René Magritte The false mirror 1928
Fight
FIGHT. pic.twitter.com/Q7X1D0ohkn
— Amazing Video (@amazingvideo01) July 14, 2024
“I want to try to unite our country… but I do not know if that is possible. People are very divided.”
• “I’m Supposed To Be Dead” (ZH)
Donald Trump says he’s “supposed to be dead,” and that Saturday’s attempted assassination was a “very surreal experience.” Speaking with the NY Post aboard his private plane en route to Milwaukee for the GOP National Convention, the former president said the doctor called it a ‘miracle.’ “The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” said Trump, whose ear was covered by a loose white bandage. His staff insisted on no pictures. “I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” said Trump. “I’m supposed to be dead.” Trump said that had he not turned his head slightly to the right to read a chart on illegal immigration, it would have been a kill shot instead of having a small piece of his ear torn off, spattering blood on his forehead and cheek.
© AP Photo / Gene J. Puskar
Trump said that as Secret Service agents led him off stage, he still wanted to continue speaking to supporters, but the agents told him it wasn’t safe and they had to get him to a hospital. He marveled at how the agents came flying in like “linebackers” as soon as the shooting started, and he unbuttoned his long-sleeve white shirt to show a large bruise on his right forearm. -NY Post Trump explained that “The agents hit me so hard that my shoes fell off, and my shoes are tight.” He then commended the Secret Service for their heroic actions, and praised them for gunning down the shooter – who had fired from around 130 yards away. Trump also reacted to the iconic photo of him raising his fist as agents tried to get him off the stage. “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen,” he told the Post. “They’re right and I didn’t die. Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture.” “I just wanted to keep speaking, but I just got shot,” he continued.
“He stood flanked by his new running mate JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson on the left, and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and journalist Tucker Carlson on the right.”
• Trump Makes First Public Appearance Since Assassination Attempt (RT)
Former US President Donald Trump was greeted with thunderous applause on the opening night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The four-day convention began just two days after a failed assassination attempt against Trump, who was officially nominated on Monday as the party’s presidential nominee for the November election. The crowd cheered wildly when Trump, with a white bandage on his right ear, appeared on the big screen, walking from backstage to the convention floor to a live version of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” After greeting his supporters, who were chanting “USA! USA!” and “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Trump climbed the stairs to the VIP section. He stood flanked by his new running mate JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson on the left, and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and journalist Tucker Carlson on the right.
Trump tapped JD Vance as vice presidential candidate but did not address the convention on Monday. He is expected to deliver a speech, which he revised in the wake of the shooting, on the final day of the gathering on Thursday. A bullet grazed Trump’s right ear when a gunman fired at least five rounds from a semi-automatic rifle in his direction during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. One spectator was killed and two others severely wounded before the shooter was fatally shot by US Secret Service officers. ”I am not supposed to be here; I am supposed to be dead,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Post on Sunday. The former president said he had prepared “an extremely tough speech… all about the corrupt, horrible administration” for the event in Milwaukee, but “threw it away” after the assassination attempt. ”I want to try to unite our country… but I do not know if that is possible. People are very divided,” he added.
Tucker likes him a lot.
• Trump Picks J.D. Vance As Running Mate (ZH)
48 hours after being shot through the ear at a campaign event, Donald Trump has announced J.D. Vance as his running mate. “After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump posted on Truth Social. Full statement:
After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country. J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond….
Vance, 39, had emerged as the front-runner earlier in the day after sources said that Marco Rubio and Gov. Doug Burgum had been finalists. Both were told on Monday that they were out of the running.Following Saturday’s attempted assassination Vance jumped into action – suggesting on X that President Biden bore responsibility. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” wrote Vance, who went from harsh Trump critic to ardent supporter. Donald Trump Jr. has repeatedly advocated for Vance – who in 2016 privately texted a former Yale roommate that he feared Trump could be “America’s Hitler.” By 2018, however, Vance had softened his tone – viewing Trump as speaking to the frustrations of the very Americans he had written about in his book. Of note, the Ohio Senator is pro-crypto…
Tucker JD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812954934909849746
“I don’t know what the network is, I don’t know which organizations he is tied to, but he didn’t do this on his own..”
• Trump’s Would-Be Assassin Did Not Act ‘on His Own’ – Ex-CIA Officer (Sp.)
