Are you sick of Republicans? Or just right-wingers in general? Do you want to send a message to Washington that you aren't going to buy into their racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic and classist nonsense for one second longer? Then do the very thing that Donald Trump unintentionally encouraged in a recent tweet: Encourage Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2020! Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time. She just can’t stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2017 I'm sure this is the part where the Clinton-haters — be they Trumpers, Bernie Bros or anything in between — will say something to the effect of, "Of course he wants her to run again. That's the only way he'll get re-elected!" Slow your roll there. Clinton's poll numbers aren't too good right now (OK, they're downright atrocious), but there are still four great reasons to consider choosing her as the Democratic nominee in 2020. Even better, all but one of them has to do with an emotion that has no place in this season (which is why I absolutely had to write this article for Thanksgiving weekend): Spite. Delicious, nutritious spite. 1. Hillary Clinton is the Winston Churchill to Vladimir Putin's Adolf Hitler. I agree with the basic principle of Godwin's Law: The first person to invoke Hitler in a political debate should normally lose. The exception, of course, has to be when someone has genuine Hitler-like qualities. A foreign despot who has invaded neighboring countries and has a right-wing nationalist agenda is about as Nazi-like as you can get. This is where Clinton offers a quality that no politician in America can beat. While Republicans are trying to tar her with a bogus scandal connecting her to Russia (and anyone who believes Clinton did something wrong in the Uranium One deal lacks credibility on all matters political), the reality is that no candidate can be better described as Russia's nemesis than Clinton. Putin has always hated Clinton because of his innate sexism, which has manifested in his policies, and she certainly didn't endear herself to him by publicly criticizing Russian corruption in 2011. As the ample connections between the Trump campaign and Russia or its water-carriers like WikiLeaks clearly demonstrate, the one person we know we can trust more than anyone is the candidate who Putin very obviously did not want to see as America's president. 2. Hillary Clinton being elected president (at last) would monumentally piss off misogynistic trolls, and what's not to like about that? I can't think of a single political figure in recent American history who has been hated as deeply, or for as long, as Hillary Clinton. From the moment she emerged on the national stage in 1992 as a distinctly feminist prospective first lady, she has been the target of right-wing wrath woefully out of proportion to anything she has ever said or done. The reason for this is sexism. It's not the chic thing to say right now, but no other explanation really makes sense. Yes, Hillary Clinton is more centrist than either party likes these days, but why is she singled out for opprobrium here when her husband — who actually served as president — remains popular despite holding the exact same views? The same point can be made about the claim that she is corrupt or too establishment. To the extent that these accusations are valid, they are no more true of Clinton than of the vast majority of politicians from both parties (especially Trump). At the very least, the next Democratic presidential candidate needs to be a woman — perhaps not Clinton specifically, but certainly a woman, to offset the symbolic gut-punch of the first female candidate getting cheated by an overt misogynist. And speaking of cheating ... 3. By winning the popular vote convincingly in 2016, Hillary Clinton has earned the right to be considered the presumptive nominee in 2020. As I wrote in September, Clinton is the first defeated presidential candidate to win the popular vote without being automatically considered a frontrunner in the next election. Two of the previous four popular vote-winning also-rans were actually elected in the subsequent cycle (Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Grover Cleveland in 1892), while two others were widely regarded as frontrunners before dropping out for personal reasons (Samuel Tilden and Al Gore). Let us not forget that, for all of the smack talk about how poorly Clinton ran her campaign, she bested Trump by nearly 3 million votes. This was no razor-thin margin of victory, but a decisive expression of the American public's preference. In terms of percentage points, her margin of victory was roughly comparable to that by which Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford in 1976 or George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004. She also held Trump to a lower percentage of the popular vote than that garnered by Mitt Romney in 2012. 4. We can expect her to be a good president. Frankly, the worst thing that can be said about a potential 2020 Clinton candidacy, especially in America's current cultural and political climate, is that her husband still hasn't answered for the numerous sexual abuse accusations against him. While it may seem unfair for Hillary to be held accountable for Bill's alleged predations, it can plausibly be argued that she played a role in helping him cover them up. If that is ever proved beyond a reasonable doubt, she should be given the heave-ho. Then again, Bill Clinton is also widely associated with the economic, social and foreign policy conditions of the beloved 1990s, and is greatly missed for that reason. And since few dispute that Hillary was her husband's co-president during that halcyon decade, that association can still remain a giant advantage. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Clinton demonstrated through the 2016 Democratic National Committee platform that she would work with progressives on pursuing a policy agenda very close to their own goals. On issues ranging from raising the minimum wage and fighting global warming to scaling back the war on drugs, she would stand exactly where the majority of grassroots activists in the party want her to be. Plus — while this has been noted countless times before, it deserves repetition — she has ample experience as a U.S. senator and secretary of state in actually getting things done. That ability to get things done, by the way, is why Clinton had high approval ratings as secretary of state (usually in the 60s), even proving more popular than President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in 2011 and 2012. Her stock may be low now, but it's been low in the past (such as when she "ran" to be first lady in 1992), and it has always recovered. Arguably the big political question facing a potential Hillary 2020 campaign will be whether that bounce occurs at a fortuitous moment for her. It very well could, and wouldn't that be a giant helping of the dish best served cold?


The rise of right wing nationalism comes with a massive side dose of bad faith arguments. So argues Sasha Polakow-Suransky, the author of “ Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy," which examines the explosion of far-right anti-immigration politics in both Europe and the United States. People like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen are reactionaries, Polakow-Suransky told me on "Salon Talks," but they like to hide behind liberal values like equality and secularism when launching attacks on Muslim immigrants. “What these parties are doing, especially in France and Holland, is they’re telling gays, they’re telling feminists, and they’re telling Jews even, ‘We are the only ones who will protect you,” he said. “The threat all of you face is from Islam and Muslims and we’re the only party that can stand up to that.’” These politicians want voters to believe they’re not neo-Nazis and skinheads, he continued, but in reality, they’re “weaponizing secularism to target a specific group.” Polakow-Suransky, who is an Open Society Foundations fellow and has held previous positions as an op-ed editor at the New York Times and as a senior editor at Foreign Affairs, says he sees similarity in how “our president reacts to a horrible terrorist attack,” such as the murders in New York City on Halloween, and other crimes. “You see a real gulf between the reactions to any crime perpetrated by an Islamic extremist and crimes committed by white nationalists or other groups,” Polakow-Suransky said. “I think that shows they’re targeting a specific group rather than talking about universal values that we all share.” Watch our full "Salon Talks" conversation on Facebook. Tune into Salon's live shows, "Salon Talks" and "Salon Stage," daily at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT and 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT, streaming live on Salon and on Facebook.


