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44 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

FARGO—A confrontation at a Fargo Wal-Mart parking lot is creating a national media frenzy after a video of an argument went viral

I read another account of this story where Ms. Hensley claimed she attacked the Muslim women because they said something insulting about Jesus. Ms. Hensley obviously is unaware that Muslims see Jesus as a prophet, and would therefore not say something insulting about him.

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I read another account of this story where Ms. Hensley claimed she attacked the Muslim women because they said something insulting about Jesus. Ms. Hensley obviously is unaware that Muslims see Jesus as a prophet, and would therefore not say something insulting about him.


I'm getting out on the limb again to guess Hensley probably doesn't know that much about her own religion.
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13 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I read another account of this story where Ms. Hensley claimed she attacked the Muslim women because they said something insulting about Jesus. Ms. Hensley obviously is unaware that Muslims see Jesus as a prophet, and would therefore not say something insulting about him.

She's also unaware that just about everyone except white fake-Christians are respectful of others' beliefs. You would think that they would all be consumed with bliss now that their God-loving business man is President. Instead they seem to get closer to the edge every day. Hypocrisy can be confusing.

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Good grief: "Florida man wearing Trump hat arrested in fight over politics near Dupont Circle"

Spoiler

A man from Florida wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat was arrested over the weekend after D.C. police said he beat three people near Dupont Circle during a heated argument over President Trump’s politics.

Police said that the 32-year-old suspect “straddled” one man “and pounded” him in the face 20 times with a closed fist and left and right forearms. Two others were also struck in the face when they intervened, police said.

Police identified the suspect as Louis Samuel Travieso, of Riverview, Fla., about 20 miles south of Tampa. Police charged him with three counts of felony assault, classifying the incident as a “suspected hate crime.” Prosecutors later reduced the charges to misdemeanors but did not indicate why.

Travieso was released from jail Monday and ordered to return for a hearing on Sept. 18. His attorney did not return calls seeking comment.

Two of the men, both from Manassas, Va., could not be reached or did not respond to interview requests. The third man declined to comment Monday.

Police said the fight occurred Saturday about 6:30 p.m. in the 1200 block of New Hampshire Avenue NW, outside a restaurant where both Travieso and the men had visited. But the argument that preceded the fight began inside after one of the men commented on Travieso’s hat. Police did not describe the exchange, but said a “heated political argument” ensued, and then ended, with Travieso leaving the restaurant with his family.

The affidavit says Travieso got into an Uber vehicle but by that time the men were outside and the argument resumed. Police said Travieso got out of the Uber at a red traffic light and attacked the three men. A police report says numerous bystanders reported Travieso as the aggressor.

Two of the men were treated at a hospital; the other was treated by paramedics at the scene.

 

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I found natasha who goes under the name. .America news trump news wellness natasha ..on you tube. EVERYTHING weird thing trump does she defends. Any one else seeneeds her videos???

I've been putting anti comments on there hoping I'll get blocked so she doesn't come up on my you tube. .because. .and this is sad..I'm compelled to see what else she says. She uploads several times a day which go something like..so..everybody..fake news/Obama Hillary conspiracy theory etc etc. 

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Both of these above are examples of how unhinged Trump supporters are becoming. In their minds, they know he is not right and neither are they but they can't let go because they don't think they will fit anywhere else. They flaunt it to pick fights so they can find a few friends on the internet.

People on our side should ignore these people if at all possible so as to starve them of the attention they desperately need. And also to limit any evidence they crave that ebil librils are violent. Video tape them, gather witnesses, call the police and treat them like the freaks that they are.

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Spoiler

 

I need to leave her alone...but her level of crazy is enticing! I do notice her feed will show several more comments than what is shown so I guess she's deleting haters.

She wears patriotic clothing and maga pictures behind her.. it's like she's the real deal American and the lying evil liberals are not!!

 

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2 hours ago, clese said:
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I need to leave her alone...but her level of crazy is enticing! I do notice her feed will show several more comments than what is shown so I guess she's deleting haters.

She wears patriotic clothing and maga pictures behind her.. it's like she's the real deal American and the lying evil liberals are not!!

 

Yes, because wearing the flag on EVERYTHING, using an eagle as your avatar and naming your "foundation" the Best and Only Godly Genuine Blessed and First American Foundation makes you a legitimate American! Oh and don't forget to have Lee Greenwood playing on all your You Tube posts, put a million bumper stickers insulting Hillary on your car and name your dog MAGA. So your neighbors keep mistakenly calling him Maggot.