On July 13 Donald Trump narrowly survived an attempt on his life when a gunman opened fire at him during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. One bystander was killed and two sustained serious injuries while Trump himself was shot in the ear. The recent attempt on Donald Trump’s life has, among other things, effectively “destroyed the ability of the Democrats going forward to demonize Donald Trump,” says retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson. As the US Democrats consistently sought to brand Trump as an “existential threat… their very language encouraged violence, encouraged killing Trump.” “Now they can’t do that without being accused of inciting violence. And, so now they have to argue on just issues. And when they are supposed to argue on issues, that means, they’re going to fail,” Johnson argued.
Currently, Trump’s political opponents can do little to curb the surge of his popularity in the wake of the assassination attempt, in no small part due to the fact that “they can’t argue the issues,” the ex-CIA officer notes. “What are the issues? Illegal immigration? Well, the Democrats have been enabling that. Inflation? Well, the economy is still plagued with inflation, but people are feeling that at the grocery store and at the gas pump,” Johnson elaborates. “So, their efforts to try to shift to issues, it’s going to be difficult for them, because they’ve been so accustomed to describing Trump as, you know, the personification of Satan.” While the FBI has already announced that the man who is suspected of trying to kill Trump, one Thomas Matthew Crooks, was acting alone, Johnson argues that it is “highly likely” that the gunman “had additional support.” “I don’t know what the network is, I don’t know which organizations he is tied to, but he didn’t do this on his own,” Johnson says.
“There is no way to fake courage like that..”
• I Know A Hero When I See One (David Sacks)
I KNOW A HERO WHEN I SEE ONE. The Washington Post names me, along with as one of several businessmen, who are using their “megaphones” to spread “narratives” about the assassination attempt on President Trump. I’m not sure what “narratives” they’re referring to, but I know what I saw, and I know what the crowd in Butler witnessed live. At it turns out, my father-in-law lives in Pennsylvania and he was at the rally on Saturday. When the shots rang out and Trump went down, he said pandemonium broke out around him. Everyone feared the worst. But then Trump rose. Covered in his own blood, resisting the secret service’s efforts to whisk him away to safety, Trump raised his fist defiantly, and the crowd could see him say: “Fight. Fight. Fight.”
Immediately the fear of the crowd dissipated, the chaotic uncertainty lifted, and it was replaced with steely resolve. The crowd responded back as one: “USA, USA, USA!” This is not a “narrative.” It is the truth. Trump stood defiant in the face of an assassin’s bullet. There is no way to fake courage like that. It was more important for Trump to let the crowd know that he was unbowed and unbroken than to be taken to safety. Donald Trump has already been in the fight of his life for months, as vindictive Democrats seek to imprison him, but on this day he came within inches of losing it. He has risked everything for this country. It is now up to us, the American people, to show him that he does not stand alone. Let us reject the lies, the hoaxes, the hate and the division that the media has spread about this brave man, and support his resounding victory in November.
Sacks
David Sacks Torches the Biden Administration at the 2024 Republican National Convention (Full Speech)
"The Biden / Harris administration has taken a world that was at peace under President Trump and they lit it on fire…Rather than bolstering confidence in American leadership… pic.twitter.com/r9xZDddP3h
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) July 16, 2024
“..if you come at the king, you better not miss.”
• Shocks to the System (Kunstler)
[..] following the election of 2016, scores of government officials from Barack Obama and Joe Biden on down set out to wreck Mr. Trump’s turn in office, and ran one hoax after another to disable and dislodge him, and each hoax was a battery of lies begetting more lies. The style of thinking behind all that is called unprincipled. Many of these lies entailed crimes, some of them gigantic frauds perpetrated on the citizenry such as the ballot-stuffing operation that jammed “Joe Biden” into office — and which you were not permitted to speak of on penalty of cancellation and prosecution.
By 2020, “Joe Biden” had racked up enough bribes from foreign lands that he was susceptible to blackmail and thus to manipulation. That his mind was failing through his entire term only made that easier. Both “Joe Biden” and the Neocon gang at State and the CIA were implicated in a web of crimes in Ukraine, and war there was one way to cover all of it up, so they made sure that war happened. The lies and hoaxes continued to multiply, accompanied by huge, destructive pranks — the George Floyd riots, the drag queens in the kiddie classrooms, the wide-open border, the FBI-instigated J-6 riot — and the Democratic Party was embroidered in that whole tapestry of degenerate politics along with the Deep State blob.