Donald Trump has been hiding in plain sight. Or not hiding. Seldom, if ever, has an American politician so aggressively acted out and imposed his unfiltered personality on the public, consequences be damned. And yet, the final weeks of the presidential campaign now are wholly centered on the media's shocking revelations about who he really is. "Well, where have you been?" is one glaring question for the media. The other is about how complicit the media has been in covering for him until now. Trump is a thrice-married beauty pageant owner, a compulsive attention seeker and a sexual braggart. The possibility of him not engaging in lewd, loutish, outre and, for a presidential candidate, scandalous behavior is nil. Was no one in the media looking? Did nobody care about the details? Or was it just not possible to believe what was as clear as the noses on our faces? A journalist's job can't be so easy as that. Or, perhaps, it was just a case of not wanting to belabor the obvious: It would hardly seem to advance the discussion to insist that Trump is an oaf, brute, philistine and cad, which is, of course, exactly the shocked — shocked! — point that now repeatedly is being made in the campaign's final days. Or, as the candidate uniquely created and promoted by the media, has he been gamely protected and tolerated through stages of amusement, gratefulness ("It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," said CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves earlier in the cycle, no doubt now regretfully), incredulity and alarm, until we reached the horror stage in September with a sudden leveling of the polls, prompting the media to act in righteous concert? The unavoidable awkwardness, of course, is that so many of the details about Trump's particular sort of sleaziness, so many smoking guns, actually have been in the hands of the media all along. The more or less fatal bullet came from the NBC-owned infotainment show Access Hollywood. Billy Bush, who would become a Today show regular this summer — that is, an employee of the NBC News division of NBCUniversal — was the other party to the tape. He knew! Reports indicate that inside NBC he was talking openly about what he knew since this past August. Still, perhaps this wasn't seen so much as news but as Trump being Trump, as hilarity. Really, does the video reveal anything about Trump that was not previously known? Bush, now losing his Today role, becomes something of a tragic figure in this. In the business of stroking celebrities, he now is reviled for stroking one. Likewise, NBC, ever on the job of the care and maintenance of NBC stars, was no doubt instinctively reluctant to shoot one — one, as it happens, running for president. Part of the rationale about the video's news value, and for why the media should be so righteous about stomping on Trump now, is the seeming singularity of the vulgarity in Trump's own voice. (For those without television or internet, he told Bush, among other things, he "moved" on Bush's Access Hollywood co-anchor Nancy O'Dell "like a bitch" and noted "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.") To have imagined it, to have intellectually appreciated what it must be, is nothing like actually hearing it. And yet, it turns out his real voice, offering a detailed and nuanced account of his sexual views and habits, was not at all unique. What he said theoretically in private to Bush he has said publicly over and over again with many variations — including agreeing with the description of himself as a sexual predator — to Howard Stern, for 30 years a leading champion of sexual harassment practices. Trump himself — recalling Gary Hart's fatal invitation to reporters to follow him if they didn't believe his claims of virtue — assured Anderson Cooper during the second debate that, in fact, he really didn't do the things he said he did. Voila! Among the accounts to swiftly contradict him was one from a former People reporter, Natasha Stoynoff, assigned to cover Trump and Melania at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 on the occasion of their first wedding anniversary. During the interview, in Stoynoff's telling, Trump sexually assaults her with a sudden kiss and grope. It is pretty much only Trump himself who now points out that the article she wrote based on this interview is a celebratory one. Nobody else, least of all anyone in the media, is saying People published a fraudulent story. It lied: People had firsthand proof the marriage was something other than what it said it was but drooled sycophantically over the couple anyway. The influence of People contributed to creating the celebrity stature of Trump. Now, with no more information than it had then, it wants to take that stature back. Who's responsible for what? Who's less trustworthy here? Another aspect of the media rationale for why now and not before involves the recently enshrined journalistic principle that the testimony of one victim brings out supporting testimony of others — and now there's a growing list of Trump grope victims — quite putting aside the fact that when witnesses have the opportunity to compare accounts, that necessarily lessens reliability. While it is wholly believable that Trump systematically mashed a lot of women, it also is as reasonable that the rudeness and grossness he has made no secret of, only now, in the tailoring of a chorus of accounts (lawyers shaping the language of decade-old memories) inflates to a media consensus of sociopathic if not criminal behavior. Indeed, The New York Times, when it previously pursued the issue of Trump's behavior toward women for an article in May, relying on independent accounts, came up with an entirely different tenor of story — "a complex, at times contradictory portrait of a wealthy, well-known and provocative man and the women around him, one that defies simple categorization." Trump, not surprisingly, now that he has been simply categorized as a sex abuser, makes matters worse for himself. By attacking the media — with toothless threats of lawsuits — he fortifies its unity and its certainty. But you can see why he's hurt and confused. For so long the media encouraged him to be Donald Trump. Thirty years of enabling him and encouraging him. And through more than 18 months of campaigning for president, it really seemed like he was going to get away with being who he was. But let no one forget: The media, if it makes you — in this instance with great civic resolve — can break you, too. This story first appeared in the Nov. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.


After Colin Kaepernick rightly chose to kneel during the national anthem before NFL games, many racists and idiots came out with critical response to what was a peaceful, important statement against police brutality and systemic American racism. That’s what Kap’s protest is about. Brutality and racism. Violence against people of color, unimpugned state violence at that. Kap’s protest is strictly against racism, which is what this country was built on. On the backs of African slaves shipped here catch-style to do white people’s work. Kap’s protest is decidedly not against the American flag. Anyone — including our moron President — that tries to argue otherwise is themselves a moron. “But the troops!” you might scream. The troops are a manifold and variegated thing. Here’s a former Marine sayingthat Kap’s protest is nececcesary. Chaps is good. Many of them fight for Kaepernick’s right to stand down during the national anthem. You want to shit on those troops too? Here’s a picture of Laremy Tunsil, a wonderful and beautiful left tackle, kneeling out of solidarity with fellow Americans before Sunday’s game against the New York Jets, which the Dolphins lost, 20-6. That doesn’t matter at all, though. He kneels at left. Hat off to Tunsil for this action. “Respecting the flag” and “respecting the anthem” before football games are perhaps the dumbest notions floated among sports fans. Sporting events are not flag-worthy at all. Nobody else in the world does this. Further, THESE ATHLETES ARE HUMAN PEOPLE. Laremy Tunsil is a real person with real political beliefs, and his political beliefs include “black people shouldn’t be killed by the police with impunity.” That’s a pertinent thing to assert. Tunsil’s politicism is important.


Trump is so far off the reservation that he is claiming that Republican Special Counsel Robert Mueller is a Democrat who worked for Obama for eight years. Neither of these statements is true. Video: Trump said, “But you have a group of investigators that are all Democrats. In some cases, they went to the Hillary Clinton celebration that turned out to be a funeral. So you have all these investigators that are Democrats. In all fairness, Bob Mueller worked for Obama for eight years.” The Special Counsel is not a Democrat. He is a Republican. Robert Mueller did not work for Obama for eight years. He was replaced as FBI Director by James Comey in 2013. In 2011, Obama asked Mueller to say on beyond his initial ten-year term, and the Senate approved his request. Trump is in complete meltdown mode, and he is inventing reasons out of thin air for why he can’t sit down for an interview with the Special Counsel. The investigation is not a biased witch hunt against him. The Russia investigation is being run by members of Trump’s own party. Facts matter. The fact is that Trump is lying and running away from doing an interview with Mueller. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.


The level of doublethink involved in being a contemporary member of the GOP is astounding. Former Presidential candidate and current Donald Trump sycophant Mike Huckabee can barely even remember basic facts, like whether or not Trump has ever admitted to committing sexual assault. The things Republicans have to tell themselves and the public in order to continue pushing their agenda take some serious mental gymnastics. We have Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway coining the term “alternative facts.” Former Press Secretary Sean Spicer became a laughing stock for his outrageous defenses of President Donald Trump’s statements and behavior. And the person who took Spicer’s Job, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has continued that trend. For example, she suggested that ESPN analyst Jemele Hill be fired for bullying President Trump on Twitter, despite the fact that the President regularly uses his own Twitter account to shout down opponents and turn his followers against others. However, Sarah’s father Mike Huckabee may take the cake with his comments on Fox & Friends this morning. Conservatives have loved speaking about disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and his donations to Democratic causes and candidates, and Trump’s favorite morning team and Huckabee decided to tie it back to Hillary Clinton yet again. Host Abby Huntsman started things off by addressing Huckabee: “There was also an uncomfortable moment when she talked about President Trump, how he admitted to being sexual assaulter. She was asked about the Weinstein situation and she mentioned how her husband – Bill Clinton – what he did was in the past. Anyone watching that, I think, was a little squirmy in their seat. She even looks squirmy, talking about it. Has President Trump ever admitted to being a sexual assaulter?” Anyone with a halfway functioning brain would of course recall the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” because he was famous. Huckabee, apparently, lacks that halfway functioning brain, responding: “I don’t recall that that has ever happened.” He then proceeds to turn the discussion back to Bill Clinton, who, if you recall, was President twenty years ago. Fairly selective memory there, Mike. So keep playing in your big boy trucks, Donald, and know that your sycophants are doing everything in their power to rewrite history. Watch the ridiculous exchange below: Featured image via Flickr user Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0.


Amanda Marshall was Oregon’s federal district attorney. Then the scandals started catching up to her. Let’s recap her sordid history. Appointed by Obama in 2011, Marshall resigned in 2015 after allegedly stalking a subordinate and having an affair, and later faced internal probes (no pun intended). Marshall is the DA who pursued charges, even to the point of double jeopardy, against Dwight and Steven Hammond, the eastern Oregon ranchers who preemptively set controlled burns to stop wildfires from encroaching on their property. After already serving time in federal prison, Marshall encouraged the judge to re-imprison them for a harsher sentence. Those actions are what prompted the Malheur Wildlife Refuge protests in early 2016. In 2014, Marshall was caught on camera conspiring with Gabby Gifford’s gun control group, Americans For Responsible Solutions, to scheme up new gun control laws and propaganda. She spoke of wanting to force county Sheriffs to enforce federal gun laws, while also being one of the voices saying that local law enforcement shouldn’t enforce federal immigration laws. Of course the anti gun folks were more than happy to feature Amanda Marshall as a guest speaker at a summit presented by Ceasefire Oregon and “Oregon Alliance To Prevent Gun Violence”. Now she faces ethics complaints with the Oregon State Bar. The Oregonian reports: The panel determined there was probable cause to bring ethics charges against Marshall for violating rules dealing with honesty and trustworthiness. The case now advances to the trial phase. A panel will convene, likely sometime in the spring, to determine if Marshall has engaged in misconduct. Punishment for ethics violations range from a public reprimand to a suspension or disbarment. The disciplinary board identified two rules Marshall may have violated, one involving criminal conduct that reflects poorly on a lawyer’s honesty and trustworthiness or fitness and the other dealing with conduct involving fraud and dishonesty. Marshall’s lawyer, Allison Martin Rhodes, said Monday that Marshall “has always acknowledged” that she “was not completely truthful” when asked by a superior about the relationship. Martin Rhodes has said Marshall lied when asked if she had sex with her subordinate but was subsequently forthcoming in a four-hour interview with authorities. The professional standards agency opened an investigation last year after the U.S. Department of Justice’s inspector general found Marshall had engaged in a yearlong “intimate and personal” relationship with a subordinate. The inspector general said Marshall, who now practices law in McMinnville, violated sexual harassment laws, lied to investigators and tried to block the investigation. The Inspector General’s Office in March 2015 opened an investigation of Marshall. She took a leave of absence that month, citing health reasons that included post-traumatic stress disorder. She officially resigned on May 15, 2015, amid the internal review. It’s just fitting that someone with ties to the Obama administration and anti-gun organizations is caught up in a series of scandals and lies. Sponsored Sponsored


