Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

A Las Vegas paper just published a stunning editorial: 'We are struggling to identify' Republicans 'who are not an active threat' to democracy



On Tuesday, May 17, the Big Lie and the “Stop the Steal” movement enjoyed a major victory when Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano — a far-right Christian nationalist and QAnon ally — won the 2022 GOP gubernatorial nomination in the Keystone State. Mastriano has been a forceful supporter of the claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, but he is hardly alone in that regard. From Pennsylvania to the southwestern swing state of Nevada, the Big Lie has become a litmus test in the Trumpified GOP — and the Las Vegas Sun’s editorial board, in a biting editorial published on May 15, poses the question: Are there any Republicans left who are willing to stand up for democracy?

The answer to that question is that yes, some right-wing Republicans are willing to aggressively stand up for democracy — in the U.S. House of Representatives, for example, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois have been blistering critics of the Big Lie. But Kinzinger isn’t seeking reelection, and Cheney will be gone from the House in 2023 if she loses a GOP congressional primary in Wyoming. Cheney and Kinzinger are the exception, not the norm, in the MAGA-oriented, increasingly authoritarian GOP of 2022.

The Sun’s editorial board focuses heavily on Nevada politics, but its message is relevant whether one lives in Nevada, Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida or Maine.

“No one knows better than Nevadans when it’s time to put our cards on the table,” the Sun’s editorial board writes. “The editorial board, and Nevadans as a whole, are facing an agonizing problem. We have endorsed Republicans in the past and might do so again in the future. Yet as we survey the field of Republican candidates across the state, we are struggling to identify those who are not an active threat to American democracy or the institutions of government that have sustained our republic for 250 years. Those are the stakes here for the GOP. For Nevada. For our voters.”

The Sun’s editorial board goes on to describe the “violent insurrection” of January 6, 2021 and the vicious assault on the U.S. Capitol Building as “one of the darkest days in U.S. history” — arguing that the Big Lie is just as toxic now as it was then.

“Since the insurrection,” the Sun’s editorial board warns, “Republican leadership across the nation has worked to disenfranchise voters, allow themselves to defy the will of voters outright and to allow partisan interference in the vote count…. (Nevada) gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert was actually at the Capitol that day, spinning unfounded conspiracy theories about election fraud and accusing those Republicans who believe the vote was legitimate of being ‘RINOs (Republicans in Name Only)’ who should be removed from the party.”

The editorial board continues, “(Gilbert) didn’t think that those who vandalized the halls of our Capitol or threatened police officers should be tossed out; he cheered them on. And he’s not alone…. As we wrote last October, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo disgraced himself by not condemning the violent right-wing groups that have been welcomed into the Nevada GOP, leaving Southern Nevadans to wonder whether their sheriff will protect and serve everyone in our community regardless of political persuasion.”

Nevada’s Republican and Democratic primaries will be held on June 14.

“Of the five leading Republican candidates for the governorship of Nevada, every one of them has gone on record as both supporting and contributing to the Big Lie,” the Sun’s editorial board laments. “In doing so, they have all made a choice to subvert our democracy, undermine the integrity of our elections, and ignore the Constitution of the United States. Will GOP leaders stand up for the rule of law and free and fair elections by rejecting autocracy and lies? Or will they continue to debase themselves and their formerly great party by kneeling to their unhinged demigod, Donald Trump, and his dreams of authoritarianism?”

https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2022/may/15/in-search-of-republican-candidates-willing-to-stan/

[Rick Plant]

Liz Cheney says Republican leadership has ‘enabled white supremacy’

Her scathing tweet may have targeted Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who has complained of immigrants replacing white voters



Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney has accused her Republican party leadership of enabling “white nationalism, white supremacy, and antisemitism”, in a scathing message after the racist massacre at a grocery store in Buffalo.

Cheney, who was removed from her position as the No 3 House Republican last year after she joined the panel investigating the 6 January Capitol attack, urged party leaders in a tweet to “renounce and reject these views and those who hold them”.

The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.

https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1526159124840558592

Her remarks were made amid increasing scrutiny of Republican figures who have embraced the racist “great replacement theory” the Buffalo killer is said to have cited in a manifesto he used to justify the murders.

The far-right ideology expounds the view that immigration will ultimately destroy white values and western civilization.

Although a growing number of Republican lawmakers and hopefuls have promoted the discredited conspiracy theory, including JD Vance, the Donald Trump-endorsed candidate who won last week’s Republican Senate primary in Ohio, many believe Cheney’s message is directed at one person: the Republican House conference chair, Elise Stefanik.

The New York congresswoman, who was swiftly installed to replace Cheney when the House minority leader and Trump loyalist, Kevin McCarthy, orchestrated Cheney’s ouster last year, has used the great replacement theory to make false accusations that Democrats were plotting a “permanent election insurrection” by replacing white voters with immigrants.

The Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, who is the only other Republican on the House panel investigating Trump’s insurrection efforts, posted his own tweet slamming Stefanik’s promotion of the theory as “despicable”.

On Sunday he added another post, demanding that Stefanik, McCarthy and extremist Republican congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn be “replaced”.

McCarthy is one of five Republicans who received subpoenas from the House panel last week as it seeks more information about Trump’s actions to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, including the deadly riots at the Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Stefanik, meanwhile, has been furiously tweeting this morning, doubling down on her claims that Democrats are purposely manipulating immigration policy “specifically for political and electoral purposes”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/16/liz-cheney-republican-leadership-enabled-white-supremacy

[Rick Plant]

Trump secretly hates far-right Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate he endorsed: report



On Wednesday, POLITICO revealed that former President Donald Trump never particularly liked Doug Mastriano, the far-right candidate who just secured the Republican nomination for governor of Pennsylvania — even though Trump gave Mastriano his endorsement.

In particular, according to the report, even though Mastriano was a leading figure in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania, Trump believed that he had given up on the effort.

"Donald Trump and some of his top lieutenants spent the last year privately disparaging Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano," reported Meredith McGraw and Holly Otterbein. "Mastriano’s loyalty alone wasn’t enough to earn his support. Trump wanted more concrete action. Trump was skeptical of Mastriano, according to a source familiar with his thinking, because he had 'done nothing on the audit promises in a year,' a reference to an investigation of the 2020 election that he pushed in the state."

"But on the Friday before Pennsylvania’s primary, with Mastriano ahead in the polls and ensconced as the clear favorite in the primary for governor, Trump changed his mind," the report continued. "He called up the state lawmaker and delivered the news he would endorse him, according to a person familiar with the conversation. A day later, Trump issued a statement announcing the nod."

According to the report, Pennsylvania GOP officials are enraged by Trump's last-minute actions — and some even believe it could injure his prospects of ever winning Pennsylvania again should he attempt another run for the presidency.

Mastriano has quickly become a controversial figure. He has given speeches at QAnon events, and has ties to a bizarre "gun church" that believes the AR-15 is literally ordained by the Bible. He was also present at the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection and paid to bus people there that day, although he denies he breached the Capitol himself.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/18/trump-endorsement-mastriano-pa-republicans-00033573

[Rick Plant]

Putin was ‘frustrated’ by Trump’s inability to grasp policy issues: Fiona Hill

Russian leader Vladimir Putin grew frustrated with Donald Trump's inability to understand foreign policy issues, his former top National Security Council advisor on the country said.

Fiona Hill explained the dynamics during a Tuesday Chicago Council on Global Affairs event.

Business Insider reports, "One of the reasons Putin invaded Ukraine with President Joe Biden in the White House is because he expected the US to 'sue for peace' and thought it would be better to deal with Biden than trying to negotiate with someone like Trump, who the Russian leader had 'to explain everything to all the time," said Hill, who served as the top Russia advisor on the National Security Council under Trump."

Hill currently serves as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"He thought that somebody like Biden — who's a Transatlanticist, who knows all about NATO, who actually knows where Ukraine is, and actually knows something about the history, and is very steeped in international affairs — would be the right person to engage with," she explained. "You could see that he got frustrated many times with President Trump because he had to keep explaining things, and Putin doesn't like to do that."

Trump praised Putin prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, 'This is genius,'" Trump told a far-right podcaster. "Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine -- Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful."

"I said, 'How smart is that?'" Trump continued. "And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Each day the radical right becomes more extreme infringing upon our rights, civil liberties, and our pursuit of happiness. 

Hundreds of GOP state legislators have joined far-right Facebook groups, according to new report



More than one in five state lawmakers across the country have joined at least one far-right Facebook group, according to a new report.

Together the lawmakers sponsored 963 bills during the most recent legislative sessions, said the group that wrote the report, which describes the far-right efforts as anti-human rights.

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a think tank that defends democracy and human rights, identified 875 lawmakers who have joined at least one of 789 Facebook groups, including white nationalist groups, groups tied to QAnon, groups that spout conspiracy theories about COVID-19, and others that promote former president Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.

The institute’s report, titled Breaching the Mainstream, lists all of the legislators identified as being part of far-right Facebook groups and detailed their legislative impact.

“We knew we had a problem on our hands, but we hadn’t been able to quantify the depths of it,” said Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the institute. “This was a first attempt on our part to wrap our heads around it, and it was pretty striking in terms of the various pipelines that have opened up to pump disinformation and far-right ideas into legislatures.”

The legislators who have joined far-right groups made up 21.74% of all Republican legislators and 0.09% of all Democratic state legislators in the 2021 and 2022 legislative sessions, according to the report.

