Trump’s lies are legion. By one count he has lied 273,693,849 times since 2016. This is well known. The anti-Trump group of brothers known as The MeidasTouch (who are similar to The Lincoln Project but not Republican) has uncovered a rarity: Trump actually telling the truth.
In a world where millions suddenly find themselves unemployed, desperate, even searching for ways to make ends meet – it would be nice to get some help from the Federal Government. Fix the problems so people can fend for themselves again. Unfortunately it will require a new administration for that to happen.
When basic human needs are not being met, as the video implies, its time for a Democrat to take control. Therefore: Vote Biden-Harris is the true message from Trump. When he tells the truth that is.
The President attacks widow of tech icon Steve Jobs
On Sunday morning, September 6, 2020, Donald Trump went to his Twitter to call out Apple co-founder Steve Job’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs who has financial backing to the Atlantic magazine. On Thursday, The Atlantic published a story that reported Trump called American who had died in war both “losers” and “suckers”.
The initial tweet stated: “Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE. Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!”
Check out tweet below:
Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE. Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!! https://t.co/wwuoP85bQE
Lines Blurred in Tinsel-town in Must Win Election Year
Variety magazine, the renowned weekly entertainment trade, always sports pictures of familiar Hollywood faces on its covers. From Oscar winners to television tycoons, the trade typically displays stars synonymous with entertainment success. Thus, subscribers were likely surprised to find Nancy Pelosi on the cover of the March 3rd issue, and for the 79-year-old Speaker of the House to be the primary subject of the feature article.
While some might enjoy going to the movies or turning on the TV to forget about complicated, real world matters such as politics, global warming, or high-strung elections, the gap between entertainment and government is narrowing. Mainstream movies and shows are reflecting contemporary ideologies more transparently than ever before, and celebrities are using their influences to voice political thoughts. For evidence, one needs to look no further than this year’s politically fueled acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes and Oscars.
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Granted, politics have always overlapped with entertainment. Ever since the first televised presidential debate took place between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960, political theater has become a swaying source of amusement for many constituents. This became evermore prevalent in 1980, when former movie star Ronald Regan took office and led the nation with an endearing Western-cowboy-like kind of performance. Add in immense marketing campaigns, choreographed speeches, and pre-prepared rallies meant to evoke emotional responses for certain candidates, and elections start looking a lot like movie or TV productions, ongoing serials aired in episodic bursts on morning and nightly news programs.
This took on an entirely new level of truth in the 2016 election, when a literal reality TV star won the republican ticket and eventually took home the general election with an unprecedentedly theatrical campaign. The trend has continued in the media ever since, as Donald Trump now sits in the oval office and has been a goldmine of riveting, controversial stories over the past four years.
American politics are no longer the dry, niche subject that they were pre-Trump, and behaving apolitically is hardly acceptable anymore. This new push of activism has found its way into Hollywood quite palpably. Being that moviemakers and stars have lots of money and influence, several politicians have made friends with powerful members of tinsel town. As Variety outlined in its Pelosi article, the Speaker of the House has strong support and personal relations from the likes of producers Katie McGrath, JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, David Zaslav, and James L. Brooks.
The “Stay in your Lane” refrain no Longer Applies for Hollywood Stars
Meanwhile, many starts have publically endorsed candidates for the 2020 election. Before Super Tuesday, actor Michael Douglas supported Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor/producer Seth MacFarlane co-hosted events for Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren has the support of John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Jonathan Van Ness, and Scarlett Johanson amongst others in the industry, while Joe Biden has Tom Hanks, Michelle Kwan, and Alec Baldwin in his corner. Recently, you also may have noticed actor Danny DeVito lending his charisma to ads for Senator Bernie Sanders, who also has support from Ariana Grande, Dick Van Dyke, and Mark Ruffalo.
This is just the surface. Each candidate has an exhaustive list of celebs backing him or her. Each candidate except one, that is—the one currently in the White House.
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While people in Hollywood are taking their picks of which candidate they want to support, the industry as a whole is uniting against Donald Trump. The foremost rhetoric behind each celebrity endorsement implies that this election’s primary objective should be defeating Trump. Thus, the film and television community (a community that has always been left leaning) is likely to rally behind whomever wins the Democratic nomination and vote Blue no matter what come November.
Endorsing Trump has proven to be unwise in Hollywood. The handful of actors, directors, and producers who openly supported Trump in 2016 have had trouble finding work since the election. Agencies and management companies often hesitate to represent Trump supporters, for Producers will rarely hire them. Simply stated, in a Liberal industry, those in charge do not want Trumpish toxicity on their sets or in their offices.