ILOSM family the situation between Usher and his STD accuser, Quantasia Sharpton, has just gotten even more real. For Ms. Sharpton, it’s bad, but for Usher, it’s great. As we previously informed you all, Quantasia claimed that she’d met Usher at his concert and then had a one night stand with him later that night, without him telling her that he allegedly has herpes… It was her details ( and the prior lies she was accused of telling about other celebs) that caused many Usher fans to call her bluff though. Sharpton claimed that after Usher’s concert, she went back to her Days Inn hotel room and Usher called her, then went to Days Inn to sex her up like Color Me Badd (okay she didn’t say the Color Me Badd part, but if the shoe fits…). Anywho, after fans heard her ‘Days Inn’ claim, they were like ‘Chile please…Usher ain’t rollin’ up to a cheap Days Inn hotel room to have sex with you.’ Days later, an alleged Days Inn worker then claimed she saw Usher walk into the hotel to go see Quantasia. The worker also said the only reason she revealed that is because she didn’t like that Usher reportedly said to the press that Quantasia isn’t “his type.” Many Usher fans didn’t buy the employee’s story either. Fast forward to today and Usher has spoken, through his team, to provide 3 facts that shoot down Quantasia’s claims, according to TMZ. Check out what was reported by Usher’s people below… 1. WIFE/MANAGER: Sources close to the singer tell TMZ … he says there was never a hotel hookup with Quantasia Sharpton, telling friends, in November 2014 he was on the verge of getting engaged to Grace Miguel. Usher tells them at the time of his alleged encounter, Grace was his manager and they spent ALL their free time together. His people say when the two weren’t enjoying free time, it was all business, and they were inseparable. The couple got engaged less than 2 months after the alleged Days Inn tryst.-via TMZ 2. ACCUSER’S TIMELINE CONFLICT: Usher’s people also say on the night in question his show ran late, which pushed the meet-and-greet well after midnight … and that flies in the face with Quantasia’s timeline in which she claims she hooked up with the singer around 12. -via TMZ 3. TRAVEL SCHEDULE CONFLICT: We’re told his travel schedule was super tight too … making it even more unlikely he even had time to step out for a secret trip to the Days Inn. -via TMZ Sometimes it’s best to make moves in silence…I wonder if Quantasia Sharpton and her attorney, Lisa Bloom, are now wishing that she did, because this is turning out to be a mess.


Donald Trump is our next president, which means Keith's not going anywhere. Catch every episode of his new GQ show, The Resistance, and then come join the fight. Don't miss Keith Olbermann's new book, Trump Is F-cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Available now on Amazon Keith Olbermann's suits, starting with episode 100, provided by Tallia Orange


Corey Taylor doesn’t like Donald Trump. In fact, that’s probably something of an understatement, the President being dubbed ‘the Cheeto’ throughout America 51. But on the other hand, Corey doesn’t like the two-party system of American politics at all, which he makes abundantly clear at the beginning of his fourth book. One thing The Great Big Mouth loves, however, is his country – the United States Of America. In his typical stream-of-consciousness style, often flailing wildly off-topic, the Slipknot frontman airs his gripes with all the political bullshittery that has gone down on his home turf recently. While his previous books have taken aim at the unending list of humanity’s traits that annoy Corey, this is a takedown of modern-day politics and (of course) the Trump administration from a man who admits he feels no kinship to either big party, but has a wealth of knowledge on American politics and a comical yet vicious tongue to match. Using his band life and turbulent childhood as reference points throughout, Corey shares his liberal views on everything from Black Lives Matter to Reaganomics, with cursing and caps lock firmly in place, forever reminding the reader that he’s an asshole (his words!). And while not everyone will agree with the points made on these pages, this asshole knows his shit.


The Dallas Cowboys made headlines before their Week 3 “Monday Night Football” game against the Arizona Cardinals when they briefly knelt on the field — alongside owner Jerry Jones — and then stood with arms linked during the national anthem. While some saw the move as a good compromise between protesting during the anthem and respecting the flag, others were surprised and disappointed the Cowboys took a knee at all. Why is there politics in the middle of football? Protest on your own time! Political agenda being shoved down my throat everywhere No escape — TexasGirl (@HannahIvers) September 26, 2017 Well, Dez Bryant has good news for those who weren’t happy with the demonstration: It won’t be repeated. TRENDING: MLB Player Goes 7 Straight Games With HR, Sets Franchise Record The Cowboys’ star receiver told the Dallas Morning News that the team will go back to doing what it did before Monday night’s game: “We’re going to stand and put our hand over our heart.” Bryant said the Week 3 protest “was just a response to [President Donald] Trump. That’s all that was.” Trump had suggested last week that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who protest during the national anthem. Jones said Friday morning on KRLD-FMthat Bryant appeared to be “torn” before the protest took place in Arizona. “I’m so appreciative of how the team responded,” said Jones. “It was a trying time. Players were truly under pressure, external pressure from their relationships. They were really under pressure to basically in many cases kneel at the flag.” As for this week, Bryant said, “I’m going to leave all of that in the past. It is what it is. I’m focused on this week. I don’t even want to think about it. I’m done.” Trump also tweeted that he had spoken with Jones and confirmed that the players will stand for Week 4. Spoke to Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys yesterday. Jerry is a winner who knows how to get things done. Players will stand for Country! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2017 It appears the Cowboys will be back to business as usual come Sunday. Dallas will look to build upon its Week 3 victory over the Cardinals as it hosts the surprising Los Angeles Rams at AT&T Stadium. We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.