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Awesome interview by Chris Cuomo on CNN tonight.  He's interviewing Ed Butowsky (Branch Trumpvidian), who apparently heard about Seth Rich's murder and, even though he didn't know ANYBODY in the Rich family, hired a private investigator to look into the murder, purely through the compassion in his heart, and not to find out if Seth was the WikiLeaks leaker.  Butowsky's all over the place, and at the end of the interview says he wants to come back for another interview.  We'll see about that, Ed.

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21 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Awesome interview by Chris Cuomo on CNN tonight.  He's interviewing Ed Butowsky (Branch Trumpvidian), who apparently heard about Seth Rich's murder and, even though he didn't know ANYBODY in the Rich family, hired a private investigator to look into the murder, purely through the compassion in his heart, and not to find out if Seth was the WikiLeaks leaker.  Butowsky's all over the place, and at the end of the interview says he wants to come back for another interview.  We'll see about that, Ed.

Chris will say yes and bring the knives. This whole Seth Rich thing is now starting to stink to high heaven.

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7 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Chris will say yes and bring the knives. This whole Seth Rich thing is now starting to stink to high heaven.

It could finally be the undoing of Sean Hannity.  Inquiring minds will stay tuned....

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9 hours ago, JMarie said:

It could finally be the undoing of Sean Hannity.  Inquiring minds will stay tuned....

Not holding my breath (unfortunately).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Early in the morning-well, for me-getting ready for company but you know I'm addicted so I'm reading about these stupid, stupid people, who still support their dear leader. Vehemently support him. WTH!

It's mind boggling to read their reasoning. He's different(so is Charles Manson). He hasn't been effective yet because people are in the way of him getting it done. I'm sorry, who exactly is in his way? He seems to have plenty of time, and ability, to Tweet, play golf, eat meals at his expensive properties. The only ones in his way are the other Republicans you voted for, moron! You're in his way!

And of course the media is lying about him. By showing him speaking? One woman said they manipulated his speech on Tuesday. How? And of course there's the old Republican fall-back: If you don't like it you should leave the country. Funny how I never heard any of them saying they were leaving the country when Obama was president. Then it was "We need to take out country back!" It's always their country. Gotta do it...:violence-smack:

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Crazy Navy Guy retweeted by Trump - security clearance suspended, etc. - NBC news article
 

Spoiler

 

WASHINGTON — A right-wing activist who brought attention to debunked conspiracy theories — and who gained new prominence when he was retweeted by President Donald Trump this week — is a U.S. naval intelligence officer detailed to a reserve unit, Navy service records show.

John Michael Posobiec III's security clearance is currently suspended, according to a U.S. official, who did not disclose the reason for the suspension. Posobiec told NBC News that he was never given an explanation but suspects it was because he had become "more outspoken on Twitter."

Posobiec, who goes by Jack, is a lieutenant junior grade in the U.S. Navy Reserves, assigned to Joint Reserve Intelligence Support Element Dekalb. From March 2014 through March 2017 he was assigned to a Reserve Intelligence Unit at Office of Naval Intelligence's Naval Maritime Intelligence Center in Washington.

He resigned his civilian job with the Office of Naval Intelligence in March, claiming his support for Trump led to a "toxic work environment" and because his "political advocacy" was taking off. He went to work for Canada-based right-wing Rebel Media but has since left.

He said he "never conducted any of my political activities while in uniform or on government time. I never once mishandled classified information."

During his time in the reserves, Posobiec has used his social media accounts to draw attention to false theories, including the rumor that former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered for leaking emails to Wikileaks.

He also delved into the so-called Pizzagate theory, which posited that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria. Shortly after the election, Posobiec visited Comet Pizza and posted a video in which he talked in a seemingly joking way about trying to find out what's happening in the bathroom.

He also promoted, through Twitter, leaked emails from the campaign of French President Emmanuel Macron.

In June, he was in the audience when a fellow pro-Trump protester rushed the stage at a New York production of "Julius Caesar" that drew controversy because the title character resembled the president.

"You are all Goebbels, you are all Nazis like Joseph Goebbels," Posobiec shouted into the audience in video posted on his Twitter feed.

More recently, he tried to organize a protest against Google for firing a engineer who wrote a controversial memo about women, but he then called it off, citing "Alt Left terrorist threats."

While Posobiec, 32, is frequently referred to as a member of the alt-right, he describes himself as a "conservative Republican" and member of the "New Right" — and an ardent Trump supporter.

On Monday, Trump retweeted Posobiec's tweet of a news article about shootings in Chicago, with a comment questioning why there was "no national outrage." Posobiec crowed on Twitter that his tweet ultimately racked up 6 million impressions.

He sometimes refers to his military service, most recently in a video posted this week in which he said it showed he is not a racist.

"I am an American military veteran. I served this country by wearing the uniform overseas on multiple deployments," he said.