Vote Blue No Matter Who is Standard Stance
Actors who backed Trump in 2016 such as Dean Cain, John Voight, and Antonio Sabato Jr have been all but blacklisted for the past few years. Sabato has even moved to Florida and taken on a construction job, ending his career in Hollywood for lack of work. Meanwhile, steadfast Republican celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood have retracted their support for Trump despite his political affiliation.
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Evidently, the ~3,000 mile distance between Hollywood and Washington DC is shrinking, as candidates are crisscrossing the continent for support from powerful and influential individuals. Historically speaking, this is hardly anything new, as celebrities have played roles in politics for decades. In World War II, the federal government solicited studios to create and distribute wartime propaganda films. During McCarthyism, troves of creative people were put on trial for creating films with Communist sentiments. As recently as the Obama administration, former Disney CEO Bob Iger held close relations and political counsel with the President, giving Mickey Mouse an influential voice of our federal government.
At the same time, political theater is getting all the more theatrical these days. The news feels more like “House Of Cards” everyday. It is entertaining, but unlike drama television, the consequences of real life politics do not end after 58 minutes. They remain authentic and oftentimes quite harsh. Trump proved in 2016 that a melodramatic, highly staged campaign can be triumphant in the modern era. In order to defeat him now, the Left has to hold their own in this sphere, but they are doing their best to uphold truth and dignity while giving the constituents the show they crave.
Four years ago, Russia played an illegal hand in deciding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, using social media to spread misinformation, disenfranchise voters, and contribute to the Trump campaign in ways that reaped obvious results. Following the election, social media and tech moguls behind companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and more have been called into question, pressed by politicians to provide greater cyber security and proactively catch instances of foreign powers trying to infiltrate American politics.
While actual amendments made by these social media companies have appeared lackluster and hollow—changes in leadership, marketing ploys, logo changes, etc.—Facebook and Twitter did recently find and suspend several accounts that were linked to Russian operations.
Feb 26, 2020: Twitter suspends all accounts associated with EBLA office in Ghana
– CNN
These accounts, ran by people from Ghana, were targeting African/Black American constituents, making radical posts about liberation, identity, and rebellion. Although the posts did not show preference for any specific candidate, they were unambiguously voicing a political message and attempting to influence the American populace at this integral time.
The Ghanaian-based group that ran these accounts was dubbed EBLA online. Across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the group had over 150 pages and accounts, and over a quarter-million followers. It also had a false headquarters location of Charleston, South Carolina to appear authentically American.
March 12, 2020:Facebook removes 49 accounts, 69 pages and 85 Instagram accounts associated with the troll farm. Twitter removes 72 EBLA accounts.
– CNN estimate based on multi-month investigation
Obvious Inauthentic Behavior Masked by Human Trolls
Tech company personnel, AI security software, and a few active users noticed the conspicuous aspects of these page’s posts and flagged them. Further analysis eventually ousted them as inauthentic. Oddly enough, however, the investigation revealed that the posts were not created by bots (which is typical for such scams), but by actual people in Ghana. Thus, it took real digging along with some cross references with Russia’s previous posts to realize that EBLA was tied up and led by Russian operations. The Ghanaian representatives were essentially a ploy, an extra layer of protection for Russia to carry out its sneaky offenses
In the end, EBLA got the boot from social media, kicked off of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. While EBLA never endorsed or even mentioned a 2020 candidate, this seemed like an appropriate precaution on the social networks’ behalves, for the foreign accounts were clearly attempting to sway the American political climate.
Ever since its social media exile, EBLA has gone silent and reporters have been unable to reach anyone involved in with the suspicious organization. In the digital age, disappearing becomes quite easy. Such is why social network users have to be all the more vigilant, critiquing false information and halting suspicious online behavior before it overtakes the truth this election year.
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Even Democrats are Repeating the Nonsense that Sanders is “Putin’s Choice”
On February 21st, Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders revealed in an interview that, about a month ago, U.S. Intelligence Dept. Officials briefed him that Russia has plans to ‘assist’ him in the 2020 election. Sanders response to the prospective foreign assistance was direct—he told Russia to “Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.”
The Vermont Senator also went on to call Russian President Vladimir Putin “an autocratic thug” and clarified, “Unlike Donald Trump, I do not consider Vladimir Putin a good friend… I stand firmly against (Russia’s) efforts, and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our election.” He speaks of course of Trump’s close relationship with the Russian leader, and of Trump’s encouragement, in plain sight, of Russian interference in his 2016 campaign.