Donald Trump, Republican nominee for president, does not believe in the United States Constitution. That’s a strong statement, but it’s increasingly clear that it’s true. Trump wants to be president of a country whose fundamental organizing document he almost completely disagrees with. Even if he has read the Constitution – which is a serious question, as raised by Khizr and Ghazala Khan during the DNC – Trump doesn’t believe in its core principles and values. You know, the principles and values that make America great. This disdain was on full display Monday. When talking about the recent bombings in New York and New Jersey, Trump lamented the fact that the Constitution would require suspected bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami to be treated fairly. “He will be represented by an outstanding lawyer. His case will go through the various court systems for years and in the end, people will forget and his punishment will not be what it once would have been. What a sad situation,” he said. “We must have speedy but fair trials and we must deliver a just and very harsh punishment to these people.” Trump also decried that Rahami would be given “amazing hospitalization” and “a fully modern and updated hospital room.” Putting aside Trump’s inaccurate assessment of the quality of medical care prisoners receive and the woefully underfunded public defender system in the U.S., Trump is attacking some of the bedrock principles of American justice. Ever since Gideon v. Wainwright, the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution has been understood to require that everyone charged with serious offenses in this country receive defense counsel. This protection for criminal defendants is cause for celebration, not castigation. Speaking about this right in glowing terms, the Supreme Court has said it is “necessary to insure fundamental human rights of life and liberty” and called this a “noble ideal” without which there can be no fair trial. Similarly, the Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” We already know from Trump’s advocating extreme forms of torture that he is no fan of this part of the Constitution, but his comments Monday make that even clearer. Prisoners’ serious medical needs cannot be ignored; doing so would be “cruel and unusual.” The Supreme Court has explained that “infliction of such unnecessary suffering is inconsistent with contemporary standards of decency” and outlined the basic principle that “the public be required to care for the prisoner, who cannot, by reason of the deprivation of his liberty, care for himself.” Just this weekend, he once again showed that he couldn’t care less about the First Amendment. After The New York Times published a story finding that Trump relied on $885 million in tax breaks to build his real estate empire in New York City, Trump tweeted, “My lawyers want to sue the failing @nytimes so badly for irresponsible intent. I said no (for now), but they are watching. Really disgusting.” Of course, as any middle school student will tell you, the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press. Part of that protection is that no public figure can sue as a result of a bad story without proving malice, meaning that the journalists knew the story was false or demonstrated complete disregard for whether it was true. This standard is crucial in protecting the press from being attacked by people who don’t like unflattering coverage. Without this principle, the press would be too scared to write pieces critical of the powerful, and the First Amendment would be virtually meaningless. It’s been clear from other contexts, though, that “ virtually meaningless” is how Trump views the First Amendment as a whole. Among other things, he has called for violence against individuals expressing their opinions and advocated for a religious test for those entering the country. These positions fly in the face of the First Amendment’s protection of free expression and freedom of religion, as well as its guarantee against an established state religion. Trump is no fan of the rest of the Constitution either. His recently announced maternity leave plan includes no coverage for fathers, which shows his lack of concern for the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause; his insistence that women and doctors should be punished for abortion shows that he doesn’t believe in a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause; he has promised to violate treaties, which are constitutionally recognized sources of law; he doesn’t understand the difference between state and federal authority, the basic principle of federalism which underlies the Constitution; nor does he care about separation of powers, the founding constitutional idea that the president, Congress and the courts have different responsibilities in order to prevent tyranny. In other words, other than his repeated invocation of the Second Amendment, including his not-so-oblique references to one of his supporters shooting Hillary Clinton (something that came up again this weekend), Trump has shown that he disagrees not just with one or two isolated parts of the Constitution – which would be within normal democratic bounds, and is countenanced by the Constitution’s amendment process – but rather with the very fabric of the document. This is highly unusual in American politics, where most debate occurs against the backdrop of accepted constitutional principles. Trump doesn’t appear to accept those principles at all, and instead seems to want to be president of a country with a foreign understanding of government and its relationship to the people. If Trump were elected, he would have to swear the same allegiance to the Constitution that every president has before him: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Based on how he has campaigned over the past year, if he were to utter those last 10 words, he would be lying – as has become par for the course with Donald Trump.


Brynn Anderson/AP Photo In his Alabama appearance for Roy Moore, Steve Bannon turned in an intellectually and morally putrid performance even by his standards. There is a partisan case for voting for Moore, which is simply that Republicans can’t afford to lose a Senate seat over the next three years and Moore’s failings must be ignored or rationalized away for the larger good of the party. This is not an elevated line of reasoning and is not obviously correct on its own terms. With Democrats throwing John Conyers and Al Franken overboard, Senate Republicans would be welcoming into their ranks a potent symbol of sexual malfeasance to be used against them in the 2018 midterms. It’s a better argument, though, than the tawdry justifications offered up by Bannon, who parachuted into an already disreputable campaign and dragged it through the gutter. Bannon seems to misunderstand the nature of the deplorables he seeks to lead. “Deplorable” is supposed to be an unfair, disparaging term for people who believe reasonable but politically incorrect things (immigration should be restricted, NFL players should stand during the national anthem, all lives matter, etc.). It shouldn’t be a license for doing truly deplorable things. Democrats, at least some of them, now want to jettison Bill Clinton and are saying that they were wrong to defend him during his scandals. For his part, Bannon wants to pick up the ethics of the party of Clinton and transfer them into the GOP. In Alabama, Bannon used that phrase redolent of the 1990s, “the politics of personal destruction.” Who is doing the destroying? Why the globalists, of course. There is nothing they aren’t capable of. It’s not clear why the globalists would be so fixated on defeating Moore that they’d work behind the scenes to get a bunch of women — and corroborating witnesses — who don’t know each other to lie about Moore having a romantic interest in them when they were teenagers. It seems a lot of effort to defeat a man who is arguing he should be elected to provide another vote for corporate tax cuts. Bannon referred to a conspiracy against Donald Trump in the way the “Access Hollywood” tape was brought to light, somewhat jocularly. But his mind-set is deeply conspiratorial. Because there are so many forces arrayed against you — the globalists, the establishment, the media — you are freed of any moral responsibility or standards. In fact, the mere mention of the words “honor” or “integrity” is a terrible provocation. Bannon launched his scurrilous attack on Mitt Romney because the former Republican presidential nominee used those terms in opposing Moore. Bannon shot back, in a truly perverse riff, that Moore has more honor in his “pinkie” than the entire Romney clan; per Bannon, Moore served in Vietnam and Romney didn’t, and none of Romney’s sons joined the military. Obviously, if going to Vietnam and having kids who served in the military is the sole measure of honor, Trump fails the test, and John McCain passes it. This doesn’t stop Bannon from considering Trump the great savior of the republic and McCain a disgrace. But it’s not worth trying too hard to unpack Bannon’s spiel. There is a huge element of play-acting here. Bannon waited to see which way the wind was blowing in Alabama. If Moore were still running consistently behind Democrat Doug Jones, Bannon wouldn’t be holding a campaign rally for him and challenging Romney to come down to Alabama to prove his manhood. He’d be looking to minimize the damage and shift the blame (the advantage of the specter of an all-powerful establishment is that it can be blamed for anything). Privately, Bannon can’t be thrilled that he’s stuck with Moore, and he must know that Moore is a kook, even if he can’t admit it in public. Bannon likes to attack everyone else in the party for lacking courage, but in Alabama, he’s afraid to admit he backed a bum candidate and afraid to acknowledge the truth about Moore. The urgency to get the party to back Moore-type candidates isn’t immediately apparent. If the point is just to hold Republican Senate seats, safer, more conventional Republicans are better suited to the task. If the point is just to support the Trump agenda, safer, more conventional candidates are as reliable, and perhaps more reliable than the likes of Moore, who opposed the Graham-Cassidy health care bill (“Rand Paul praises Roy Moore for opposing Obamacare repeal effort” is how one headline put it at the time). Part of the point has to be to elect candidates who have no standards for the sake of it. Bannon may be thinking ahead to a time when the Trump sex allegations become a live issue again or when a true scandal emerges from the Robert Mueller investigation. In this scenario, will there be anyone more naturally inclined to be dismissive of the accusers or other evidence than former Judge Roy Moore? Bannon may also believe that a GOP with a highly attuned ethical sense can’t truly be the party of the working class. In which case, who is the one who has contempt for the “rubes”?


Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that “Trump could be the greatest president in history.” In a 14 December 2016 interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, Robert Kennedy, Jr. said that “I think Trump can be any kind of president he wants. I think he could be the greatest president in history if he wanted to.” Kennedy, who spoke these words prior to Donald Trump's taking office, was speaking in general terms about his hope that Trump would become a great president, seeing optimism in the fact that Trump appeared at the time to be unbound by ideology. On 14 December 2016, President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, appeared on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon to discuss the appointment of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State (a move Kennedy, an environmental activist, was strongly opposed to). In an earlier segment on that night’s show, Lemon and his guests had drawn comparisons between the Trumps and the Kennedys, referencing remarks made by former Microsoft head Bill Gates a day earlier, with Lemon’s asking Kennedy Jr. how he felt about this comparison: We’ve discussed this on this show during the primary season, but Bill Gates has said today that Trump could be a new JFK. Some people look how close the Trump family is and how connected the children are to the family business and any they could be like the Kennedys. […] How do you feel about that? Kennedy’s answer, essentially, was not that Donald Trump had already done and achieved things that would fairly rank him as the “greatest President in history,” but that the comparison of Trump to the Kennedy family could turn out to be fair, because Donald Trump “is less bound by ideology than any president probably that we’ve had this century.” His statement was one of optimism for the future and was not rooted in anything Donald Trump (who had yet to assume office) had actually done as President: I think Trump, you know, because he doesn’t have obligations, he doesn’t owe anything to anybody, if he’s — I think if he cares about history and he understands that history is his principal audience, that he could be an extraordinary president. […] He said to Leonardo DiCaprio the other day that he wanted to be the next Teddy Roosevelt and he can easily do that he could — but I think it’s important to start by surrounding yourself with advisers who share that idealism and not people who are just working for the oil industry. I think he can be any kind of president he wants. I think he could be the greatest president in history if he wanted to. Since that exchange, numerous pro-Trump websites have run with Kennedy’s statement that “I think [Trump] could be the greatest president in history” without offering the any of the context that led to up to it. Numerous YouTube videos excerpt this brief segment, posted under the title “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Drops Bombshell: ‘Trump Could Be Greatest President In History!'” Other sites have added their own slanted commentary to Kennedy’s remark, frequently suggesting the conversation happened more recently. In a May 2017 post frequently reshared on Facebook, ConservativeFighters.com gleefully and rhetorically asked: “Can you hear the sobs coming from liberal protesters when a left-wing icon like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. finally admits the truth?” While Kennedy is certainly a Democrat, he has expressed willingness to work with Trump in the past, especially during the timeframe when the Don Lemon interview took place. Trump allegedly offered Kennedy (though Trump later disputed this) the chance to head a controversial commission on “vaccine safety” that had been widely panned by the medical community back in January 2017. However, because Kennedy’s words, in full context, were not offered as complimentary of Trump’s actions as a president (which he wasn’t at that point) but as a general hopefulness for the future, we rate this claim as a mixture. Snopes.com has long been engaged in the battle against misinformation, an effort we could not sustain without the support of our readers. If you'd like to learn more about how you can support us, click here.