"If you are an extremist, if you are a racist, if you are someone who does not believe in tolerance in this country, you're not allowed to serve in the military."

His service record shows one overseas deployment: 10 months in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, starting Sept. 11, 2012. He said he was also sent overseas for annual training and as a civilian Navy employee.

Records show Posobiec enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserves on May 25, 2010, and was later commissioned as an officer on Halloween in 2013. He has been a Lieutenant Junior Grade since October 2015.

He has numerous awards and decorations from his time in the Navy, most of which are unit awards and service awards for completing an assignment. He also earned the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Award.

Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which has written about Posobiec on its Hatewatch blog, said she doesn't think he should be in the reserves.

"Nobody with these crazy ideas should be in the U.S. military," she said. "It's just too dangerous."

Posobiec said the only organization he belongs to is Citizens for Trump and he added that he had no involvement with the groups that protested in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"I’m not a member of any of the Charlottesville extremist groups. I have condemned them for over a year at this point. I’ve always been a patriotic American. I condemn hatred and bigotry in all its forms," he said.

 

Define patriotism, Posobiec.  Sheesh.

 

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47 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

Crazy Navy Guy retweeted by Trump - security clearance suspended, etc. - NBC news article
 

  Hide contents

 

WASHINGTON — A right-wing activist who brought attention to debunked conspiracy theories — and who gained new prominence when he was retweeted by President Donald Trump this week — is a U.S. naval intelligence officer detailed to a reserve unit, Navy service records show.

John Michael Posobiec III's security clearance is currently suspended, according to a U.S. official, who did not disclose the reason for the suspension. Posobiec told NBC News that he was never given an explanation but suspects it was because he had become "more outspoken on Twitter."

Posobiec, who goes by Jack, is a lieutenant junior grade in the U.S. Navy Reserves, assigned to Joint Reserve Intelligence Support Element Dekalb. From March 2014 through March 2017 he was assigned to a Reserve Intelligence Unit at Office of Naval Intelligence's Naval Maritime Intelligence Center in Washington.

He resigned his civilian job with the Office of Naval Intelligence in March, claiming his support for Trump led to a "toxic work environment" and because his "political advocacy" was taking off. He went to work for Canada-based right-wing Rebel Media but has since left.

He said he "never conducted any of my political activities while in uniform or on government time. I never once mishandled classified information."

During his time in the reserves, Posobiec has used his social media accounts to draw attention to false theories, including the rumor that former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered for leaking emails to Wikileaks.

He also delved into the so-called Pizzagate theory, which posited that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria. Shortly after the election, Posobiec visited Comet Pizza and posted a video in which he talked in a seemingly joking way about trying to find out what's happening in the bathroom.

He also promoted, through Twitter, leaked emails from the campaign of French President Emmanuel Macron.

In June, he was in the audience when a fellow pro-Trump protester rushed the stage at a New York production of "Julius Caesar" that drew controversy because the title character resembled the president.

"You are all Goebbels, you are all Nazis like Joseph Goebbels," Posobiec shouted into the audience in video posted on his Twitter feed.

More recently, he tried to organize a protest against Google for firing a engineer who wrote a controversial memo about women, but he then called it off, citing "Alt Left terrorist threats."

While Posobiec, 32, is frequently referred to as a member of the alt-right, he describes himself as a "conservative Republican" and member of the "New Right" — and an ardent Trump supporter.

On Monday, Trump retweeted Posobiec's tweet of a news article about shootings in Chicago, with a comment questioning why there was "no national outrage." Posobiec crowed on Twitter that his tweet ultimately racked up 6 million impressions.

He sometimes refers to his military service, most recently in a video posted this week in which he said it showed he is not a racist.

"I am an American military veteran. I served this country by wearing the uniform overseas on multiple deployments," he said.

"If you are an extremist, if you are a racist, if you are someone who does not believe in tolerance in this country, you're not allowed to serve in the military."

His service record shows one overseas deployment: 10 months in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, starting Sept. 11, 2012. He said he was also sent overseas for annual training and as a civilian Navy employee.

Records show Posobiec enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserves on May 25, 2010, and was later commissioned as an officer on Halloween in 2013. He has been a Lieutenant Junior Grade since October 2015.

He has numerous awards and decorations from his time in the Navy, most of which are unit awards and service awards for completing an assignment. He also earned the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Award.

Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which has written about Posobiec on its Hatewatch blog, said she doesn't think he should be in the reserves.

"Nobody with these crazy ideas should be in the U.S. military," she said. "It's just too dangerous."

Posobiec said the only organization he belongs to is Citizens for Trump and he added that he had no involvement with the groups that protested in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"I’m not a member of any of the Charlottesville extremist groups. I have condemned them for over a year at this point. I’ve always been a patriotic American. I condemn hatred and bigotry in all its forms," he said.

