Donald Trump’s MAGA media propagandists are so deep in the tank for the former president that they’ve been praising him for repeatedly falling asleep during his New York City hush money trial.
Since April 15, Trump has regularly been in a Manhattan courtroom, where he faces charges of falsifying business records in order to conceal payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say these payments were intended to keep Daniels’ claims that she had an affair with Trump from becoming public during the 2016 presidential election.
Trump, age 77, often mocks President Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” suggesting that Biden is too old and frail to fulfill his duties. But reporters in the courtroom have repeatedly observed Trump appearing to fall asleep during the trial — most recently on Monday morning before opening statements began.
That evening on Fox News’ Special Report, chief political anchor Bret Baier suggested that news outlets are providing too much coverage of the first-ever criminal trial for a former president, and criticized them in particular for covering the spectacle of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s inability to stay awake in the courtroom.
“You know, we cover it every day,” Baier said of the trial, “and we will — all the details of each day in court — but there are some places that are obviously covering it ad nauseum and have gone through every single detail, including four times that he might have fallen asleep, everything that happens inside the courtroom.”
Meanwhile, Baier’s colleagues and their ilk spent last week attempting to turn Trump’s proclivity for nodding off in public into a virtue — apparently unphased by their years of denigrating Biden as an addled old man whose energetic speeches can only be the result of performance-enhancing drugs.
“I mentioned that Maggie Haberman posted this update from the courtroom, ‘It appears that Trump might be sleeping’ — this was on day one,” Republican political operative and Fox host Sean Hannity said on his April 18 radio show. “By the way, I think I’d fall asleep if I was there,” he added.
And Hannity wasn’t the only Trump flunky to attest that they, too, would sleep through a trial just like their beloved former president.
“I'd be falling asleep at that trial too,” Hannity’s colleague Laura Ingraham said on her April 15 Fox show.
“That’s exactly how all of us would act in, like, the ‘Intro to Gender Studies’ class at the University of Missouri,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his radio show.
Others praised Trump for falling asleep in court and urged him to be even more disrespectful during his trial.
“Did Donald Trump nod off for a moment? Good for him. These things are boring,” Newsmax host Greg Kelly offered on April 16.
“Trump appearing to sleep and be bored is exactly the response this Kafkaesque persecution deserves,” Fox host Greg Gutfeld said on the April 16 edition of The Five. “He is America, who, unlike this frothing infantile media, doesn't see this as some mutant form of entertainment and justice.”
“Trump should go to trial, bring a big book, big fat John Grisham novel, just sit there and read,” Gutfeld added. “Just sit there and read. That's the only response this manufactured mayhem deserves — is just contempt.”
Co-host Jesse Watters replied that he was going to send Trump’s team a copy of his new book so Trump “can open it up inside the courtroom.”
On Sunday’s MediaBuzz, Fox contributor Tomi Lahren praised Trump’s “excellent job” and claimed that journalists are “trying to distract from Joe Biden” by pointing out that Trump keeps falling asleep.
“I don't think anybody's buying it,” she said. “Good job media, but I don't think that it's resonating when you've got the current guy, President Joe Biden, in the office, who quite literally falls asleep.”
Less than 24 hours later, Trump apparently once again dozed off in court.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
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NRA: ‘We Highly Recommend’ Racist Newsletter That Frequently Defended Slavery
Published with permission from Media Matters for America
The NRA’s magazine America’s 1st Freedom celebrated racist former NRA board member and NRA Executive Council member Jeff Cooper and recommended that people read the late Cooper’s newsletter — which was peppered with racial slurs and defenses of slavery — before the 2016 election.
In an August 3 article, America’s 1st Freedom feted the upcoming 40th anniversary of Gunsite, a shooting academy founded by Cooper. The article lavishes praise on Cooper’s “well-known erudition,” calling him “a formidable historian and philosopher of broad, eclectic taste.”
The article concludes with a note suggesting, “For further reading, we highly recommend Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries” before linking to where the newsletter can be read online. Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries were a monthly to bi-weekly publication that ran from 1993 until Cooper’s death in 2006.
According to the NRA, the commentaries “are insightful, wide-ranging and quite frequently laugh-out-loud funny” and “Even 10 or more years later, many of his observations remain astute and timely, particularly in advance of the 2016 presidential election.”
Cooper often used racial slurs in his newsletter, including calling people of Middle Eastern descent “ragheads,” black children “pickaninnies” and “goblins,” Japanese people “nips,” Vietnamese people “gooks,” American Indians “pesky redskins” and “Injuns,” and black South Africans “kaffirs” — a term equivalent to the slur “nigger” in the United States.
After the Transvaal Province in South Africa was renamed to the Gauteng Province during the 1994 post-Apartheid elections which were open to all races, Cooper suggested that the province’s inhabitants should be referred to as “Oranggautengs.”
In response to a 1999 speech by Nelson Mandela, Cooper put forward the racist idea that “Equality is biologically impossible, and liberty is only obtainable in homogeneous populations very thinly spread.” Years later, he also wrote, “Sorry, Mr. [Thomas] Jefferson, but all men are not created equal. (‘All ya gotta do is look.’)”
A recurring theme in Cooper’s newsletter was defending the institution of slavery. In one instance, Cooper claimed that “slavery has been the normal condition of mankind for most of history. What do you do with the losers? You either kill them outright or put them to work”:
We reflect, in this period of racist agitation, that slavery has been the normal condition of mankind for most of history. What do you do with the losers? You either kill them outright or put them to work. If you pen them up you have to feed them, and you have enough trouble feeding yourself. Despite this a large number of semi−literate types in the States seem to think of slavery as a unique invention of the southern states of the US over a period of a few generations.
Cooper mused that abolishing slavery in the United States was “a mistake” in another commentary, suggesting the institution of slavery is as inevitable as “gravity,” and argued that “Without the institution of slavery, civilization would never have been achieved, for no one could ever have done anything intellectual if he had to spend all his time hewing and digging and fighting.” According to Cooper (emphasis original), “Colonial Africa was a far better place for both black and white before the colonists gave up.”
Cooper was an anti-gay bigot who praised Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe for calling LGBT people “perverts who do not deserve civil rights.” He also wrote that “lesbians make lousy shots” compared to “normal girls.”
The NRA article praising Cooper’s commentaries was published the day before an NRA representative appeared on Fox News to discuss NRA efforts to appeal to a more diverse audience:
NRA Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre speaks during the leadership forum at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting Friday, May 3, 2013 in Houston. (AP Photo/Steve Ueckert)