Athletes choosing to kneel during the national anthem is currently a controversial topic in the US. The this past weekend, 27 players from the Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens opted to take a knee during the singing of the US national anthem before a game at Wembley Stadium in London. This was the most players ever to kneel during the national anthem in a single NFL game ever. The defiant stance has become a sign of protest against racial inequality within the US, and more recently, against President Trump's lacklustre response to the Charlottesville white-nationalist rally last month, and the heated aftermath that followed. The defiant stance first made national news following a preseason game in 2016, when Colin Kaepernick sat down (as opposed to the tradition of standing), during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner". His reasoning was divisive, but simple: "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder" Eventually, Kaepernick conversed with former NFL player and US military veteran, Nate Boyer, and they both agreed that kneeling would be a much more respectful way to protest, whilst still showing respect for those who have fought in the US military. But the Jaguars and the Ravens weren't the only NFL teams to show solidarity against President Trump this week. The Pittsburgh Steelers, Oakland Raiders, Washington Redskins and more all protested in one way or another - with the Seattle Seahawks and Tennessee Titans even choosing to remain their locker rooms during the playing of the national anthem. And yet, what's even more inflammatory is President Trump's reaction to the silent protests. Instead of addressing the issues of racial injustice, Trump has hit out at the NFL, stating that fans should “refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag & Country”, and that any players who take a knee should be fired or suspended. But President Trump isn't the only fan tuning in every week to witness the protests. Young children are incredibly impressionable, and one six-year-old in particular decided to demonstrate a protest of his own during the pledge of allegiance at his elementary school. As reported on ABC Action News, a six-year-old boy in Pasco County knelt down during a reading of the pledge of allegiance - an action that his teacher found disrespectful of the country, and disrespectful of the flag. The teacher send a text message to the boy's mother, informing her, "I knew where he had seen it. But I did tell him that in the classroom, we are learning what it means to be a good citizen". The teacher then told the child to "stand up and stop it", something that the boy's mother does not believe is her "right". The boy's mother said that she did not tell her son to take a knee, but also does not want her son to be silenced. She is now asking the school to be more open-minded, as she believes the issue is "much bigger" than her son. Linda Cobbe of Pasco County schools stated that they follow state law, and that the only way a student can be exempted from reciting the pledge of allegiance is with a written request from the parents, and even then, "they must stand". Cobbe also agreed that a more beneficial approach would have been to pull the boy to the side of the class and discuss the matter, instead of punishing him in front of the other students. But the mother believes that this shouldn't just be about her son: "The bigger issue is cultural. They have demonstrated to me, through multiple incidents, that they don't take inclusion and diversity serious". Both the boy's mom and the school are now hoping that the incident will be something everyone can learn from, as the school "does not want to infringe on anyone's rights". Should the boy and his mother be punished? Was it simply just a child copying something his favorite football team did one TV, or was he fighting for his right to be heard and respected in the community? One thing is for sure, the actions of the NFL are being seen and heard across the nation by everyone.


This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive more briefings and a guide to the section daily in your inbox. Republicans are starting to talk openly about refusing to fill Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat not only through the end of President Obama’s term but indefinitely. Ted Cruz, Charles Grassley and John McCain have all sent such signals, as have some other prominent conservatives. It’s worth taking this talk seriously. Too many top Republicans have made clear in recent years that they care more about winning than about adhering to political norms or doing what’s best for the country. You can see this attitude in the willingness to shut down the government, the threats to default on the national debt and the stated desire to make Obama a failed president. The political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein call it “ asymmetric polarization”: the two political parties have come to behave quite differently. Refusing to seat a ninth justice, simply for ideological reasons, would be a clear and worrisome break with democratic tradition. It would send the message that Republicans believe a president should be able to exercise the Constitutional power to name justices only if that president were Republican. It would represent a new level of partisan cynicism. I hope that the wiser heads within the Republican Party prevail after the election. But Democrats should be prepared for the alternative. The alternative would mean that Senate control — which remains up in the air, given the tightness of recent polls — will be crucial. If Republicans hold the Senate, a President Hillary Clinton would be at their mercy with any nominee. If Democrats take the Senate, they would have an obvious fallback plan: eliminating the 60-vote threshold of the filibuster — as a Senate majority can always do — and confirming a justice with 51 votes. As long as Republicans keep talking about permanent obstructionism, Democrats should not hesitate to use that option. What I’m reading: Jeff Shesol, at The New Yorker, has an excellent breakdown of the growing signs of the Republicans’ Supreme Court obstructionism.


President Trump responded to reports that special counsel Robert Mueller is about to indict people in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election by pointing the finger at Democrats. Trump said the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with the Kremlin is “phony,” “bad for our country,” a “witch hunt,” and “evil politics.” He added the news that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the unverified dossier alleging scandalous behavior by Trump has united Republicans. “Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more,” Trump tweeted. “Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia, ‘collusion,’ which doesn't exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R's are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!” The $12 million figure refers to the amount of money Clinton’s campaign paid to Perkins and Cole, a law firm that then paid Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Trump. Fusion GPS then paid former British spy Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump that was released shortly before the inauguration. It’s not clear if all $12 million the Clinton campaign paid to the law firm went toward funding the dossier. Trump was also referring to a deal between an American company and a Russian government agency to purchase the company, which controlled about 20 percent of the country’s uranium supply. Clinton’s State Department was one of nine government agencies that signed off on the purchase, and that decision has come under new scrutiny after revelations that the FBI was investigating if Russians were trying to gain influence in the American uranium industry. Later on, Trump added the new focus on the Russia investigation is likely a distraction from the Republican push for tax reform. "All of this 'Russia' talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!" Trump tweeted.


Opinion Modal Trigger Voters’ top concerns are the stagnant economy and the threat of terrorism, but you wouldn’t know it from Hillary Clinton’s TV ads or campaign speeches. She’s trying to twist the presidential race into a referendum on political correctness. Too embarrassed to run on her party’s economic record or her failed stint as secretary of state, she’s positioning herself as top cop of the speech police. For example, Hillary is running an ad depicting pre-teen girls looking self-consciously in the mirror, agonizing over their bodies. Sometimes such young girls’ worries turn into deadly eating disorders, ultimately killing 10 percent of those affected. Clinton cynically exploits the pain and fear felt by thousands of families. Her ad uses a voiceover of Trump saying things like “she ate like a pig” and “does she have a fat ass?” Parents struggling with their child’s eating disorder run to one doctor after another frantically seeking answers. The causes are complex and still not entirely known — but no one believes the cause is Donald Trump. Some experts blame Hollywood’s glorification of skinny women for at least contributing to the rash of eating disorders and young girls’ body-image struggles. Instead of trying to muzzle Trump and other men, why isn’t Hillary calling out her big supporters in the entertainment industry? The same question applies to Hillary’s double standard in bashing Trump for lewdness but celebrating it in popular music. Clinton’s latest super PAC ads condemn Trump’s bawdy 2005 remarks on a bus with show-biz journalist Billy Bush. Trump bragged to his buddy, “I moved on her like a bitch.” Clinton claims to have been outraged when she heard it, calling it “horrific.” Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald chuckles at Clinton’s hypocritical “sudden onset of Victorian vapors.” After all, Clinton has no problem with the salacious lyrics of her pal and supporter Beyoncé. Even when Beyoncé sings: “I came to slay bitch . . . when he f–k me good I take his ass to Red Lobster.” Clinton says, “I want to be as good a president as Beyoncé is a performer.” Trump can’t catch a break with Clinton, even when he’s trying to do the right thing. Another Clinton ad attacks Trump reaching out to inner-city African-Americans with promises of more jobs and school choice. Reminding minority voters that Democratic politicians have failed to improve their economic opportunities, Trump asks for their vote, saying: “What the hell do you have to lose?” Clinton’s ad says: “Everything.” It follows her ad featuring Ku Klux Klan members praising Trump. It’s McCarthyite guilt by association. Trump has no connection to the group. What’s Trump actually guilty of? Poaching on Hillary’s turf. Worse than tarring Trump, she’s labeling cops, teachers and millions of other Americans racists. Whenever she talks to black audiences, she stokes racial resentment. She told the NAACP that whites “need to recognize our privilege and practice humility.” All whites, she claims, have “implicit bias,” and she wants bias training for police and other professions. Implicit bias — you’re told you have it even if you don’t realize it, no matter how colorblind you try to be, and denying your bias just proves it. Implicit bias is PC drivel. There’s no solid data to support it, cautions social scientists Philip Tetlock of UPenn and Gregory Mitchell of the University of Virginia and experts from New York University and the University of Connecticut. But if Clinton becomes president, we’ll all be undergoing re-education at school or work to cure our “implicit bias.” To see what President Hillary’s America would be like, look at most college campuses today. Few on campus dare to question Black Lives Matter, militant multiculturalism and “safe spaces” to spare students from challenging ideas. Hillary’s dictating how Americans talk about race, sex, even body shapes. Trump calls it like he sees it. He doesn’t stick to the well-rehearsed rhetoric of a career politician. But his supporters are sick and tired of political correctness. He’s not running for saint. He’s running to get the job done, something Hillary Clinton has already proven she can’t do. Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.