 

Define patriotism, Posobiec.  Sheesh.

 

He's quite coy about who he is. He's says one thing but his actions say something else. And I'm tired of people claiming that they're so wonderful because they were in the military. There are plenty of racists in the military. Too many. And not everyone who joins is doing it because they love their country. As a matter of fact, there are too many people in the military for all the wrong reasons.

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2 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

And not everyone who joins is doing it because they love their country. As a matter of fact, there are too many people in the military for all the wrong reasons.

Just like there are some people who go into police work for the wrong reasons. I have worked for multiple police departments and most officers are hardworking and really want citizens and the community at large to be a safer place, but there are a handful who are on power trips and/or have very ugly views of society.

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47 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Just like there are some people who go into police work for the wrong reasons. I have worked for multiple police departments and most officers are hardworking and really want citizens and the community at large to be a safer place, but there are a handful who are on power trips and/or have very ugly views of society.

Amen! When I was military-adjacent the story was that those who tested lowest when entering the military were assigned to the MPs. Then when these people get out they have a ready-made resume to enter civilian law enforcement. I've also know several people in law enforcement and most were in it for all the right reason. But it is a magnet for those on a power trip. 

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Ok, somebody has regrets. I don't agree with everything he says, and certainly not with his attempts to polish his own complicity, but the article does give an interesting insight into what induced 'normal' people (i.e. not rabid mouthbreathing white supremacist knuckledraggers) to vote for the toddler.

I Voted for Trump. And I Sorely Regret It.

Spoiler

When Donald Trump first announced his presidential campaign, I, like most people, thought it would be a short-lived publicity stunt. A month later, though, I happened to catch one of his political rallies on C-Span. I was riveted.

I supported the Republican in dozens of articles, radio and TV appearances, even as conservative friends and colleagues said I had to be kidding. As early as September 2015, I wrote that Mr. Trump was “the most serious candidate in the race.” Critics of the pro-Trump blog and then the nonprofit journal that I founded accused us of attempting to “understand Trump better than he understands himself.” I hoped that was the case. I saw the decline in this country — its weak economy and frayed social fabric — and I thought Mr. Trump’s willingness to move past partisan stalemates could begin a process of renewal.

It is now clear that my optimism was unfounded. I can’t stand by this disgraceful administration any longer, and I would urge anyone who once supported him as I did to stop defending the 45th president.

Far from making America great again, Mr. Trump has betrayed the foundations of our common citizenship. And his actions are jeopardizing any prospect of enacting an agenda that might restore the promise of American life.

***

What, you may wonder, especially in the wake of Charlottesville, Va., did I possibly see in this candidate?

Although crude and meandering for almost all of the primary campaign, Mr. Trump eschewed strict ideologies and directly addressed themes that the more conventional candidates of both parties preferred to ignore. Rather than recite paeans to American enterprise, he acknowledged that our “information economy” has delivered little wage or productivity growth. He was willing to criticize the bipartisan consensus on trade and pointed out the devastating effects of deindustrialization felt in many communities. He forthrightly addressed the foreign policy failures of both parties, such as the debacles in Iraq and Libya, and rejected the utopian rhetoric of “democracy promotion.” He talked about the issue of widening income inequality — almost unheard of for a Republican candidate — and didn’t pretend that simply cutting taxes or shrinking government would solve the problem.

He criticized corporations for offshoring jobs, attacked financial-industry executives for avoiding taxes and bemoaned America’s reliance on economic bubbles over the last few decades. He blasted the Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz campaigns for insincerely mouthing focus-grouped platitudes while catering to their largest donors — and he was right. Voters loved that he was willing to buck conventional wisdom and the establishment.

He flouted GOP orthodoxy on entitlements, infrastructure spending and, at times, even health care and “culture war” issues like funding Planned Parenthood. His statements on immigration were often needlessly inflammatory, but he correctly diagnosed that our current system makes little sense for most Americans, as well as many immigrants, and seems designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of working people.

Yes, Mr. Trump’s policy positions were poorly defined, but these days, most candidates’ positions are. And yes, he had little support from the Republican Party leadership. But many of us thought even this might be a positive if it forced him to focus on “making deals” rather than on Washington’s usual ideological posturing. He was never going to fulfill all of his over-the-top promises, but we believed that his administration might achieve some meaningful successes.

In my writing, I tried to steer this administration in the right direction. During the presidential primaries, the blog I helped organize, called the Journal of American Greatness, was one of the leading voices supporting certain themes of Trump’s campaign. (Michael Anton, now a National Security Council adviser, was our most prolific writer.) Then, after the election, I founded a quarterly journal, American Affairs, largely to question elements of what is often called the neoliberal policy consensus — totally open borders for capital and labor; transferring power from national governments to transnational technocracies; unfettered markets; and democracy promotion as the sole premise of foreign policy. In other words, the disappointing legacy we inherited from the Bushes and the Clintons that helped pave the way to Mr. Trump’s election.

