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Donald Trump Jr.

Don Jr. Praises White Nationalist: 'My Favorite Twitter Account Of All Time'

Donald Trump Jr. interviewed antisemitic white nationalist Douglass Mackey — who was recently convicted of election interference during the 2016 presidential election — on the December 7 episode of his Rumble podcast, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., and said that Mackey’s suspended “Ricky Vaughn” Twitter account “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time.” Trump Jr. also suggested that he may have been in contact with Mackey in 2016.

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Mackey had a Twitter account under the name “Ricky Vaughn.” HuffPost revealed his real name in 2018 and reported that the account was known for spreading “anti-Semitism and white nationalism,” such as using the antisemitic “echo” and tweeting that Jews had “control of the media” and were broadcasting “antiwhite messaging” in the mid-1900s. HuffPost also reported that Mackey had appeared on “numerous white supremacist podcasts.” Mackey has also reportedly spoken of his support for creating all-white communities and said he shuns interracial marriages “to maintain our unique culture and racial heritage,” and he has promoted Islamaphobic and anti-migrant content.

In October, Mackey was sentenced to seven months in prison for “spreading falsehoods via Twitter … in an effort to suppress Democratic turnout in the 2016 presidential election,” specifically by falsely posting that it was possible to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton by texting or posting on social media. (Trump Jr. indicated on his podcast that Mackey is appealing the decision.)

During the December 7 interview, Trump Jr. described Mackey as an “original MAGA meme lord” and misleadingly claimed that Mackey’s prosecution and conviction was “literally over a meme from 2016” (a claim other right-wing media figures have also made; in reality, the Department of Justice said that thousands of people tried to vote by texting to the number he distributed). While introducing Mackey, Trump Jr. also said that “we’ve probably gone back and forth on Twitter back in the old days and DMs.”

DONALD TRUMP JR. (HOST): And with that, guys, joining us now is Doug Mackey. Again, if you guys were in the meme wars, like, early adapters like me back in 2015 and ’16, you’ll know him as Ricky Vaughn. But Doug, for the people watching — and it’s great to have you. You know, I know — we’ve probably gone back and forth on Twitter back in the old days and DMs, and I’m sure we were put on lists way back then. But for the people watching, can you explain what happened here? I mean, you literally ran a Twitter account named Ricky Vaughn. And you got charged for posting a meme. What’s going on?

Later in the interview, Trump Jr. told Mackey that his Ricky Vaughn account was “awesome” and “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time” and “maybe the best of all time.” (Trump Jr. also lauded Mackey on Tim Pool’s show earlier this year.)

DONALD TRUMP JR. (HOST): But, hey, you had an awesome account. It may be my favorite Twitter account of all time. Now I’ll get in trouble for saying that because they’ll say, oh, he said something once that you must disavow. Like, it was hilarious, OK? Like, again, like I said, maybe the best of all time, but how’d you get into the idea of that account? How were you able to grow such a large following that put you on the radar of these people?

Trump Jr. also helped Mackey promote his legal defense fund, asking, “How much funds do you need to get through that next level if in fact you need to take it to the Supreme Court?” An on-screen graphic also told viewers to go to the defense fund’s site to donate. Trump Jr. ended the interview by thanking Mackey for “all of the entertainment over the years.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Donald Trump Jr.

Don Junior Previews Lunatic Staffing Of Next Trump White House

Donald Trump Jr. said on his streaming program yesterday that he wants Laura Loomer as former President Donald Trump’s White House press secretary and Mike Davis as attorney general. Loomer has described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism,” while Davis has declared that if given power in a future Trump Justice Department he would use it to imprison Trump’s political enemies and support pardons for “every January 6 defendant.”

On the October 9 edition of his Rumble show, Trump Jr. said that he’d “love to see” Loomer “as press secretary just to watch D.C. just explode.” He explained:

DONALD TRUMP JR.: She’s a bulldog, man, I will say that. She gets after it. I’d love to see her as press secretary just to watch D.C. just explode. There’s a couple of people that you could put in positions like that, you know. We talk about, like, you know, Mike Davis as attorney general, one of those guys. You almost have to. Just put them in as interim even just to send that shot across the bow of the swamp, you know? Like — you want to play?

You want to play? And then you can get someone, you know, the guys that wouldn’t get affirmed or otherwise. But let like Mike Davis, you know, Kash Patel be like interim AGs. Put Laura Loomer as press secretary for just a couple of days just to, you know, these losers in the — they’ll figure out exactly how easy their job is, you know, before that, so that’d be pretty funny.

Following his 2016 election, Trump stocked his White House and administration with an array of familiar faces from his television screen, including at least 20 former Fox News employees. As the former president has widened his media diet since leaving office to include even more unhinged sources, it’s not implausible that a future administration would feature denizens from the right-wing fever swamps.

Here’s who Trump Jr. is suggesting be given power under a potential 2024 Trump administration.

