D.C. children's hospital. To make matters worse, social media sites are allowing it to continue.

"Children’s hospitals across the U.S. are facing growing threats of violence, driven by an online anti-LGBTQ campaign attacking the facilities for providing care to transgender kids and teens," the Post reported.

Zadrozny said that this is the next step for MAGA Republicans, who she believes are setting their sights on attacking doctors and hospitals.

"Like you said, this is an ongoing way of anti-LGBTQ sentiment, the far-right and from the loudest conservatives on Twitter," she explained. "And that sentiment has hit libraries. We've seen librarians targeted. Schools, we've seen kindergarten teachers, and elementary school teachers targeted. And now, we're heading to children's hospitals. Literally, these folks have doctors, librarians, school teachers in their target."

She explained that Twitter suspended "Libs of TikTok" for their policy against threats of violence and harassment, but after a week the group is back targeting specific teachers with harassment. Meanwhile, TikTok is allowing threats of violence to grow on it's platform despite claiming they don't allow "hateful behavior" on the platform.

Zadrozny explained that the right-wing account thinks that teachers are somehow indoctrinating children to be gay, after Gov. Ron DeSantis's (R-FL) so-called "don't say gay" legislation.

"You know, here's the problem, it's that none of these tech companies have a north star when it comes to moderation, right? This is violence. This is harassment. It's clear what these accounts are doing," she explained. "But with their policies, they literally have to wait until somebody gets hurt or killed to say, 'oh, this is the promotion of violence.' Just like we saw with Jan. 6th. Nothing got Donald Trump kicked off the platform until something dangerous, until violence actually happened. And by then, it's too late. At this point, the way that we've built social media, it's already been weaponized. And so, even kicking 'Libs of TikTok' off now would hardly really do anything. They could still target on another social media platform or another person who just would come up and take 'Libs of TikTok's place.' It happens all the time. I don't actually see a way out of it."

On Thursday, President Joe Biden sounded the alarm about the right being filled with violence and urged Americans to stand up against movements like these that incite violence.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Democracy under threat from MAGA Republicans.

According to new CBS polling 72% of Americans say our Democracy is threatened.

[Rick Plant]

Why did Trump choose to showcase a Nazi sympathizer as Jan. 6 prisoner at Pennsylvania rally: CNN reporter asks



Among the people who spoke at Donald Trump's rally on SaPersonay was a woman named Cynthia, who spoke out on the plight of her nephew who attended the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. It turns out, however, her nephew is a Nazi sympathizer. The larger question, however, is how he became Trump's poster-boy at the rally.

Speaking about Cynthia Hughes, CNN's Zachary Cohen told Jim Acosta that she was leaving out a lot of details in her speech to Pennsylvania. At the same time, there were plenty of Jan. 6 attackers who could have been highlighted at the event that were everyday people who were caught up in the crowd and who got light sentences. That isn't who this was.

"He went to the nation's capitol to hear his president speak," Hughs told the crowd. "He dressed in a suit and tie and his favorite hat. Tim wanted to take part in what he thought was going to be a historical event. Instead, he witnessed a horror show."

Tim Cusanelli is the nephew she was talking about. He once explained that "Hitler should've finished the job." CNN reported over the weekend that Cusanelli faced an internal Navy probe, which found 34 of his colleagues believed he held "extremist or radical views pertaining to the Jewish people, minorities and women." His phone had racist memes using the N-word on his phone. He also told an FBI informant that he was hoping for a "civil war."

"Cynthia Hughes used her time at this high profile Trump rally to talk about her nephew who, as she says, has been in jail for nearly two years now but holds him up as sort of a poster child for Jan. 6th related injustice. But in reality, the Justice Department has argued that he is a Nazi sympathizer and somebody who the judge, in this case, a Trump appointee was so concerned that his violent neo-Nazi rhetoric would turn from words into violence, that's why the judge decided to keep him in jail while his court process played out," explained Cohen.

He went on to explain that Cusanelli's defense "was that he didn't know Congress met at the Capitol. Clearly, the jury did not buy that. But I think the bigger picture here you got to look at the fact that there is a ton of Jan. 6th defendants that the former president could have chosen from in terms of featuring them to defend or at least try to draw sympathy for people who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6th and this was the case that ultimately took center stage during this rally."

See the discussion below:

[Rick Plant]

President Biden is 100% correct when he said MAGA Republicans are a threat to our democracy.

Ex-FBI official explains why he's more worried now than when he was chasing Al Qaeda and ISIS



Former CIA and FBI official Phil Mudd revealed that he no longer works in the intelligence community, but he's still concerned about threats against his life.

While working at the FBI, Mudd served as the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorism Center during the years after Sept. 11. He's written two books on the US's hunt for Al Qaeda terrorists and was on the front lines of the attempts to bring down those who aligned with the group.

Speaking to PBS in 2005, Mudd said, "we would be foolish to assume that there are not people here who either act like Al Qaeda or who want to act like Al Qaeda, who see the world with the same vision Al Qaeda has. ... And again, it would be foolish for us to think they're not here."