In this role, as one of the few people in the media who has been somewhat sympathetic to Mr. Trump, I am often asked to comment on his surprise victory, or more recently on his statements, policies and the gusher of news pouring out of this White House. For months, despite increasing chaos and incoherence, I have given Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt: “No, I don’t really think he is a racist,” I have told skeptical audiences. “Yes, he says some stupid things, but none of it really matters; he’s not really that incompetent.” Or: “They’ve made some mistakes, but it’s still early.”

It’s no longer early. Not only has the president failed to make the course corrections necessary to save his administration, but his increasingly appalling conduct will continue to repel anyone who might once have been inclined to work with him.

From the very start of his run, one of the most serious charges against Mr. Trump was that he panders to racists. Many of his supporters, myself included, managed to convince ourselves that his more outrageous comments — such as the Judge Gonzalo Curiel controversy or his initial hesitance to disavow David Duke’s endorsement — were merely Bidenesque gaffes committed during the heat of a campaign.

It is now clear that we were deluding ourselves. Either Mr. Trump is genuinely sympathetic to the David Duke types, or he is so obtuse as to be utterly incapable of learning from his worst mistakes. Either way, he continues to prove his harshest critics right.

Mr. Trump once boasted that he could shoot someone in the street and not lose voters. Well, someone was just killed in the street by a white supremacist in Charlottesville. His refusal this weekend to specifically and immediately denounce the groups responsible for this intolerable violence was both morally disgusting and monumentally stupid. In this, Mr. Trump failed perhaps the easiest imaginable test of presidential leadership. Rather than advance a vision of national unity that he claims to represent, his indefensible equivocation can only inflame the most vicious forces of division within our country.

If Mr. Trump had been speaking about the overall political climate, he might have been right to say that “many sides” are responsible for exacerbating social tensions. Yet during the events in Charlottesville this past weekend, only one side — a deranged white nationalist — was responsible for killing anyone. To equivocate about this fact is the height of irresponsibility. Even those concerned about the overzealous enforcement of political correctness can hardly think that apologizing for neo-Nazis is a sensible alternative.

Those of us who supported Mr. Trump were never so naïve as to expect that he would transform himself into a model of presidential decorum upon taking office. But our calculation was that a few cringe-inducing tweets were an acceptable trade-off for a successful governing agenda.

Yet after more than 200 days in office, Mr. Trump’s behavior grows only more reprehensible. Meanwhile, his administration has no significant legislative accomplishments — and no apparent plan to deliver any. Wilbur Ross’s Commerce Department has advanced some sensible and appropriately incremental changes to trade policy, but no long-term agenda has been articulated. Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue’s recently proposed legislation offers a sound basis for reforming immigration policy, but seems to have no prospects and has received comparatively little attention. The administration inexplicably downgraded infrastructure and corporate tax reform — issues with potentially broad-based support — to pursue a warmed-over version of Paul Ryan’s Obamacare repeal, which ended, predictably, in a humiliating failure.

Nothing disastrous has occurred on the foreign policy front — yet — but the never-ending chaos within the administration hardly inspires confidence. Many senior-level appointees are still not in place, including the assistant secretaries of state, for example. And too many of those who are in office appear to be petty, clueless, and rather repulsive ideologues, like Steve Bannon, who seem to spend most of their time accusing one another of being “swamp creatures.” It’s pathetic. No wonder an increasing number of officials are simply ignoring the president, an alarming but understandable development.

Effectively a third-party president without a party, Mr. Trump has faced extraordinary resistance from the media, the bureaucracy and even within the Republican Party. But the administration has committed too many unforced errors and deserves most of the blame for its failures. Far from making the transformative “deals” he promised voters, his only talent appears to be creating grotesque media frenzies — just as all his critics said.

Those who found some admirable things in the hazy outlines of Mr. Trump’s campaign — a trade policy focused on national industrial development; a less quixotic foreign policy; less ideological approaches to infrastructure, health care and entitlements — will have to salvage that agenda from the wreckage of his presidency. On that, I’m not ready to give up.

 

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I was reluctant and rather hestitant about posting this, because it's so depressing. In the end I decided it's better to see, than to stick your head in the sand, so...

I hope he's wrong, but I'm afraid he's right. :sigh:

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33 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

I was reluctant and rather hestitant about posting this, because it's so depressing. In the end I decided it's better to see, than to stick your head in the sand, so...

