Tag: accusations
Donald Trump Jr.

Don Jr. Accused Of Killing Yet Another Protected Animal

Italian politician Andrea Zanoni accused Donald Trump Jr. of killing a protected species of duck while on a hunting trip near Venice in December.

Zanoni reportedly told authorities that a video shows Trump Jr. with what appears to be the dead body of a rare ruddy shelduck.

“This is actually a rather uncommon duck for the area. Not even sure what it is in English, but incredible shoot,” he says in the video.

“This is a species protected throughout Europe by the EU birds directive and of course by Italian law … [which] criminally punishes its killing and possession,” Zanoni said.

“The bird in the video is a female casarca, or ruddy shelduck. It’s highly protected and under Italian law you cannot hunt them,” Roberto Tinarelli, president of the Association of Ornithologists in Emilia-Romagna, told The Times of London.

Trump Jr. has a history of hunting questionable game. In 2019, he made headlines during a trip to Mongolia, where he shot an endangered argalis mountain sheep. It was later reported that U.S. taxpayers footed the bill for the rare animal hunting extravaganza.

The rich do not believe in laws—at least when applying them to themselves—and this clearly extends to recreational pursuits like hunting. Trump Jr.’s predilection for shady big-game hunting is shared by fellow Republican and former Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, who also has a history of dubious hunting practices.

The general irresponsibility of Trump Jr.’s actions are reminiscent of Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose bizarre bear “prank” epitomizes the kind of corrupt privilege and glib immorality embodied by the wealthy.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Not All Lies Are Created Equal

Not All Lies Are Created Equal

It never ends. The press still does not know how to handle the avalanche of lies that is MAGA's chief contribution to our national life. I understand, sort of. It's dull and time-consuming to bird-dog every false accusation, wild assertion or factual misstatement that comes out of Trumpland. "They're controlling the weather" is just the latest crackpottery from a sitting member of Congress who is also one of the GOP caucus's top fundraisers. But when there's a forest fire, the firefighters don't get to say, "Oh, this again? We put out a fire here last year."

One particular tack some journalists have taken is particularly galling. In order to show fairness to both sides, they've picked up on a trivial lie by Tim Walz and hammered it. At the vice presidential debate, the moderators grilled Walz about a discrepancy unearthed by CNN in his account of a trip to Hong Kong in 1989. Yes, 1989. Apparently Walz told an interviewer that he had been in Hong Kong when the Tiananmen Square massacre happened in May. It turns out — hold onto your hats! — Walz didn't arrive in Hong Kong until three months later.

This was considered important enough to raise at the debate 10 years after the remarks in question. Walz's answer was nearly as bad as the question. He should have known it might be coming (the CNN report was recent), and yet he dodged and weaved and then called himself a "knucklehead." Jeez, too much over too little. All he needed to say was, "I must have misremembered because when I was there, Tiananmen was all anyone was talking about. Next question." (It was a good jibe when he said he wished Trump had gone on such trips, as it might have curbed his gushing about Xi Jinping.)

Not content with that, Bill Whitaker of 60 Minutes raised it again in the interview that aired last Monday, asking whether voters can trust him to tell the truth. This led to another "Aw, shucks, I can be a knucklehead, I should really watch what words I use mea culpa." Please. This is utterly trivial. He should stop groveling.

It seems that Walz may have shaded the truth a few other times as well. He once slipped when speaking of the gun he carried as a member of the National Guard, saying he carried it "in war" when he never saw combat. Maybe I'm missing something, but this too seems a small matter to me. He was decrying the fact that pretty much anyone can get their hands on the kind of assault rifle that he was issued as a member of the military. He's apologized for using the words "in war," as he should. But let's get a grip. This is hardly a case of stolen valor.

Walz also apparently tried to bury a DUI, and he said he and his wife used IVF to conceive their children when it turns out that they used a different form of assisted reproduction. This was enough to cause a prominent columnist to declare him a "habitual liar."

Walz's lies fall into the category of misspeaking, padding one's resume a bit or shading the truth. He doesn't deserve a pass. CNN was right to report it. But it's being elevated out of all proportion, especially when you consider that the team of Trump and Vance daily and hourly tell the kind of vicious, inciting lies that are tearing our country apart.

Trump's lies about COVID 19 — that it was milder than the flu, that it would go away when the weather warmed up, that it could be magically cured with hydroxychloroquine, that everyone who wanted a test would get one (and we now learn that Vladimir Putin did get some), that abiding by social distancing and mask guidelines was fascism — those lies arguably led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

Trump's and Vance's lies about "illegal" (read: legal) Haitian immigrants eating Springfield's dogs and cats plunged a city into uproar, led to bomb threats and death threats to business owners, and terrorized schoolchildren.

Trump's and Vance's lies about the 2020 election have undermined the confidence of millions of Americans in the most sacred of democratic institutions, our election system, and caused the deaths of five people on Jan. 6.

Trump's and Vance's lies about FEMA — that funds had been diverted from disaster assistance in order to support illegal immigrants "who will vote Democrat" — aroused vicious hatred toward immigrants, Democrats and the federal government.