In short, the Democratic Party appears to be guilty of programmatic treason against the people of the United States. They know that a reckoning awaits if Mr. Trump manages to return to office. They’ve known it for years. But two recent Supreme Court decisions really amped up their fears: 1) Trump v. the United States establishes presidential immunity from prosecution for acts involving his core constitutional duties; and 2) Loper Bright v. Raimondo establishes that the federal bureaucracy can no longer rule over citizens unchecked by the courts. Both of these would make it much easier for a President Trump to disassemble the Deep State. And of course, that may lead to the investigation and prosecution of Deep State personae who abused their positions — possibly even prison. . . a discomfiting prospect.
The Democratic Party’s cover got blown on June 27th when Joe Biden had to go live in a debate and displayed his mental incompetency for all to see. That shock to the system forced a scramble to replace “JB” pretty late in the election cycle, since now just enough voters may be indisposed to re-electing an obvious human wreck. But the switcheroo effort seems to have lost traction. And the party may have muffed its blackmail leverage over “Joe Biden.” After all, his briberies are all well-cataloged by the House Oversight Committee, including the vast bank records of the many shell companies set up to receive the bribe money.
Is it possible, though, that “Joe Biden” holds blackmail material over his party confederates? After all, he’s still President. He has access to things you’d never dream of and, demented as he is, he has plenty of help close at hand from Hunter, Dr. Jill, and the Lawfare posse for sorting it out. He probably knows a thing or two about his old pard Barack Obama, too, that would make some folks uncomfortable. So, looks like “JB” is fixing to hang in there as his party’s nominee, and whoever doesn’t like it can go suck an egg.
After the stunning events of Saturday evening, it also looks like candidate “Joe Biden” would go down in flames against Donald Trump on November 5, stuffed drop-boxes and all. Not a few Democratic Party bigshots have already made noises about leaving the country if that happens, possibly to nations lacking extradition treaties with the USA. Many others must be gobbling Xanax like Tic Tacs now that Donald Trump has survived the ultimate affront to his existence. You know the old nugget of wisdom: if you come at the king, you better not miss. Ooops.
He knows very well what he said. And why.
• Biden Defends His ‘Put Trump In Bullseye’ Remark (RT)
US President Joe Biden has dismissed any notion that his rhetoric might incite violence, claiming that by calling for a “bullseye” on Donald Trump he was merely trying to shift the “focus” from his poor debate performance to his Republican rival’s actions and policies. The incumbent has repeatedly called his rival a threat to democracy and the nation and told donors earlier this month, “We’re done talking about the debate; it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.” Following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, multiple commentators argued that the violence was incited by exactly this kind of reckless remark. In an interview on Monday, Biden insisted it was a “mistake” and merely a figure of speech when NBC News anchor Lester Holt asked him about using the term “bullseye.”
“I didn’t say ‘crosshairs.’ I meant ‘bullseye,’” Biden clarified. “I meant focus on him. Focus on what he’s doing, focus on his policies, focus on the number of lies he told in the debate. Focus on… I mean there is a whole range of things that… Look, I am not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one. I am not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election.” Asked whether the shooting prompted him to do “some soul searching” and reflect on comments “that could incite people who are not balanced,” the incumbent deflected, arguing that it was Trump, not him, who has routinely used incendiary rhetoric for years.
”How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say something because it may incite somebody?” Biden wondered, recalling Trump’s pledge to become a “dictator” for just one day and his warning about a potential “bloodbath” if he loses. “I have not engaged in that rhetoric… My opponent has engaged in that rhetoric.” On Saturday, a gunman later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks fired several shots at Trump while he was giving a speech on an open-air stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. A bullet grazed the former president’s right ear, but he was otherwise unharmed. One spectator was killed, and two more were wounded before the attacker was neutralized by Secret Service agents. Although the attack was widely condemned by both Republicans and Democrats, Trump supporters have argued that the Democrats and the media were guilty of inciting hatred against Trump.
Oh puhleeze. 3 years too late?!
• Biden Orders Security For Kennedy (RT)
Independent US presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., whose father was killed on the campaign trail, had long requested Secret Service protection to no avail, despite multiple security incidents. US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on Monday that “in light of this weekend’s events, the president has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Robert Kennedy Jr.” “Thank you, President Biden, for extending me Secret Service protection,” Kennedy said in a statement, also expressing gratitude to the security firm Gavin de Becker & Associates for “keeping me safe for the past 15 months of my presidential campaign.” The announcement comes shortly after Trump demanded that Kennedy receive protection. “In light of what is going on in the world today, I believe it is imperative that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. receive Secret Service protection – immediately,” the former president wrote on Truth Social. “Given the history of the Kennedy family, this is the obvious right thing to do!”