I hope he's wrong, but I'm afraid he's right. :sigh:

The morons who attended his rallies with their crazy eyes and MAGA hats?  Probably not.  Those who reluctantly voted for him because they are die hard Republicans or just hated Hillary?  Yeah, those people just might be.

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4 hours ago, Childless said:

 Those who reluctantly voted for him because they are die hard Republicans or just hated Hillary?  Yeah, those people just might be.

Some of them are. My sister lives in Nevada and over a month ago she told me that she knew several people who had voted for Trump and are now regretting it.

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"A Deal Breaker for Trump’s Supporters? Nope. Not This Time, Either."

Spoiler

For Parson Hicks, a health care finance executive who supports President Trump, this past week has felt a little like déjà vu. Mr. Trump says something. His opponents howl and then predict, with certainty, a point of no return.

The last time this happened, she said, was in October with the notorious “Access Hollywood” recording of Mr. Trump talking lewdly about women. His opponents were sure he was finished. His supporters knew better.

“Let’s be honest, the people who are currently outraged are the same people who have always been outraged,” said Ms. Hicks, 35, a lifelong Republican who lives in Boston. “The media makes it seem like something has changed, when in reality nothing has.”

It was a week of incessant tumult, when Mr. Trump tumbled into open warfare with some in his own party over his statements on the violence in Charlottesville, Va.; business executives abandoned his advisory councils; top military leaders pointedly made statements denouncing racism in a way he did not; and his embattled chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, stepped down. But around the country, Mr. Trump’s supporters — and, according to many polls, Republicans more broadly — agreed with his interpretation of a swirl of racially charged events and stood with him amid still more clatter and churn.

Sixty-seven percent of Republicans said they approved of the president’s response to the violence in Charlottesville last weekend, compared with just 10 percent of Democrats, according to a CBS News survey conducted over the past week.

It’s an indication of what now seems an almost immutable law of the Trump presidency. There are signs that Mr. Trump’s support among Republican leaders and some Republican voters is weakening. But in an increasingly tribal America, with people on the left and the right getting information from different sources and seeing the same facts in different ways, it reflects the way Mr. Trump has become in many ways both symbol and chief agitator of a divided nation.

Moral outrage at Mr. Trump’s response to Charlottesville continues to glow white hot, but it has a largely partisan tinge.

From Ms. Hicks’s perspective, the president simply pointed out a fact: Leftists bore some responsibility for the violence, too. Of course, Nazis and white supremacists are bad, she said. But she does not believe Mr. Trump has any affinity for them. He said so himself. But she is exasperated that a significant part of the country seems to think otherwise. The week’s frenzied headlines read to her like bulletins from another planet.

“I feel like I am in a bizarro universe where no one but me is thinking logically,” she said. “We have gone so off the rails of what this conversation is about.”

Ms. Hicks, who is black and grew up in Charlotte, N.C., welcomes the public soul-searching on the meaning of Confederate monuments. She believes that the statues were erected to intimidate black people and that they should be taken down. But instead of focusing on that, she sees opponents of Mr. Trump focusing on Mr. Trump.

“This is not about me as a black person, and my history,” she said. “This is about this president and wanting to take him down because you don’t like him.”

Mr. Bannon’s departure was more noise that didn’t mean much, she said. “The show is going to go on.”

Much of what powers the love for Mr. Trump among his core supporters is his boxer’s approach to the political class in Washington and to the news media, a group that in their eyes has approached them with a double standard and a sneering sense of superiority for years.

Larry Laughlin, a retired businessman from a Minneapolis suburb, compares Mr. Trump to a high school senior who could “walk up to the table with the jocks and the cheerleaders and put them in their place.” That is something that the “nerds and the losers, whose dads are unemployed and moms are working in the cafeteria,” could never do. Mr. Trump may be rich, he said, but actually belonged at the nerd table.

“The guys who wouldn’t like me wouldn’t like Trump,” he said. “The guys who were condescending to him were condescending to me.

“I feel like I’m watching my uncle up there. Where me and Chuck Schumer — that’s like going to the dentist,” he added, referring to the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Gregory Kline, 46, a lawyer in Severna Park, Md., who is a Republican, said he did not vote for Mr. Trump but understands that part of the president’s support comes from fury at the left, particularly the media. When there is an attack by Muslim terrorists, for example, the media reaches for pundits who say most Muslims are good. But when it is a white supremacist, “every conservative is lumped in with him,” he said.

“It’s not that people are deaf and dumb and don’t see it,” he said of Mr. Trump’s sometimes erratic behavior. “It’s that they don’t care. I’ve heard rational people I really respect make the craziest apologies for this president because they are sick of getting beat on and they are happy he’s fighting back.”