Yet, 17 years later, Mudd is worried again, but this time, it's radical right-wing, Republican terrorists from home-grown MAGA cells.

"It makes me nervous. In some ways, I'm glad to be out," Mudd told CNN's Jim Acosta on Sunday. "You're talking about the professional part of this. How do you conduct an investigation with a former president vilifying the FBI? But in a personal level, remember people who are in the service have to go home to a spouse, or a girlfriend or family, including children, and say we're going into a midterm election cycle with there are election deniers who will listen to the president. And maybe more significantly into a 2024 election cycle when it's conceivable, obviously, that you could once again have President Biden versus President Trump. If you have public information, for example, information about your home address, information on social media, and you're an FBI agent, what would you think, Jim?"

He continued, saying that during the days that he was at the FBI and the CIA "chasing ISIS and Al Qaeda. And let me close with this, I would be more concerned about going to my home residence today than I was when I was in the papers with stories about chasing Al Qaeda and ISIS. I don't know how to make it clearer. You have to be concerned about personal security.

"It is that bad?" asked Acosta.

"Yeah," Mudd said frankly.

See the full conversation below:

Trump shouldn't 'be above the law' for taking top secret docs: former admin official



According to CNN contributor Alyssah Farah Griffin -- who served as Donald Trump's White House Director of Strategic Communications -- her former boss should be held to account for taking top secret documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort and leaving them sitting around.

Sitting on a panel with fellow Trump administration aides Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye -- all of whom expressed disgust with the former president's actions -- Farah Griffin asserted there should not be a separate set of rules for the former president.

Agreeing with former attorney general Bill Barr, who said on Fox News that the DOJ had every right to search the Florida resort for stolen documents, Farah Griffin adamantly claimed Trump is "not above the law."

"Every one of us, I believe, held a security clearance in government," she began. "There are very specific protocols to even handle these documents. If you physically take them out of a building, you need a certified carry card, you need a lead-covered bag so it can evade x-rays."

"He [Trump] has them co-located with his Time magazine covers at a country club in Florida that's been a target for espionage," she exclaimed. "There is no way that this is acceptable if you don't believe in a two-tiered system of justice where a former president is above the law. And I would just note, you know, Trump rallied last night in Pennsylvania and it descended into a 'lock her up' chant about Hillary Clinton."

"The reason Republicans like myself asked for her to be investigated was mishandling of classified information -- exactly what Donald Trump is doing in Mar-a-Lago," she added.

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

To be clear, Trump didn't misspeak on SaPersonay night. He insisted that "Zuckerberg visited him at the White House last week" and informed Trump that "he's #1 on Facebook."

Trump has been kicked off from Facebook for a long time.

Trump's entire story on SaPersonay is a hallucination of some kind. He's either hopped up on some drugs or his dementia is getting worse.

Watch the video in the Twitter link below to see this mess. Donnie is out of his mind!


Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski

He is high as a kite. He said Zuckerberg visited him at the WH last week. Dude is flying.

Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1566220480905895940

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1566241214600564738

[Rick Plant]

Biden Laid the Trap. Trump Walked Into It.

At his Pennsylvania rally, the former president gave exactly the narcissistic display his Democratic nemesis tried to provoke.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/trump-pennsylvania-rally-republicans/671344/

[Rick Plant]

MAGA Republicans keep proving they are anti American. How can you not "notice" that large anti American flag?

A lame excuse by Hernandez after he got caught and received severe backlash.

These right wing militias are the MAGA Republican base and they were at the Capitol on January 6th rioting and attempting to overthrow the government.

President Biden is right about MAGA Republicans being a danger to democracy.       


Michigan GOP candidate deletes photo of him standing in front of anti-government militia's flag



The Republican candidate for Michigan's lieutenant governor is apologizing after he posted a photo to Twitter showing him in front of a flag associated with an anti-government militia, Fox 2 Detroit reports.

Shane Hernandez was blasted by Michigan Democrats after posting the photo on social media.

"As Michiganders spend their holiday weekend celebrating the freedoms earned by American workers, Shane Hernandez proudly stood by the anti-government, extremist Three Percenters flag. His shameful support for the anti-American militia fits right in with Tudor Dixon’s dangerous, wrong-for-Michigan agenda to slash funding for law enforcement and undermine democracy," the party said in a statement.

In response, Hernandez "disavowed" the Three Percenters militia group's flag and "any such sentiments" it's affiliated with.

"Regarding my last post, I bought 8oz of honey from a small business owner, and he wanted to take a picture with me at his booth," Hernandez wrote on Twitter. "When I posted the picture, I did not notice the flag in the background."

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the group's "perceptions of tyranny emanate from the radical conspiracy theories and paranoia rooted in the decades-old antigovernment extremist movement, and have repeatedly led to violence against America’s law enforcement, citizens and residents."

Hernandez is Tudor Dixon's running mate and was nominated to be the Republican lieutenant governor candidate in August.

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/republican-candidate-for-lieutenant-governor-deletes-post-with-extremist-militia-flag