On Monday ESPN suspended Jemele Hillfor 2 weeks in response to her tweets encouraging NFL fans to boycott anyone who sponsors Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones. Hill's tweet was in response to Jones comments that any player who disrespected the flag would be cut from his team. In a statement ESPN said, "Jemele Hill has been suspended for two weeks for a second violation of our social media guidelines. She previously acknowledged letting her colleagues and company down with an impulsive tweet. In the aftermath, all employees were reminded of how individual tweets may reflect negatively on ESPN and that such actions would have consequences. Hence this decision." ESPN says that it has accepted the apology of Jemele Hill for tweeting that President Trump and his followers are "white supremacists." Earlier this week, the co-host of ESPN's “SC6 with Michael and Jemele" fired off a series of tweets calling the President a "bigot" and "white supremacist." Hill apologized for her tweets on Wednesday. "My comments on Twitter expressed my personal beliefs." She wrote on Twitter. "My regret is that my comments and the public way I made them painted ESPN in an unfair light." The network issued a followup statement after her apology and said that Hill has a right to her personal beliefs, but said that they are not reflective of the company's opinions or beliefs. "She has acknowledged that her tweets crossed that line and has apologized for doing so. We accept her apology," they wrote. ESPN has been under intense scrutiny after they pulled their broadcaster Robert Lee off air “as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding" in August. The Associated Press contributed to this report. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is calling for the termination of an ESPN anchor after she called President Donald Trump a white supremacist on Twitter. “That is one of the more outrageous comments that anybody could make and certainly is something that is a fireable offense by ESPN,” Sanders said on Wednesday. This comes after Jemele Hill, who co-hosts a ESPN show called “SC6 with Michael and Jemele," fired off a series of Tweets denouncing Trump and calling his supporters white supremacists. EPSN soon issued a statement in response to Smith's remarks. “The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the president do not represent the position of ESPN,” the network said. “We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate.” ESPN on Tuesday distanced itself from anchor Jemele Hill’s tweets calling President Trump “a bigot” and “a white supremacist.” “The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the president do not represent the position of ESPN,” the network tweeted from its public relation’s department’s account. “We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate,” ESPN added of Hill, a co-host on the 6 p.m. broadcast of the network’s “SportsCenter” program. Hill on Monday had a series of Twitter exchanges with other users that involved her harshly criticizing Trump. “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/other white supremacists,” she said in one tweet. “Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime,” Hill added in another post. “His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period.” Hill added in a third tweet that “Donald Trump is a bigot” before going on to deride the president’s supporters. “The height of white privilege is being able to ignore his white supremacy, because it’s of no threat to you,” she said. “Well, it’s a threat to me.” Some Twitter users on Wednesday praised Hill for singling out Trump, while others lambasted her decision instead. ESPN is owned by Disney, and neither company elaborated on a possible punishment for Hill, who was on Tuesday night’s broadcast of “SportsCenter” like normal. Former National Football League (NFL) quarterback Colin Kaepernick, meanwhile, on Tuesday voiced support for Hill on Twitter. Kaepernick remains unsigned after playing with the San Francisco 49ers from 2011 to 2016 in a situation that remains controversial in the football world. The professional athlete began kneeling during the National Anthem last year to protest police brutality and racial injustice. Supporters say Kaepernick is making a legitimate stand for social justice, while critics charge he is acting unpatriotic instead. These celebrities ended up deleting their Twitter accounts. Let's get started!


The story is told that one evening, President Lincoln greeted a Congressional delegation, ushered them into his private study and asked their business. “We present you with a petition,” said the group leader, “demanding that you dismiss General Grant.” “And why should I do that?” asked Lincoln. “Grant is a drinker,” replied the leader. “He is known to have been drunk in his tent.” The president replied, “Gentlemen, I wish all my generals drank what Grant drinks; he wins!” This is how we should regard President Trump’s tweeting and his unbecoming, personal attacks on members of the media. We may cringe at Mika’s still-bleeding face, as we would in the tent of a drunken general. But Trump wins! In office barely five months, he has moved sure-footedly to correct the derelictions of the feckless fool who preceded him. His cabinet, the best since Lincoln, the Keystone pipeline, the impeccable Supreme Court nominee, the gathering of what amounted to the formative meeting of a Middle East NATO to defeat ISIS, the facing up to North Korea and Iran and Russia and China, the withdrawal from the rigged, insufferable Paris Climate Accord, sealing our borders to prohibit illegal entry, especially entry by dreadful thugs and terrorists, and moving aggressively to rid the country of those thugs and illegals like MS-13 and the monster who killed Kate Steinle, whom Obama welcomed, either directly or through insolent benign neglect. And on and on. We are awestruck at the vision, purpose and energy Trump has brought to the leadership of his country. But he is yet hampered by a war at home. The Democrats, the Progressives (or do I repeat myself), the Radicals, The Anarchists, the Communists, the university intelligentsia, Black Lives Matter, all amalgamated into a huge mass of vicious, unhinged hatred for Donald Trump. He alone stands between A Great America and the Sorosification of America. And so we see a level of disgusting personal attack on Mr. Trump such as has never been seen before, including faux-beheadings, calls for his impeachment, calls for his assassination, magazine covers depicting the president’s head with the cross hairs of a rifle at his temple, queries about his sanity, “professional” assertions of his imbalance, bastardized Shakespearean plays, allegations that he is a modern Hitler, utterly invented stories of misconduct by Trump or his team, based on unidentified “sources.” Ad nauseam. I propose you did a disservice to your community and your country when you admonished Rep. McSally to come out and vigorously oppose President Trump and school him in proper conduct (“Time for McSally to take a stand,” July 5, Page A6). And I propose you were in error when you promised that if she did not follow your advice, she would be punished in 2018 by the voters. You have it exactly backward. She owes her president her complete loyalty. She doesn’t need your advice. She is already wobbly enough. And, if she is punished at the 2018 election, it will be for failure to support and defend her president, and the punishment will be at the hands of We The People, who elected Mr. Trump.


Brazil’s new Migration Law relaxes criminal penalties for migrants. At a recent protest against this law in São Paulo, Muslim migrants demonstrated their distaste for dissent. Jihad Watch reader Natan sends in this video and writes: Terrorist Attempt at Anti-Migration Law Protest in Brazil. Syrian immigrants throw homemade bombs at peaceful people protesting at Av. Paulista in São Paulo, Brazil. The attack took place on May 2, when the group of protesters was walking. The attack was recorded by one of the protesters. In the video it is possible to see when the Muslims ignited the artifact and launched against the civilians. Police arrested the attackers, the crime was registered at a local police station.


In his election campaign, Mr Trump was clear about his desire to build a "great great" wall along the border of the US and Mexico which he believes will bring an end to illegal immigration from South and Central America. LBC presenter Ian Collins received a call from Mexican Josephine, who explained why she could not wait for work to begin on the wall. Josephine believes people from her native country are victimised because the Mexican government does not do enough for their people and have no authority when it comes to handling crime, especially in relation to drugs. She said: “We get the blame for all these criminals. “The Mexican government has turned a blind eye and the war has been lost with the drugs. “Many areas of Mexico have become worse than Chicago. “People are shooting themselves... they look after their family and they have machine guns and they drive around in trucks.” Collins then asked: “So you’re saying Donald Trump wasn’t being a racist then? I don’t want to put words in your mouth I just want to be clear.” Tue, December 13, 2016 “No, no, no,” Josephine replied. Since becoming President-elect has reiterated his intention to crack down on immigration. Speaking to CBS in his first major interview since being elected Mr Trump said: “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million – it could be even three million – we are getting them out of the country or we are going to incarcerate.” Collins, attempting to understand why the Mexican woman was so pleased about Mr Trump’s election success, said: “Was he saying something that lots of people think but are too scared to say?” Josephine said: “Yes, and another thing is that I love the people that are here that I know, I know many people that are Asians, that are Arabs, good speaking English people, but there are very few. “The most people in the area don’t want to mix, and they are very hostile. “Everything has been twisted. I have scrutinised everything in this campaign and newspapers said today he is getting rid of three million migrants. “But they missed a word. Trump said ‘illegal criminals’.”