Is there anything Mr. Trump could do that would change the minds of his supporters? For the most loyal, probably not. A recent Monmouth University poll found that, of the current 41 percent of Americans who approve of the job he is doing, 61 percent say they cannot see Mr. Trump doing anything that would make them disapprove of him. (A similar share of the other side says there is nothing Mr. Trump could do — other than resigning — to get them to like him.)

But for many others, support is conditional. (Mr. Trump’s poll numbers have dropped considerably since he took office in January.) Michael Dye, a 52-year-old engineer who is the treasurer for the Republican Party in Annapolis, Md., said he was “a bit stunned” that Mr. Trump had not focused more on condemning what was a large neo-Nazi march through the middle of the University of Virginia, Mr. Dye’s alma mater.

“At best it is naïve to think that the people showing up for the original protest were there simply because they were upset that this statue was being taken down,” said Mr. Dye, who said he voted reluctantly for Mr. Trump.

Of the chant “Jews will not replace us,” he said: “You can argue that it was 10 percent of the crowd. But there are those types in there and I’ve got a problem with that and I wish he’d specified that.”

Even with his reservations, Mr. Dye said he would still vote for Mr. Trump. He wants his party to hold the reins and steer policy, and if Mr. Trump is the only route to that, he will take it.

Partisanship is now so deep that what we see depends entirely on who is looking. So when Mr. Trump said there had been “violence on both sides,” Democrats — and some Republicans — heard a dangerous moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and the people who opposed them. But for many Trump supporters, his words appealed to a basic sense of fairness.

“Anyone who was fair-minded could see that there was violence on both sides,” said John McIntosh, 76, who lives in New Bern, N.C., and voted for Mr. Trump. He said that did not excuse the driver of the car that killed a counterprotester and injured many others.

When those who were horrified tried to convince those who were not, it did not go well.

“Everybody is like, how can you not see it, he’s a total white supremacist, a total Nazi,” said Debra Skoog, a retired executive in Minneapolis and a lifelong Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump. “I just don’t see it that way. I don’t find his language as incriminating as some people do.”

Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Harvard University who writes about democracy, said partisanship in the United States today is dangerously deep.

“It’s now at a stage where a lot of Americans have such a loyalty to their political tribe that they are willing to go along with deeply undemocratic behavior,” he said. “If their guy says, ‘I think we should push back the election for a few years because of a possible terrorist attack,’ I fear that a significant part of the population would go along with it.”

And in a polarized nation, many see a moment, full of passion on both sides, in which actions like taking down statues in the dead of night — as happened in Baltimore on Wednesday — are just bound to lead to more division.

“People who see this stuff going down the memory hole as quickly as it is happening feel unsettled by it,” Mr. Kline said. “The left doesn’t realize that the reaction a lot of people would have is to sit back and say, ‘Wait a minute, what’s going on here?’ ”

It's depressing that there is such a divide now. In the past, you may have disagreed with the politics of "the other side", but you trusted that the people on both sides were inherently decent. That has gone away.

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"The strange story of that ‘Blacks for Trump’ guy standing behind POTUS at his Phoenix rally"

Spoiler

At a number of political rallies over the year, a character calling himself “Michael the Black Man” has appeared in the crowd directly behind Donald Trump, impossible to miss and possibly planted.

He holds signs that scream “BLACKS FOR TRUMP” and wears a T-shirt proclaiming with equal conviction that “TRUMP & Republicans Are Not Racist.”

Almost always, he plugs his wild website, Gods2.com, across his chest.

And so it was Tuesday night before a crowd of Trump supporters in Phoenix who had come to watch another show. There was the president, whipping up the wildly cheering crowd, and then there was Michael the Black Man, chanting just beyond Trump’s right shoulder in that trademark T-shirt.

The presence of Michael — variously known as Michael Symonette, Maurice Woodside and Mikael Israel — has inspired not only trending Twitter hashtags but a great deal of curiosity and Google searches. Internet sleuths find the man’s bizarre URL, a easily accessible gateway to his strange and checkered past.

The radical fringe activist from Miami once belonged to a violent black supremacist religious cult, and he runs a handful of amateur, unintelligible conspiracy websites. He has called Barack Obama “The Beast” and Hillary Clinton a Ku Klux Klan member. Oprah Winfrey, he says, is the devil.

Most curiously, in the 1990s, he was charged, then acquitted, with conspiracy to commit two murders.

But Michael the Black Man loves President Trump. And President Trump’s campaign apparently loves him right back.

It’s unclear if the White House or President Trump’s campaign officials are aware of Michael the Black Man’s turbulent history or extreme political views, but he and his followers have stumped for the president at his inauguration and the Super Bowl.