It is a hopeful sign for our country when a political opponent calls for one's protection. Maybe our country can unite after all. pic.twitter.com/Nfd3yXAh1F
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 15, 2024
Kennedy met with Trump earlier on Monday to discuss “national unity,” and said he hoped to meet with “Democratic leaders about that as well,” dismissing rumors that he was planning to drop out of the race. Trump survived an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday when a gunman fired at least five rounds from an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in his direction, with one bullet grazing his right ear. A Trump supporter was killed, and two others were severely wounded in the attack. The assailant was shot dead on site by Secret Service officers. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose uncle, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and father, New York senator and presidential candidate, were both assassinated over half a century ago, filed an application for Secret Service protection last year. Despite several follow-ups, his requests were rejected by the White House.
Kennedy, who initially challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination before launching an independent bid last year, suffered multiple security incidents on his campaign trail. Last September, an armed man impersonating a federal officer was detained at his campaign event, while in October, a man was arrested for trespassing at his Los Angeles home.
“Take your secret service and shove it up your ass.”
• Bobby Kennedy III Slams US Secret Service (RT)
Bobby Kennedy III, a member of the famous American political dynasty that has experienced the ‘Kennedy curse’ of assassinations, deaths, and accidents, has slammed the US Secret Service’s failure to detect Donald Trump’s attacker before he fired shots at the former president. According to eyewitnesses who spoke to the media, the suspect was seen on the rooftop of a manufacturing plant shortly before he targeted Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. “Unsecured rooftop 150 yards away. Multiple witnesses saying they were screaming at secret service and cops for 3-4 minutes as they watched the guy with the rifle crawl to the spot and line up his shot, Kennedy III wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. “Take your secret service and shove it up your ass.” Kennedy III is the son of current presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – whose uncle, former US President John F. Kennedy, and father, a New York senator and presidential candidate, were both assassinated in the 1960s.
Regarding the attempt on Trump’s life, eyewitnesses and video footage have depicted a chaotic scene as shots rang out at the event. Concerns have mounted about the level of security in the aftermath of the shooting, after multiple witnesses said police did not respond to warnings about the presence of the would-be assassin. The suspect, later identified as 20-year-old local Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed on the spot by Secret Service snipers. One bystander told the BBC that minutes before the attack, he and other people had seen a man crawling up on the roof carrying a rifle, and had tried to alert the police. “He had a rifle, we could clearly see a rifle,” Greg Smith told the broadcaster. “We’re like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle’… and the police did not know what was going on.”
In another report, law enforcement officials told the AP that a local policeman had spotted the shooter on the roof moments before he tried to kill Trump. However, the officer reportedly failed to stop the gunman after he pointed his AR-style rifle at him. “The fact that we’re hearing that people knew that there was a man on this roof with a gun, and were trying to get police attention while the president was up at the podium is just incredibly cause for concern and, I think, very frustrating for everyone,” Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN on Sunday. Trump narrowly escaped death after his attacker fired at least five shots. The presidential candidate was grazed by one of the bullets, sustaining a wound to his right ear. At least one rallygoer was killed in the attack by stray bullets, with two others sustaining gunshot wounds.
“After numerous attempts to eliminate the Trump candidate from the political arena using first legal tools, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was obvious for his life to be in danger.”
• Russian Reaction To The Trump Assassination Attempt Is Biblical (Helmer)
The Russian reaction to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is a combination – idol, whirlwind, sin, destruction, God, payoff — plus deep suspicion that either President Joseph Biden or Trump’s organization, or both of them, had a hand in fabricating what happened, plus conviction that they are now capitalizing on the outcome for all they are worth. The official line was given by the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman on sowing the whirlwind. The Kremlin spokesman followed with the calf of Samaria. “Yesterday,” wrote Maria Zakharova of the Foreign Ministry on Telegram, “one of the leaders of the Kiev regime, [Kirill] Budanov, openly admitted that Ukrainian intelligence was preparing attempts on the President of Russia. So this attempt was being prepared, again, for American money, without which there would have been no malicious activity of the GUR, the SBU and, in general, Bankova [the presidential office ].