Laura Loomer

Loomer is a conspiracy theorist who recently joined Rumble as an exclusive host — a fitting collaboration since the platform hosts right-wing conspiracy theories and bigoted rhetoric. (Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski hailed Loomer’s addition.)

According to The New York Times, former president Donald Trump wanted to hire Loomer for his current presidential campaign but was talked out of it. Since then, he has repeatedly praised Loomer, and campaign adviser Jason Miller recently appeared on her program, where he called her “the best” and said of Trump: “I know he's very appreciative for everything that you do, Laura.”

(Ironically, one of Loomer’s biggest critics is member of congress and anti-Muslim bigot Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has called Loomer “a documented liar,” among other things)

Loomer is virulently anti-Muslim. She has said that she is “anti-Islam” and a “proud Islamophobe,” stated that she never wants “another Muslim entering this country EVER AGAIN,” and asked, “How many more people need to die before everyone agrees that Islam is cancer & we should never let another Muslim into the civilized world?” Here is a summary of some — but certainly not all — of her anti-Muslim rants.

  • Loomer described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and wrote: “I never want another Muslim entering this country EVER AGAIN!”
  • Loomer called Muslims “savages” who “ruin everything.”
  • In response to July 2017 news that “over 2,000 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean so far this year,” Loomer tweeted: “Good. [clapping emoji] Here's to 2,000 more.”
  • Loomer wrote of the 2019 mass murder of 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand: “Nobody cares about Christchurch. I especially don’t.”
  • Loomer said: “How many more people need to die before everyone agrees that Islam is cancer & we should never let another Muslim into the civilized world?”
  • Loomer has argued that “it should be illegal in America to take your oath of office on the Quran,” explaining, “There must be a full blown effort to prevent these people from further infiltrating our government.”
  • Loomer complained in 2021 of former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy: “Kevin is very pro-Islam. He wouldn’t allow the NRCC to support my campaign last year because I’m anti-Islam and he doesn’t like that I speak out about Sharia law and Islamic terrorism/ immigration.”

Loomer also said during a podcast: “Someone asked me ‘Are you pro-white nationalism?’ Yes. I’m pro-white nationalism.”

Mike Davis 

Davis served in the Justice Department during the Bush administration, oversaw judicial nominations as a staffer to then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, and played lead roles in the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. He founded the Article III Project, which he described to The New York Times in 2019 as an effort to “take off the gloves, put on the brass knuckles and fight back” on judicial issues. That article characterized Davis as “a take-no-prisoners conservative eager to challenge the left with hardball tactics.”

In practice, Davis has spent the last several years offering unhinged and authoritarian diatribes, conspiracy theories, and pro-Trump sycophancy on his social media feed and across a constellation of right-wing media outlets.

He has excused Trump’s withholding of government documents by claiming presidents can effectively “wave a magic wand” and declassify them; urged House Republicans to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and President Joe Biden; said that Biden is “the perfect guy to put in the White House if you want a puppet to control”; described Trump’s various criminal indictments as “a political hit by Biden and Garland to take out Trump for the 2024 presidential election” that will “have a very chilling effect on democracy” and the district attorneys and the special counsel investigating Trump as “partisan hitmen sent by Biden to take out Trump”; and argued that the New York civil suit against Trump was “only constitutional in Third World Marxist hellholes” and was essentially “legal terrorism."

Davis has put forward a chillingly specific platform for what he would do if appointed attorney general, which he describes as his “reign of terror.” He claims to have “five lists, ready to go and they're growing,” which consist of political enemies he would fire, indict, deport, or imprison in the “DC gulag” or Guantanamo Bay, as well as political supporters who would be pardoned, including “every January 6th defendant.”

When Media Matters’ Jason Campbell reported on those remarks in September, Davis replied that he was “excited to put” Campbell “and all the leftwing freaks at” Media Matters on the lists for indictment, deportation, and imprisonment at the “DC gulag” or Gitmo. When Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted that “Trumpists are becoming unusually explicit in acknowledging they want to regain power so they can engineer political prosecutions of people they disagree with,” Davis responded, “Fact Check: True,” adding that Gertz had been added to the indictment and gulag/Gitmo lists.

Trump Jr. also mentioned Kash Patel as a potential attorney general. Patel previously worked as chief of staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller during the Trump administration. He is now a right-wing pundit who, along with other senior Trump officials, has spoken at events featuring Hitler-promoting antisemites. He’s also embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Tuberville Sputters Openly Racist Remarks On Don Jr. Webcast

Tuberville Sputters Openly Racist Remarks On Don Jr. Webcast

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville has long been known for saying wildly racist stuff out loud in the service of the conservative agenda. And he did it again during an appearance on Donald Trump Jr.’s web show, “Triggered,” while talking about all the “woke” problems in the world.

Making the rounds on Friday was a clip of Tuberville attacking teachers. More specifically, Tuberville blew his racist whistle, saying, “COVID really brought it out about how bad our schools are and how bad our teachers are in the inner city, most of them in inner city.” But he wasn’t done degrading “inner city” educators, adding, “I don't know whether they can read and write.”