The NFL national anthem story isn’t going away anytime soon. During many debate shows that air on cable sports networks, it was topic one. This was especially true during true during FS1’s Undisputed with Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe. As the FS1 Dynamic Duo began discussing the topic, Sharpe went on an incredible eight-minute rant on how NFL owners suddenly got an awakening about President Trump’s comments at an Alabama rally about players who kneel during the national anthem. Sharpe first said he was “disappointed and … unimpressed,” about the whole thing. And then he expressed why he was disappointed and unimpressed: “I’m disappointed, Skip and Joy, because this is the tipping point. Of the 7,537 things that President Trump has said in the last 50 years, him calling an NFL player a ‘SOB’ is what brought the NFL, the owners and players together. And while some might be moved by the conscience of these NFL owners, it wasn’t their conscience that moved them. It was the cash. Because see Skip, what we know about people with money, they don’t like to be told what to do…they don’t like being bullied. You see, President Trump has bullied a lot of people …” Sharpe then mentioned Trump’s comments on Mexico, attacking a Gold Star family after last year’s Democratic National Convention, and his statements to former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about women saying, “that did not shock the conscience of NFL owners.” And he also pointed out a number of owners, including Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder, Shad Khan, and Robert Kraft, who contributed to Trump’s inauguration. “Now I’m unimpressed because this wasn’t a protest. This was unity. So what are we showing solidarity against, Skip? We’re showing solidarity because President Trump .. he challenged the very men … wealthy, wealthy men … billionaires and he told them what you should do if someone protests, you should fire them. They don’t like being told what to do, Skip. “And then, Skip, he called players that protested the anthem … he called them ‘SOB’s.’ Think about that now, he called them ‘SOB’s.’ That’s what got the owners, that’s what got the players to unite. “Is that the worst that he’s ever said? Absolutely not. Never called Vladimir Putin an ‘SOB,’ Never called (Erdogan) of Turkey an ‘SOB,’ even those men that walked down the streets in Charlottesville, Virginia … he never said ‘SOB’ …” This was an impassioned Sharpe. He also pointed out Colin Kaepernick, who started the kneeling during the national anthem, was forgotten and the NFL owners were uniting against Donald Trump. “It wasn’t until he came for the NFL that their conscience was shocked!” Sharpe said of all the teams that issued statements this weekend, only the Seattle Seahawks got the reason why they were denouncing the President’s statements. And he also set his sights on fellow FS1 analyst Ray Lewis for previously criticizing Kaepernick and then kneeling on the sideline with the Baltimore Ravens in London on Sunday. Sharpe said he was “very disappointed” in him, saying Lewis “sat in that chair right there saying that he could never kneel, never not stand for the national anthem” citing those who died fighting for the flag and then he went down on both knees. “What are you kneeling for?” It was one of the more emotional segments on Undisputed in its brief history.


Do Not Resist is an order to the viewer: Watch. Videos in newsfeeds depicting the murder of black men by police open automatically without warning on our screens all the time, forcing another wave of trauma for some black folks and other people of color. This film changes the perspective, offering on-the-ground footage of protests, police-academy training and interviews with people involved in both. Why does our society so often discount the stories of black people who face danger from the police? The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has just passed a ruling declaring that it is reasonable for black men to flee police officers, so great is the risk. In this new and vital documentary, Craig Atkinson interrogates what is happening in American police departments and why cops' presence on the streets looks more and more like war. There's no need for commentary in the film when footage from protests in Ferguson, Missouri, immediately following Michael Brown's death at the hands of a police officer shows squads of cops in riot gear, holsters on their hips, facing down young black men wearing shirts reading "STOP KILLING US." Why do police act this way? What is the culture creating this? At local and national levels, Atkinson investigates. His visit to a police academy, where officers in training are told that the riskiness of their day jobs guarantees great sex back home, illuminates the objectification, detachment and selfish brutality of American police culture — and why it might be so seductive. Atkinson focuses on the growing resistance to it; we must, too. Director:Craig Atkinson Writer:Craig Atkinson


President Donald Trump criticized some in the National Football League Friday night at a rally for Alabama Republican Senate candidate Luther Strange, saying team owners should fire players for taking a knee during the national anthem. Trump added that if fans would "leave the stadium" when players kneel in protest during the national anthem, "I guarantee, things will stop." Trump said NFL owners should respond to the players by saying, "Get that son of a b**** off the field right now, he's fired. He's fired!" Unable to play video. HTML5 is not supported! "For a week, (that owner would) be the most popular person in this country. Because that's a total disrespect of our heritage. That's a total disrespect for everything we stand for," Trump said. Last year, Colin Kaepernick -- formerly with the San Francisco 49ers, but currently without a team -- drew national attention for refusing to stand during "The Star-Spangled Banner" prior to kickoff. "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick told NFL Media in August 2016. His protest spurred both support and backlash. Following the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists gathered to protest the removal of a Confederate soldier statue, Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett told CNN he would follow suit. "I can't stand for the national anthem," Bennett said. "I can't stand right now. I'm not going to be standing until I see the equality and freedom." Trump also took aim at NFL efforts to prevent concussions. "They're ruining the game, right?" he said. "They're ruining the game."


Tropical Storm Harvey is building up strength in the Gulf of Mexico. A hurricane may be on our hands, and it’s headed to Texas and Louisiana, where it is predicted to do a lot of flooding with massive amounts of rain and 80 mph winds. Update (8/25/17; 8:29 P.M.): Hurricane Harvey has seriously picked up. The storm has upped the ante to a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds as high as 130 mph. Gusts of winds have been reported to be as high as 155 mph. Update (8/27/17; 10:45 P.M.): Massive flooding has reached Houston and many areas of southeast Texas, with 20 inches of rain hitting some areas. However, the hurricane has since dwindled from a Category 2, with sustained winds of 110 mph. More flooding and rainfall is expected into Wednesday, with meteorologists predicting 50 inches of rainfall. Three deaths have already been reported along with 12 injuries. Update (8/29/17; 7:52 P.M.): Harvey is officially a tropical storm. However, that doesn’t downplay the danger. An incredible amount of flooding has been reported in the Houston area. There are now 14 official causalities of the storm, including a family of six and a Houston police officer. Update (9/5/17; 1:34 P.M.): The death toll of Hurricane Harvey has increased to at least 60 causalities as a direct result of the storm. Officials are expecting up to 20 inches of rain in eastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana, starting Friday (August 25) up until the beginning of next week. As a result of the impending storm, Portland, Texas, is already being evacuated. Corpus Christi Mayor, Joe McComb, just announced that a voluntary evacuation is highly encouraged especially if you are in a low-lying area. — H-E-B Prepared (@HEBPrepared) August 24, 2017 Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell have also evacuated their employees. Flights in-and-out of the area have been cancelled and delayed. Gas stations are currently running out of gas as people are attempting to escape the path of the hurricane. On Thursday, Hurricane Harvey can be found in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s been predicted that the storm will be into Texas by Friday, and will advance even more as it enters Louisiana. Flooding is expected in both states. The current speed of the hurricane is 80 mph. San Patricio County issues mandatory evacuation https://t.co/VEEaYZrMpS via @callerdotcom #HurricaneHarvey #RGV — Teddy Wilson (@reportbywilson) August 24, 2017 Schools in Houston have been closed in anticipation of Hurricane Harvey. Districts are announcing closures for public schools, community colleges, and universities. Hurricane Harvey school closures in Houston: Districts already announcing closures https://t.co/Dwd7vFuhFZ via @houstonchron — Andrew Blankstein (@anblanx) August 24, 2017 Here’s a short list of some of the schools that will be closing down as a result of the storm.