With massive financing and uncontrolled supply of weapons, Washington has created a terrorist structure in Ukraine – the Kiev regime. It is a machine of murders, bombings, exterminations, and terrorist attacks against both political figures and civilians…TheUnited States of America should take stock of its policy of inciting hatred against political opponents, countries and people, and sponsoring terrorism. The bell is already ringing for Washington!” Dmitry Peskov for President Vladimir Putin said there is “no plan” for the latter to telephone Trump. He then implied the Biden plot by making a qualified denial. “We do not think and do not believe that the attempt to eliminate the presidential candidate Trump was organized by the current authorities, but the atmosphere that was created by this administration in the course of the political struggle, the atmosphere around the candidate Trump, it was that which provoked what today faced with America.”
Peskov then tipped the Kremlin in Trump’s direction: “After numerous attempts to eliminate the Trump candidate from the political arena using first legal tools, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was obvious for his life to be in danger.” The state news agency RIA-Novosti tipped even further for Trump. “The assassination attempt on Donald Trump is surprising only because it happened on July 13, and not earlier — a year, three or eight years ago. The upstart, who challenged not only most of the American establishment, but also the ‘Washington swamp’ as such, has risked his head very much all these years… It is clear that now the ‘swamp denizens’ are biting their elbows because they did not think to kill Trump before November 2016: they underestimated the threat, did not believe in the reality of his victory.”
Tsargrad, an internet platform of Russian exceptionalism and Orthodoxy, treats Trump as a Russian ally in the war against Biden. “A bullet in Trump’s head is a blow to Russia: What remains behind the scenes of the assassination attempt on the ex-president of the United States — a real assassination attempt or a staging? The question, in fact, is not idle, especially in relation to Russia. After the appearance of an increasing number of details in the case of the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump, a lot of interesting things come up behind the scenes of the assassination attempt… This is the true face of hegemony and the unipolar world: anyone who is against globalism, who stands in its way, is first subject to demonization (through the tools of the abolition culture), then physical elimination…Globalists don’t care about the United States, just like everyone else. They need planetary power, the absolute power of supernational capital. And all countries, including America and Europe itself, are just tools in creating a World Government. Trump is for America and against the World Government. As Putin is for Russia, Xi Jinping is for China, Modi is for India, and Orban, Fico, Marine Le Pen and AfD are for Europe,”
Can he try again? Perhaps not as Special Counsel?
• Trump Classified Docs Case Dismissed, Jack Smith Unconstitutional (ZH)
US District Court Judge Eileen Cannon has dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents case, ruling that the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional. “The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers,” Cannon wrote in her decision. “He can be appointed and confirmed through the default method prescribed in the Appointments Clause, as Congress has directed for United States Attorneys throughout American history.” “Dismissal of this action is the only appropriate solution for the Appointments Clause violation.” The ruling comes after Judge Cannon had indefinitely postponed the trial, and followed a May hearing in which Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta argued that the Justice Department’s Special Counsel’s Office decision to prosecute the valet was “both selective and vindictive.”
The ruling marks another blockbuster legal victory for Trump, following the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling that the former president has immunity from prosecution for many of his actions in office. According to Reuters, prosecutors are likely to appeal the ruling, as courts in other cases have repeatedly upheld the ability of the DOJ to appoint special counsels for politically sensitive investigations. But Cannon’s ruling throws the future of the case, which once posed serious legal peril for Trump, into doubt. Smith is also prosecuting Trump in federal court in Washington over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but his lawyers have not made a similar challenge to the special counsel in that case.
In the documents case, Trump was indicted on charges that he willfully retained sensitive national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club after leaving office and obstructed government efforts to retrieve the material. Trump’s attorneys challenged the legal authority of Biden AG Merrick Garland’s 2022 decision to appoint Smith – arguing that the appointment violated the Constitution because his office was not created by Congress, nor was Smith confirmed by the Senate.
The dismissal of the classified documents case is a seismic development. From the beginning of all of these cases, I have said that the Mar-a-Lago case was the greatest threat to the former president. It is now dismissed.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 15, 2024
Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also boosted Trump’s challenge – directly questioning the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment. Thomas used similar arguments to those made by Trump’s legal team.
Ha! They pull their no. 1 show just “to provide coverage via a single news feed..”