Not all lies are created equal. MAGA's lies are designed to instill suspicion, to corrode tolerance, and to shred our unity as a nation. The job of the press is not to give the same treatment to both sides; it is to present the truth, or as close an approximation of it as can be ascertained. When one side stretches the truth and the other side seeks to obliterate it, they should not be treated equally.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Bob Good (R-VA)

Bob Good Suggests 'Election  Fraud' By Trump-Backed Rival In GOP Primary

A week after Virginia’s primaries, the race between Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good and state Sen. John McGuire remains too close to call, but Good isn’t waiting for the final results to yell fraud. Turns out, election denial works even worse if you’re not convicted felon Donald Trump. It also doesn’t garner you much support when Trump endorsed the other guy.

Good is demanding a revote in the city of Lynchburg, where he is leading in the count, and he is saying that if the revote doesn’t happen, he’ll block certification of the city’s results because, of course, conspiracy theories of fraud.

“They did not secure their drop boxes. There’s no accountability for when those boxes were open. They were apparently left to be stuffed for two or three days after the election,” Good said Monday on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “There’s no accountability for who opened those, how many ballots came out.”

In the case that the ballot-stuffing and/or -stealing allegations don’t pan out, Good is also pushing a conspiracy theory about fire alarms that went off in some precincts.

“We had 3 ‘fires’ on election day in 3 precincts, all requiring the precincts to be evacuated for 20 minutes. Albemarle County, Hanover County, and Lynchburg City,” he tweeted last Thursday. “What is the probability? Does anyone recall even 1 fire at a precinct on election day?”

There were no fires, and no one was prevented from voting in any of the incidents, election officials in each county told USA Today.

All of this is being met by ridicule and worse from Good’s Republican colleagues in the House. That might have something to do with the fact that Trump has already declared McGuire the winner.

"[Of] course Bob is claiming election fraud. He is grasping at straws to help save his political career," Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin told Axios. "If Bob had spent more time working for America and less time trying to dictate to other members of Congress how we could vote for our constituents, we would not be having this conversation. He is a bully and it is time for him to go,” he added.

"F**k Bob Good. Bob Good is a sore loser. His defeat strengthens our majority," one House Republican anonymously told Axios, while another said, "I assume Bob Good is full of s**t."

"What a loser,” Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said, noting that Good won Lynchburg but is still declaring fraud there.

Who knew that House Republicans would ridicule election denial? It seems that because Trump endorsed the other guy, the MAGA crowd just won’t back Good on this one. If Good somehow manages to eke out the win, however, all bets are off on whether they believe fraud happened.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Sexism Accusations Kick Off Contentious Massachusetts Senate Campaign

The 2012 senatorial election in Massachusetts is starting to heat up. Republican Senator Scott Brown is under attack from critics accusing him of sexism for his response to a quip by one of his Democratic challengers, Elizabeth Warren.

During a debate on Tuesday night, the six Democrats vying for their party’s nomination in November’s election were asked how they paid for their college educations; the moderator noted that Brown posed nude in a Cosmopolitan photo spread to help finance his education at Boston College Law School.

Warren answered “I kept my clothes on,” in a thinly veiled shot at Brown, before going on to explain that she paid for college by taking out student loans and held a part time job.

On Thursday, when asked about Warren’s remarks on a Boston radio show, Senator Brown laughed and said, “Thank God.”

Although Warren took Brown’s shot in stride, remarking that “I’ll survive a few jabs from Scott Brown over my appearance,” other Massachusetts Democrats are up in arms over Brown’s comment.

“Scott Brown’s comments send a terrible message that even accomplished women who are held in the highest esteem can be laughingly dismissed based on their looks,” said Clare Kelly, the executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. She went on to label Brown’s comment as “kind of thing you would expect to hear in a frat house, not a race for U.S. Senate.”

The controversy over Brown’s remarks promises to be just the first of many flare-ups in the highly publicized election. Brown has been very closely scrutinized after pulling off a shocking upset victory in the January 2010 special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. Despite upsetting some conservatives with his occasional willingness to cross party lines, Brown is popular in Massachusetts, with his approval rating consistently polling above 50 percent.

Warren, his likely opponent, is also highly regarded. Just as Brown’s upset victory made him a hero to many Republicans, Warren’s work to develop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has earned her a devoted progressive following. The time is right for Warren to make a big move politically: She is known for the kind of fiery anti-Wall Street rhetoric that is stealing headlines across the country by way of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Indeed, Warren seems determined to frame the election as a choice between a Republican who will fight for Wall Street and a Democrat who will fight for the people.

Forbes magazine named Scott Brown Wall Street’s favorite senator. I was thinking that’s probably not an award I’m going to get,” Warren said on Wednesday.

Warren and Brown’s back-and-forth over nude modeling served as the opening shot in what promises to be a bitter fight. It may be a must-win for Democrats; with the GOP in good position to claim the majority in the Senate, reclaiming Brown’s seat in liberal Massachusetts could be the Democrats’ best chance at holding onto control of the upper chamber. Furthermore, there’s a good chance that the election will turn into a proxy war between pro-business conservatives and progressives looking to scale back Wall Street’s political power. Such a debate could have broad ramifications on other races across the country, including President Obama’s campaign for re-election.

Early polls show Brown narrowly leading Warren, generally by a small number within the margin of error. Whether or not you were offended by Brown’s comments, they served as the first sign that the Massachusetts election will be one to watch in 2012.

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