In July, he posted video footage of himself at the Mar-a-Lago Club, President Trump’s so-called “Winter White House,” for the Republican Party of Palm Beach County’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner.

Wearing a black dinner coat over a white “BLACKS FOR TRUMP” T-shirt, Michael posed with the local GOP’s chairman, apparently took a photo of first lady Melania Trump and recorded a selfie video that showed his arm slung over the shoulder of Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

“I saw you on TV with Trump,” Scott can be heard telling Michael. “You did a good job.”

At a campaign rally in late October 2016, down in Sanford, Fla., Trump even gave the “BLACKS FOR TRUMP” signs an approving shout-out.

“Look at those signs behind me,” Trump said to the roaring crowd. “Blacks for Trump. I like those signs.”

The candidate, wearing a camouflage “Make America Great Again” hat, turned to the sign-holders and offered a thumbs-up. Michael, standing behind Trump and grinning widely, gave a thumbs-up right back.

“Blacks for Trump,” the candidate said again. “You watch. You watch. Those signs are great, thank you.”

...

The signs drew national attention at the time, but not because of Michael. Rally watchers came away perplexed after one event when white women were seen waving the signs. That same month, New York Magazine and the Miami New Times published articles recounting the sign maker’s story.

Before he started calling himself Michael the Black Man, the man identified as Maurice Woodside. Around 1980, he joined a cult led by Hulon Mitchell Jr., who went by Yahweh Ben Yahweh and eventually turned violent, reported the New Times. The two men met when Woodside was 21 years old.

Woodside followed Yahweh’s fiery teachings for years, even after the leader allegedly denied his dying, cancer-stricken mother medical treatment and instead prescribed her “vegetables, nuts, and herbs,” prosecutors once said in court, according to the New Times.

In the early 1990s, the New Times reported, Woodside, Yahweh and 14 other members of the cult were arrested by federal agents and charged with racketeering and conspiracy in 14 murders and a firebombing, reported the New Times.

Ricardo Woodside, Maurice’s brother, had once been in the cult but left after his mother’s death. Woodside testified in court that his brother had helped beat a man named Aston Green, who argued with Yahweh and was taken to the Florida Everglades and beheaded with a dull machete, reported the New Times.

He also testified that Maurice Woodside was the cult member who stabbed a Louisiana man named Leonard Dupree in the eye with a sharpened stick.

Yahweh was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Maurice Woodside, who denies the cult was violent or murderous, was acquitted along with six others.

“You know why I wasn’t scared?” Woodside told the New Times in 2011, speaking of those charges. “Because Yahweh wasn’t scared!”

In later years, Woodside changed his name to Maurice Symonette. Eventually, he became Michael the Black Man, an anti-Democrat — or as he calls them, Demon-crat — who preaches the Bible and abhors homosexuality. He started a private radio station, BOSS 104.1 FM, to broadcast his radical beliefs, and began causing a ruckus in public.

At an Obama campaign speech in Coral Gables, Fla., in 2008, he and a group of other protesters loudly interrupted the future president, shouting “Barack, go home!” and waving signs that declared “Obama endorsed by the KKK,” reported the Miami New Times.

One sign, held by Michael the Black Man, read: “Blacks against Obama.”

His website, Gods2.com, proclaims on the landing page: “LATIN, BLACK AND WHITE MUST UNITE!”

Links on that site lead to another one, honestfact.com, which claims that the “Real KKK Slave Masters” are “CHEROKEE Indians (Hidden Babylonians).”

The proclamations only get more unhinged from there: “ISIS AND HILLARY RACE WAR PLOT TO KILL ALL BLACK & WHITE WOMAN OF AMERICA WITH MS-13.”

And: “YAHWEH BEN YAHWEH Taught Us To Vote Republican & is Now VINDICATED.”

And: “BLACKS FOR TRUMP SUPPORTS SENATOR JEFF SESSIONS”

The site also displays a photo of a Confederate flag with the caption: “Cherokee Democratic Flag.”

Under the name Maurice Symonette, Michael has posted many videos to YouTube. One, from February 2017, is titled “BLACKS FOR TRUMP calling Trump” and shows Michael giving a message to the president.

He told Trump he was proud of him for winning the election, saying he “conquered the Kingdom of Babylon and delivered everybody out of the sure hands of death.” Then he said he felt like his movement had been left behind in the wake of victory.

“Here we are, the lone Blacks for Trump,” he said in the video. “We’re the helpless. We just helped you by standing behind you.”

But in Phoenix Tuesday night, Michael the Black Man seemed at peace with his president. As supporters chanted “build that wall!,” Trump turned to the roaring crowd behind him and flashed a thumbs up.

Michael flashed one back. Then he smiled and mouthed, “I love you!”

What a nutjob.

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