Despite Sander’s straight answer to the news regarding Russia, Trump was not hesitant to bring it up during a Las Vegas rally the day before the Nevada caucus. He quipped about Bernie honeymooning in Moscow and snidely warned Democrats to be careful about foreign interference in elections. Then, he bragged that Putin really wants four more years of Trump.
Trump’s snarky speech is ironic given the fact that when Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire first informed the President about Russia’s support of him for 2020, he reportedly threw a fit, angry that Maguire would disclose such information with Democratic nemesis Adam Schiff in the room. Even though reporting such activity to the POTUS is part of the DNI job description, Trump ended up terminating Maguire for, essentially, telling the truth and doing his job.
No one Knows Who is “Electable” even though all the Candidates Try to Claim they are the One that can Beat Trump
The conventional wisdom is that only a moderate centrist Democrat can defeat Trump. There are, however, only a lot of theories, based on the standard data, to support this contention and the same people espousing those theories are the ones that said that Hillary, based on the same methods of predicting election outcomes, would beat Trump with ease.
Bernie Sanders does have “extreme” proposals, compared with the bland, compromise based plans of the more moderate wing of the party. Maybe, just maybe, going up against the most extreme most volatile and completely corrupt politician in recent history requires an extreme challenger? Trump will cheat and lie, that is clear, and someone to take him on must be ready for that and must be able to show that he (or she) can survive the shit storm he will create and then take the country out of this nightmare.
You can not compromise with a sociopath.
2016 All Over Again but with a twist, and perhaps, a Different Outcome
The propaganda spin that appears to have been planned long in advance seems to be working already. Viewing various tweets from Democrats who are not aligned with Sanders indicate that they are actively parroting the Putin planted misinformation.
The two threads they have, apparently subconsciously, picked up are:
A – Sanders has no chance and the proof is that he is the Putin’s preferred opponent for Tump (unsubstantiated inferences stated as fact and as original thought)
Or
B – That Sanders is going to be called a Communist (or is a Communist) and that his past, regardless how innocent compared to Trump, makes him an easy target that he has no chance to win in the general election. There are even those that posit that he must be a Communist because Putin “likes” him.
In other words, they have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.
According to the New York Times:
The Russians have been preparing — and experimenting — for the 2020 election, undeterred by American efforts to thwart them but aware that they needed a new playbook of as-yet-undetectable methods, United States officials said
They have made more creative use of Facebook and other social media.
Rather than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are working to get Americans to repeat disinformation, the officials said. That strategy gets around social media companies’ rules that prohibit “inauthentic speech.”
(emphasis mine)
Typical examples of the parroting of the Russian disinformation:
Not even close…tells us something when Russia and trump are fronting for him…
The disturbing thing is that these supposedly intelligent Democratic voters are immediately jumping to the first thoughts that Putin has planted in their minds.
The real truth is that Sanders is the most dangerous candidate to both Trump and Putin and should be seen as such. They have an elaborate plan to stop him but they fear that he will do the one thing that they can not overcome; awaken the American people to the power they already have.
And Outsider Rises Up in Spite of Both Republican and Democrat Establishments being Against Him: Sound Familliar?
The cable news pundits have already started repeating that Sanders, “a socialist candidate” has little chance to win and will hurt down ballot races for the House and Senate. Naturally, they have no proof of this and no idea if another candidate would do any better in that regard. They are parroting conventional “wisdom” and creating noise just like Putin wants.
There are also already rumblings and propaganda-troll posts that are implying that because Sanders was in Moscow many years ago on his Honeymoon (supposedly) that he is therefore, obviously, a Communist.
The fact that so many have taken it at face value that Putin is “helping” him, although zero evidence has been revealed and no details exist showing what exactly this “help” consists of, creates a perfect launching pad for what is likely to be the most blatant and ridiculous-nonsense mudslinging contest in history.
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On the other side is the rock-solid record and consistency of Sanders. People can disagree with his goals and platform but it will be difficult, indeed, to rattle him when trying to sling random insults and trying to make up lies about him to dissuade those who have followed his political career.
Likewise, Trump’s response to the briefing—both his hysterics in Washington and his jests in Vegas—illustrates a subliminal touch of fear. Fear that Bernie will win the primary, which he did, “bigly”, without but in reality in spite of, supposed Russian assistance.
As Bernie leads the Democratic race after definitive wins in New Hampshire and Nevada, it is looking increasingly likely that it will ultimately come down to “Trump v. Sanders” in November.
Trump and the Republicans will undoubtedly try to turn this murky Russian briefing report against Bernie again, spinning the wheels of propaganda over and over. We can all relate, in the meantime to the sentiment of Bernie’s final word when interviewed on the topic on the eve of the Nevada Caucuses: “I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president.”