A total of 16 women joined together Monday to address their stories of sexual assault and sexual harassment at the hands of President Donald Trump. While many of these women came forward during the 2016 election, the Trump campaign attacked them, their lives and many right-wing activists invented information designed to discredit them. The three women that spoke earlier to Megyn Kelly sat at a table with documentarian Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films. He commended the reporters who have investigated the many accounts across all industries about sexual harassment. “There was one man that wasn’t being held accountable — who’s not being called out,” Greenwald said. That’s why he decided to create the documentary with the women. “It really had an impact on your heart, your soul, your emotions,” Greenwald said. He noted that so many women came forward to warn Americans, but “attention was not paid.” Today, Greenwald said “we know better. We know a lot better,” when it comes to predators. He demanded those in politics to act against anyone of either party not to give anyone “a pass.” Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey and Rachel Crooks each introduced themselves, telling story after story of their horrifying encounters with Trump. “I have a new dream now that this man will be held accountable for his actions and that future women will not be treated as less than just because they are a woman,” Holvey said. Crooks noted that given Trump owned the building in which she worked, she didn’t have any power to do anything. “Given this hostile work environment, my only solution at the time was to simply avoid additional encounters with him,” Crooks said. “I do realize that in the grand scheme of things there are far worse cases of sexual harassment, misconduct and assault. But make no mistake, there is no acceptable level of this behavior. That some men think they can use their power, position or notoriety to demean attack women speaks to their character and not ours. Which, believe me, is a tough lesson learned.” She went on to say that it was only through other remarkably similar accounts that she felt empowered to come forward. “Instead, this was serial misconduct and perversion on the part of Mr. Trump,” Crooks continued. “Unfortunately, this behavior isn’t rare in our society. Many women of any background can be victims. The only reason I am here today is because this offender is the president of our country.” She went on to note that Trump had dismissed his “Access Hollywood” tape as “locker room talk,” but “having been the victim of such actions, I knew better.” She asked that some things should transcend politics and that all people, regardless of position or power be held accountable for their actions, including Trump. Leeds walked through her disgusting story and further encounter, saying that she never once anticipated being on the front page of a newspaper. She was “absolutely destroyed” by Trump’s election. “The United States is a big strong country,” Leeds said that she thought at the time. “We can survive this person.” But women kept coming up to her in public and told Leeds their own story. She said that she had hoped things were better for women in business, but “apparently I was wrong.” When the Harvey Weinstein story hit and woman after woman began to come forward, people were finally being held accountable. “Except for our president,” Leeds said. She quoted Trump’s White House, who has said that the women are all “liars.” She noted that some are holding men accountable for bad behavior, however, “our president is not being held accountable for what he is and who he is.” Leeds said that this is part of the problem that is happening in Alabama. Crooks agreed, saying that Trump endorsed Roy Moore because he denied the allegations and it “worked for him.” Lisa Boyne spoke via phone to the press conference, telling her own story of being invited to a dinner party with Trump in the West Village. She said that he wanted the women to rate other women on a 1 to 10 scale. While at dinner, the men used the table as a “casting couch.” The women were brought to the table one by one and he told them to walk across the table. Boyne said that Trump looked up their skirts as they walked by. She said that John Casablancas ordered her to drink more but she refused and he was bothered by her refusal. She ultimately excused herself to the ladies room and from the restaurant. She explained that over the years her story was met with shame and questions of why she was there. She tried to pitch it to reporters, but no one wanted to hear it. “As a parent I was so deeply deeply offended… because he had a son around the age of my son and what sort of values are we teaching our children when we say that something like rape is ‘locker room talk,'” she shouted. “And that her husband talking about that is ‘boy talk.’ Everybody is normalizing as something that boys and men say in the locker room. That is the talk of horrible people and Trump keeps staying it to the press pool. And you’re all taking it in like it’s normal. It is not a normal way for people to talk. Why aren’t people calling him out on that. Something that is so horrific — I’m so fed up of listening to people. We take it in like it’s nothing. We shouldn’t teach our boys to talk like this.” She went on to say it was “one thousand times worse that what Al Franken has done.” Watch the full event below: You can watch the clip of the Brave New Films documentary below:


GREENVILLE, S.C. — Two people are dead after an officer-involved shooting Friday afternoon on White Horse Road, according to the Greenville County Sheriff Will Lewis. The sheriff’s office got a call that a man with a gun was chasing a woman near McAfee Funeral Home, according to Greenville County Sheriff Will Lewis. Deputies responded to a call that came in just after 4 p.m. according to dispatch. The shooting happened near the McAfee Funeral Home on White Horse Road, dispatch said. As the woman ran across White Horse Road, the man shot her, according to Greenville County Coroner Parks Evans. He said when deputies confronted the man, the man fired at deputies. The coroner said the deputies returned fire killing him. The woman was taken to Greenville Memorial Hospital where she was pronounced dead just before 5:30 p.m., said Evans. Saturday afternoon the Greenville County coroner's office identified the woman as Candy Rosario, 25, of Greenville. Witnesses on scene said a deputy confronted the man and ordered him to put down his gun and the deputy was forced to discharge their weapon after the man did not put the gun down. Witnesses on scene said about 10 to 15 shots were fired. On Sunday, the Greenville County coroner identified the man as Ramiro Bravo Ramirez, 34, of Greenville. The coroner said autopsy results on Ramirez are still pending. Dispatchers said White Horse Road reopened around 6 a.m. on Saturday. All of the deputies are fine and the investigation has been turned over to SLED, Lewis said. Following standard procedure, the deputy is placed on administrative leave while the investigation is pending. We will continue to update this story as we get new information.


Disgraced Hollywood producer and mogul Harvey Weinstein has been under the spotlight as multiple disturbing allegations of him sexually abusing women have come to the public's attention following an article published by the New York Times. The abuse has allegedly been occurring for over three decades, with the earliest case cited being from 1984. TMZ writes that on Wednesday morning Weinstein's daughter Remy called 911 to notify police that her father was "suicidal and depressed." The 22-year-old and her father were reportedly arguing. The morning's event took place in the Los Angeles area. The Daily Mail reportsthat Weinstein attempted to flag down a ride from a random driver following the argument. When the police arrived, Remy reportedly made no mention that her father was suicidal, and said it was a family dispute. Actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Mira Sorvino, Rosanna Arquette, Heather Graham, Ashley Judd, Asia Argento, and others have come forth with their personal stories of Weinstein's sickening and sexually abusive behavior. Weinstein's wife Georgina Chapman left the famed Hollywood producer on Tuesday. In a statement made to People, Chapman wrote, "My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions. I have chosen to leave my husband. Caring for my young children is my first priority and I ask the media for privacy at this time."


PUYALLUP, Wash. - A man who police say is connected to nearly a dozen robberies was shot by an officer after a chase Wednesday morning. The suspect is expected to survive after undergoing CPR at the scene. The officer responded to the Denny's restaurant near South Hill Mall for reports of an armed robber threatening employees and customers. The officer began chasing a pickup truck that was speeding away. The driver lost control and crashed into a concrete overpass pillar nearby, police say. That's when the passenger pointed a gun at the driver, prompting the officer to fire a shot, injuring the gunman. The suspect was given CPR until medics could arrive and transport him to the hospital. Police say the suspect, a 37-year-old convicted felon, is tied to at least ten other robberies in the Pierce County area. The driver, a 39-year-old who is also a convicted felon, was arrested and booked into the Pierce County Jail, The officer is now on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure after an officer fires their gun.


A recent Sacramento Bee commentaryby another anti-Trump ankle biter (“Horrified by Trump? Just tell yourself it could be worse,” by Foon Rhee) talked about how horrified he was by President Trump. How Trump’s belittled our allies, demonized immigrants and endangered the environment — the usual mind vomit leftists spew forth on a daily basis. He talked about Russian collusion, which after 11 months and nearly $7 million has yielded no evidence whatsoever, and how Trump is undermining America by deregulating the EPA and repealing Obama’s health care debacle, which is true since Trump is trying to improve both fiascos. The writer then goes on to say that as horrible as Trump is, it could be worse. That is also true, especially if Hillary had been elected. She would not only have increased the growing malignancy of a liberal ideology that has made a mockery of the presidency, the IRS, the FBI, the DOJ and the media, but we’d have both Clinton serial women abusers and compulsive liars in the White House. On Hillary’s website one can open tabs on ethnic, religious and sexual minorities all related to the nature of diversity, power and oppression, but unlike Trump’s, there’s not one mention of her vision of a true American community. Why is that? The afternoon's latest local news Recaptcha requires verification. protected by reCAPTCHA Privacy - Terms Privacy - Terms Larry Bargenquast, Paso Robles What do you think? The Tribune welcomes your opinion. Send your letters to the editor to letters@thetribunenews.comor submit your letter here. Letters should be no longer than 200 words. Your letter must include your address and phone number. Writers are limited to one letter a month. We reserve the right to edit letters for length, clarity and taste. All letters and Viewpoints become the property of The Tribune.