• MSNBC Yanks Morning Joe On Fears Of Inappropriate Trump Shooting Comments (ZH)
MSNBC has taken its celebrated “Morning Joe” off-air on Monday reportedly on fears that their well-known leftist hosts could say the wrong thing or something deeply insensitive about the Saturday Trump assassination attempt which could leave the network in a bind. The show is missing in action on this crucial day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “The progressive news network confirmed the decision to preempt its influential and top-rated morning show after a CNN inquiry Sunday evening,” CNN confirms. “The network said the show will resume airing Tuesday.” As speculation abounds, and as some try to dubiously claim that it’s ‘normal’ for Morning Joe to not air during a major political news event, NBC issued the following statement: “Given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story, NBC News, NBC News NOW and MSNBC have remained in rolling breaking news coverage since Saturday evening,” a spokesperson said.
The press release followed with: “As we continue to cover this story into the week, the networks will continue to cross simulcast, alternating between NBC News, NBC News NOW and ‘MSNBC Reports,’ so there is one news feed covering this developing situation.” CNN then admitted the following based on one of its sources: “A person familiar with the matter told CNN that the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole.” Indeed there is a long history of show hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski making astounding and highly incendiary claims which leave network executives facing scrutiny and having to field difficult questions. At the very least, the decision to pull the program on Monday displays lack of trust in the long-running program and hosts by top network leadership.
Conservative pundit Laura Loomer sounded off in wake of the decision, pointing out the following: “MSNBC has pulled Morning Joe off air this week because they don’t think their leftist hosts can control themselves from celebrating the attempted assassination of President Trump. Let’s be honest. The rhetoric from MSDNC, CNN, WAPO, NY TIMES and Joe Biden is a contributing factor to why Donald Trump almost had a bullet in his skull this week. They have been inciting violence against Trump for years, calling him Hitler, saying he’s a dictator and a “threat to democracy”. The shooter was probably even a Morning Joe viewer. I’d be willing to take that bet.”
Ironically some on the Left are miffed at the display of obvious lack of trust, with Liberal journalist Jeff Jarvis questioning on X, “What the f—, MSNBC? You preempted your excellent weekend programming… and now you’ve silenced [Morning Joe] in favor of your anodyne streaming news cos-play called Now?” “This is when we need the analysis and conversation these shows bring us (yes, with controversy; that is how public discourse works through it: with discussion),” he continued. “It is shocking that NBC/Comcast do not understand their own company’s programs and raison d’etre.” But again, MSNBC has not alluded to any deeper reasons behind temporarily pulling the program other than to say it wishes to provide coverage via a single news feed.
Media.
• There’s Another Culprit In The Trump Murder Attempt (Bridge)
Americans from across the political spectrum were treated to yet more evidence that Donald Trump is an invincible force that cannot be easily reckoned with. But this perception will do little to mitigate the media hostility that poisons the US political scene. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time. Trump, who was addressing a crowd of supporters in Butler, Pennsylvania, was grazed by an assassin’s bullet during a campaign speech (how the would-be killer managed to get so close to the Republican frontrunner amid an army of Secret Service agents is a question for another day). What must concern Americans now is what exactly triggered this latest display of political violence. Several commentators pointed to reckless remarks Joe Biden made on a call with donors earlier this month, when the incumbent leader reportedly said: “I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump… So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”
JD Vance, the senator from Ohio and a top contender to be Trump’s running mate, said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter): “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” While that is true, it is the media that happily promulgates such dangerous messages and which must be held at least partially responsible for the atmosphere of hate that now permeates the US political scene. While we constantly hear reports about unhinged individuals being ‘politically motivated,’ how about we give more attention to those who have been ‘media motivated’?
For starters, consider last month’s issue of the New Republic, a left-leaning political journal that featured on its cover a portrait of Trump made to resemble Adolf Hitler along with the inscription, “American fascism, what it would look like.” One month later and on the day of the shooting, the journal was whistling a different tune. “As I write these words, we don’t know what motivated 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to try to assassinate Trump,” wrote the TNR columnist Michael Tomasky, feigning ignorance and disbelief. “But whatever his motivation turns out to be, his act not isolated (sic)… I’d write that we’re about to enter a very dark period, but in fact we entered it long ago, and there’s no end in sight.”