More than 75% of the legislators in far-right Facebook groups identify as male, while 24.45% identify as female. Nationally, 31.2% of all legislative seats are currently held by women.

The report found 27 Michigan lawmakers participated in far-right groups.

While the legislators in far-right groups come from all 50 states, some states are represented more than others. The representation is highest in New Hampshire (62), followed by Pennsylvania (40), Minnesota (39), Missouri (36), Arizona (34), Montana (34), Maine (34), Georgia (32), Washington (30) and Maryland (27), according to the report.

The state lawmakers are also spread out in all regions of the country. Currently, 221 of them represent districts in the Midwest, 191 in the Northeast, 264 in the South and 200 in the West.

“It’s a nationwide phenomenon,” Burghart said. “Far too often, people think of this activity as being relegated to the deep South or the Pacific Northwest, but there are legislators in all 50 states who have joined these different far-right Facebook groups.”

Many of the legislators identified have been at the forefront of pushing anti-democracy and anti-human rights bills, according to the report.

The lawmakers identified have supported far-right legislation including “Don’t say gay” proposals and pushing the racist critical race conspiracy theory which Republicans accuse educators of being taught in schools. They’ve proposed bills attacking women’s reproductive rights, immigrants and the LGBTQIA community, the report noted.

“There was a very high level of support and sponsorship of bills coming from this cluster of legislators that we’d identified,” Burghart said.

Read the report here: https://www.irehr.org/reports/breaching-the-mainstream/

[Rick Plant]

Criminal Donald is now going to cry about imaginary voter fraud in a Republican primary?

Trump's 'dangerous' election lies may be about to blow up in Pennsylvania Republicans' faces: NYT's Haberman

Donald Trump is encouraging Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Mehmet Oz to declare victory even before all mail-in ballots are counted -- and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman thinks this could hurt the GOP's shot at winning the seat this fall.

Appearing on CNN, Haberman said that if Oz goes on to lose the primary to rival David McCormick, Trump could wage a scorched-Earth campaign to convince his followers that Oz only lost due to voter fraud.

"What he is doing is muddying the waters and there are huger implications here because Republicans are trying to retake the senate," Haberman explained. "It is going to be much harder if Donald Trump is casting doubt on Dave McCormick the way he's clearly prepared to do."

Haberman also said that, even though Trump's antics could potentially hurt the Pennsylvania GOP, they are also bad for the health of American democracy.

"I'm not at all surprised to see how this is playing out but, again, this is really dangerous what Donald Trump is saying and it should not be minimized," she said. "This isn't just him complaining that he lost an election, all of the things that got said after November 3rd, 2020... now he's willing to say this about other people's elections and we are heading down a different path."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump 'wearing out his welcome' with Pennsylvania GOP over his endorsements of 'difficult' candidates

Donald Trump privately trashed Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano before changing his mind last week and endorsing his gubernatorial campaign, throwing the state's Republican Party into turmoil.

The former president was frustrated that Mastriano was unable to make good on his promise to conduct a 2020 election audit, but he ultimately backed the right-wing legislator because he pledged to make Trump's election loss a top priority if he was elected governor -- which many Republicans doubt he will be, reported Politico.

“The biggest reason why he did it was he said, ‘Mastriano was there for me and I need to be there for him,’” said one person close to Trump.

Republicans are worried that Mastriano's focus on 2020 will cost them a shot at retaking the governor's mansion, and they're concerned that would ultimately hurt Trump and other GOP candidates in 2024.

“He endorsed someone who is going to be very difficult to elect," said Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator. "I’ve heard from so many people who’ve said to me, ‘He obviously isn’t running for president,' and their rationale is, ‘If he actually cared about winning the presidency, he would not want a Democratic governor or Democratic secretary of state to do what they did two years ago.’”

Trump also backed former TV talk show host Mehmet Oz, who's locked in a too-close-to-call Senate primary with hedge fund manager David McCormick, but Republicans are also doubtful of his chances for winning in November.

“I’m not very happy with his involvement in local races and endorsements,” said Rob Gleason, former chair of the Pennsylvania GOP. “He doesn’t live in Pennsylvania. His name isn’t on the ballot. He might be wearing out his welcome.”

Local party leaders were frustrated by Trump's last-minute endorsement, saying they already had strategies in place for other candidates they felt were more electable, and they said the former president squandered political capital with his picks.

“The question here is, was the juice worth the squeeze? I think no,” said one prominent Republican involved in the governor’s race. “His standing and reputation — it took a big, big hit with both Oz and Mastriano [endorsements]. There is a third of the electorate that loves the endorsements, but there’s a great number of Republicans that don’t.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/18/trump-endorsement-mastriano-pa-republicans-00033573