Now, Tuberville says lots of racist things, but his appearance with Don Jr. did expose how racism often works for the Republican Party: as an attack on labor.

The full exchange between the two dunderheads gives away the game. Notice how quickly Tuberville’s racist convictions jump track to labor issues.

“And they want a raise. They want less time to work and less time in school. It's just we've ruined work ethic in this country.” They’re also lazy. Got all that old-timey racism?

But basic conservative racism aside, this is Tuberville’s real agenda: breaking unions and ridding Alabama of public schools. Tuberville, like virtually all Republican officials, is in the business of siphoning public school money to the private sector. The lynchpin of the conservative movement’s war on public education and teachers is “parents rights” (unless those parents’ children don’t agree with Christian conservative politics).

Tuberville just has a tendency to bang the racist gongs as loudly as possible, and the MAGA world needs racism the way that the general population needs soylent green. It is no coincidence that Tuberville’s blunt bigotry has found a home in the MAGA camp, pushing Big Lie election fraud claims, even saying this pretend election fraud against the Donald “makes me want to vote for him twice.”

Tuberville has been called out for his dangerous racist statements before. During a Trump rally in October of last year, Tuberville gave his jumbled version of an attack on Democrats and the fake crime wave, saying, ”They want crime, because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bullshit. They are not owed that."

Tuberville hits pretty much every racist trope that Black Americans have fought against for hundreds of years. In the span of a few months, Tuberville has said, out loud and in front of cameras, that the descendants of slaves are criminals, uneducated (if not illiterate), and indolent. Tuberville’s lazy use of racist tropes exposes him as the low-rent George Wallace he is clearly modeling himself after.

Tuberville’s racist wisdom is always factually wrong, even if the majority of Republican officials believe it. Tuberville joins other bigoted right-wing charlatans in his use of racist dog whistles we all once believed were too archaic to be used anymore—even for racists.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Ditching Lawyers (And Brothers), Ivanka Hires New Counsel In Fraud Trial

Ditching Lawyers (And Brothers), Ivanka Hires New Counsel In Fraud Trial

Ivanka Trump has parted ways with her family’s legal counsel in the New York civil fraud lawsuit and hired lawyers to defend her, and her alone, distancing herself from her father and brothers in the case.

The move came after the judge overseeing the case rejected Ivanka’s independent attempt to dismiss the accusations against her — and only her.

The lawsuit was brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against the Trump Organization and its executives — including former President Donald Trump and his three adult children, Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump — last September, alleging years of financial fraud.

James accused Trump of conspiring with his children and Trump Organization executives for years to flagrantly distort property and asset valuations to deceive lenders, insurance brokers, and tax authorities to obtain better loans, insurance coverage, and tax benefits.

The lawsuit sought to recover $250 million in financial benefits obtained through fraud, bar the Trumps from serving as executives at any New York company, and bar Trump and the Trump Organization from any New York real estate acquisitions or loans issued by New York-registered lender for five years.

Court documents submitted a week after James filed the lawsuit showed that the Trump children had hired Clifford Robert and Michael Farina as legal counsel. Ivanka also independently engaged the services of two Washington, DC-based lawyers — Reid Figel and Michael Kellogg — to represent her alongside Robert and Farina.

In early March, Figel urged the judge via letter to delay the trial to give just Ivanka time to prepare a defense stating that “other individuals” — suggestively, her father and brothers — had prepared the fraudulent financial statements cited in James’ lawsuit.

James’ complaint “does not contain a single allegation that Ms. Trump directly or indirectly created, prepared, reviewed, or certified any of her father's financial statements,” Figel wrote.

He added: “The complaint affirmatively alleges that other individuals were responsible for those tasks.”

However, at least one of James’ allegations pertains to a property that Ivanka had lived in, reports the UK’s Daily Mail.

The request was denied.

According to Forbes, the Trump children’s legal divorce occurred last week. Figel and Kellogg withdrew from the case on Tuesday.

Three days later, Bennet Moskowitz, who represented Jeffrey Epstein, informed the court he was replacing Robert and Farina as Ivanka’s sole legal counsel. Forbes stated in its report that Robert and Farina still represent Trump Jr. and Eric.

While Ivanka's decision to legally distance herself from her family in such a high-stakes legal battle isn’t unheard of, the timing of her move is, former elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek.

"The timing is somewhat unusual as discovery is ending, so the evidence in the case is by now largely identified and developed," McAuliffe told the paper.

“Ivanka Trump [could be] looking ahead to the trial in the fall and wants a separate advocate who is free to point out the disparity in the evidence against the various defendants. A lawyer representing all or several of the defendants can't realistically or effectively make that argument,” he added.

Blaming Eric and Don for the expansive financial fraud alleged by James could put Ivanka’s defense at odds with her brothers’, Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek.

The lawsuit’s ongoing discovery process is set to end on April 30, per Forbes. The trial, scheduled for 2nd October, will commence on time “come hell or high water,” the judge has since said.