You don’t say, Michael? As to be expected, there was no sign of Trump sporting the Hitler moustache to accompany the article. After reading literally hundreds of such hypocritical pieces that totally lack self-awareness, it becomes more obvious that the entire political field is rigged in favor of one team, namely the Democrats, over those of the Republicans. While the two factions enjoy roughly 50% support of the electorate, it’s no secret (although a great mystery) that the liberal left enjoys far greater public reach due to its overwhelming control of the national media. Thus, Democrats have much greater trust in the media since it generally reflects their own values.
“..based on a realistic assessment of the situation” and on setting “realistic goals..”
• Orban Delivers Ukraine Peace Proposals To EU (RT)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has sent proposals to EU leaders on ways to resolve the Ukrainian conflict, newspaper Magyar Nemzet reported on Monday, citing the PM’s political adviser Balazs Orban. The proposals are said to be based on the results of the premier’s controversial peace mission earlier this month, during which he visited Ukraine, Russia, and China. Orban provided EU leaders with a detailed account of his visits, and delivered Budapest’s action plan to their desks, Balazs Orban (no relation) told the newspaper. The adviser described Budapest’s proposals as being “based on a realistic assessment of the situation” and on setting “realistic goals,” without elaborating further. Balazs Orban claimed that there are “pro-war” political forces in the EU, and that the bloc is following the lead of the current US administration, which, he said, wants the conflict to continue.
”If Europe wants peace and wants to have a decisive say in the settlement of the war [in Ukraine] and the end of the bloodshed, then the change of course must be worked out and implemented now,” the adviser said. Hungary is one of the few member states to criticize the bloc’s stance on the conflict. Budapest has refused to go along with Brussels and send weapons to Kiev. It has also stalled financial aid to Ukraine. Viktor Orban’s recent visit to Moscow was condemned by senior EU figures, with Brussels seeking to distance itself from Orban’s efforts. According to the prime minister’s adviser, external mediators, such as China and Türkiye, could be vital to helping negotiate peace.
Hungary plans to use the six months of its rotating presidency of the, which began in July, to create conditions for peace talks. “If the union does not act now, it may not be able to act later,” Balazs Orban warned. During his visit to Kiev, the Hungarian leader called on Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire with Russia, a proposal the latter rejected. President Putin has repeatedly insisted that the hostilities can only end if Ukraine fulfills several of Russia’s demands – including legally binding guarantees that Kiev will not seek NATO membership, and the withdrawal of troops from the whole of Donbass, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. Kiev, along with its Western backers, have rejected the proposal, calling it an unacceptable ultimatum.
They want NO FUTURE. None.
• Ex-US NATO Ambassador Tells Ukraine To Conscript Teenagers (RT)
Kiev should send 18-year-olds to fight Russia to increase the likelihood of victory, former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder has argued. Earlier this year, Ukraine lowered the draft threshold from 27 to 25 years as part of a major overhaul of the military service system, aimed at boosting mobilization rates. “This is a war being fought by 40-year-olds,” Daalder told Euronews on the sidelines of last week’s NATO summit in the US. “No other war in history has been fought by 40-year-olds.” “You need to get 18-year-olds, and you need to get 20-year-olds, and you need to get 21-year-olds, which is what every army in the rest of the world relies on,” he added. Both Russia and Ukraine have a system of mandatory conscription of young adult males, but 18-years-olds are not deployed to the frontline by either country.
Moscow has said it fully relies on contracted volunteers rather than mobilized reservists in the conflict with its NATO-backed neighbor, with roughly 1,000 people recruited per day, according to senior Russian officials. Daalder served as the US ambassador under President Barack Obama. He currently heads the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, a prominent corporate-funded think tank known for a hawkish foreign policy. Kiev has reformed its military since suffering significant casualties during last year’s failed attempt to push back Russian forces using Western-donated weapons. Draft avoidance emerged as a major problem, with many Ukrainian men risking their lives trying to cross the western border illegally. Weeks before Vladimir Zelensky signed into law the lowering of the draft age, US Senator Lindsey Graham urged him to do so during a trip to Kiev.
He said: “I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27. You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving – not at 25 or 27.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Ukrainian citizens to embrace the new rules, after they took effect in May. “Your recent mobilization was a difficult decision, but a necessary one,” he said in a speech at a prestigious Ukrainian university. Joining the military will “allow you to harden your defenses, to build more units, to take the fight to Russian aggressors.” Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Lozinsky said last month that a further reduction of the draft age was possible “if we are still fighting for our existence.” His political party Golos is widely considered to be aligned with US interests in the country.
“The Global Alliance for Responsible Media is too sophisticated to simply bullhorn groups into silence. Instead, it strangles them financially.”
• Elon Musk is Right: End the Online Censorship Racket (Turley)
Few Americans have ever heard of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, let alone understand how it shapes what they read and hear in news and commentary. That may soon change. An alarming new report of the House Judiciary Committee details this organization’s work to censor conservative and opposing viewpoints in the media by targeting figures such as Joe Rogan and entire social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter). It is part of a massive censorship system that a federal court recently described as “Orwellian.” The sophistication of this system makes authoritarian regimes like China’s and Iran’s look like mere amateurs in censorship and blacklisting. In my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage,” I discuss our history of speech crackdowns and how this is arguably the most dangerous anti-free speech period that we have faced as a nation. The reason is an unprecedented alliance of government, corporate, academic and media institutions supporting censorship and the targeting of largely conservative viewpoints.
As discussed in the book, there is a crushing irony to the current anti-free speech movement. During the Red Scare and the McCarthy period, it was the left that was targeted with blacklisting, censorship and arrests. It is now the left that has constructed a global censorship system that exceeds anything that Joe McCarthy even dreamt of in the control of news and commentary. Through the years, I have testified repeatedly in Congress on this system supported enthusiastically by President Biden and his administration. It has proven to be a frustrating game of whack-a-mole for civil libertarians. The Democrats in Congress have uniformly opposed any investigation or action on censorship while denying for years that there was a coordinated effort between government and corporations. When we were successful in uncovering components of this system, they were often quickly shut down as the work shifted to other components and assets.
One of the most insidious efforts has been to strangle the financial life out of conservative or libertarian sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns. Years ago, I wrote about the Biden administration supporting efforts like the Global Disinformation Index to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the 10 riskiest sites targeted by the index were popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. That included Reason.org and a group of libertarian and conservative law professors who simply write about cases and legal controversies. The Global Disinformation Index warned advertisers against “financially supporting disinformation online.” At the same time, HuffPost, a far-left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.
Once that index’s work and bias was disclosed, government officials quickly disavowed the funding. It was a familiar pattern. Within a few years, we found that the work had been shifted instead to groups like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which is the same thing on steroids. It is the creation of a powerful and largely unknown group called the World Federation of Advertisers, which has huge sway over the advertising industry and was quickly used by liberal activists to silence opposing views and sites by cutting off their revenue streams. These censorship groups typically proclaim that they are merely trying to promote “brand safety” when they target for suppression the same sites that challenge the political and media establishment. The group states that it “unites marketers, media agencies, media platforms, industry associations, and advertising technology solutions providers to safeguard the potential of digital media by reducing the availability and monetization of harmful content online.”
That “harmful content” seems to be the very same sites long targeted by the Biden administration and its allies in business, the media and academia. The internal communications of these censorship groups demonstrate their contributors’ underlying agenda. In one conversation between Global Alliance for Responsible Media co-founder Rob Rakowitz and individuals with an associated “GroupM,” two executives explained to Rakowitz how they identified sites that they did not like and simply monitored them until they could find something that crossed the line. An example is the Daily Wire, a site hated by liberals for its conservative viewpoints and critiques of mainstream media.
In describing how they work to bag such sites, John Montgomery, executive vice president of Global Brand Safety, explained: “There is an interesting parallel here with Breitbart. Before Breitbart crossed the line and started spouting blatant misinformation, we had long discussions about whether we should include them on our exclusion lists. As much as we hated their ideology and bulls–t, we couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion. We watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line.” In other words, they preselected the sites and then followed their every move like a patrol unit following a car to wait for them to go one mile per hour over the limit. This is called “deplatforming,” a favorite term from higher education, whereby liberal groups organize to shout down and block speakers with opposing views. The Global Alliance for Responsible Media is too sophisticated to simply bullhorn groups into silence. Instead, it strangles them financially.
Pepsi
When Coca Cola announced it sold 4 times more than Pepsi in 2001, Pepsi responded with this commercial.pic.twitter.com/yZVe2G8nKL
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 16, 2024
Meonk
— Meonk! (@majeliskucing) July 14, 2024
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812845098469908600
Pigeon cat
This pigeon comes every day to visit this cat and this is what happens. pic.twitter.com/70SaiK74bc
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 16, 2024
Elephant
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812727308475683222
Orca
This is why Orcas are the apex predators of the ocean pic.twitter.com/NRXEIg4ywi
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 15, 2024
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