Tag: msnbc
Mike Davis

Would-Be Trump Attorney General Threatens To Send MSNBC Host To 'DC Gulag'

He’s vowed to inflict a “reign of terror” and said it will be “glorious” when he puts migrant kids in cages. Now he wants to throw MSNBC host Medhi Hasan into a “gulag.” It would all be ludicrous if he weren’t connected to powerful Republicans in the Senate, the Supreme Court, throughout government, and the private sector, and if he hadn’t already been floated as a possible Trump attorney general.

At the Federalist Society, Mike Davis’ bio says he “has served in all three branches of the federal government, including for President George W. Bush, the Justice Department, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and current Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.”

He was chief counsel for nominations to then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, but his current job is the one that is causing grave concern to those who see a second Trump term as ushering in fascism, and are worried about “the very future of American democracy.”

Like MSNBC host Medhi Hasan, who provided viewers on Sunday with an overview of Davis, and other possible top Trump officials should the ex-president get re-elected.

Davis heads Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-funded $20 million plan to gut the executive branch and install only Trump loyalists at every level and in every building.

“According to a new NBC News poll out just this morning for the first time, Donald Trump is now leading in a hypothetical general election matchup,” Hasan noted on Sunday (video below). “Now, this isn’t just bad news for President Biden, this is terrible news for the very future of American democracy.”

“For weeks we’ve been warning you on this show about the dangers of a second Trump term. The former president, after all has promised retribution, pledged to round up protesters with the military and suggested using the Justice Department to go after his political enemies,” the MSNBC host continued. “These are plans that should terrify each and every single one of us. But tonight, I want to pull back the curtain and take a look at who could be tasked with carrying out Trump’s radical agenda come 2025 and answer the question: what would a second Trump presidency without any human guardrails, without any adults in the room actually look like?”

After looking at a possible Vice President Tucker Carlson, and (again) a possible National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Hasan focused on “a man a lot of people may not have heard of yet, Mike Davis.”

“He’s the man many in Trump’s inner circle, including his own son Don Jr. and Steve Bannon, are pitching to be the country’s next possible Attorney General. Earlier this week over on my Peacock show,” Hasan explained, “I dove deep into the conservative lawyer’s record from Davis’ threats to send journalists to the ‘DC Gulag.’ He has repeatedly called on social media for his followers to quote ‘arm up against the violent Black underclass,’ and it appears I may have struck a nerve.”

“Davis has since responded to my monologue from earlier this week, pledging to indict me when he’s AG for what I’m not sure but he’s also threatened to send me to the DC Gulag.”

“That’s a totally normal, non-fascistic response from a man trying to become the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.”

Indeed, Davis on Monday afternoon doubled down on his vow to send Hasan to the “DC Gulag.”

(For those wondering, “gulag” is a Russian term referring to forced labor camps under Lenin and Stalin. In America, we don’t have gulags.)

Monday afternoon, Davis wrote on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, that Hasan “is now on my Lists 2 (indict), 4 (detain), 6 (denaturalize), and 3 (deport).”

“I already have his spot picked out in the DC gulag,” Davis reiterated, before attacking MSNBC contributor Tim Miller.

“But I’ll put him in the women’s cell block, with @Timodc,” he added. “So these whiny leftists don’t get beat up as often.”

Davis also posted a link to Hasan’s NBC Peacock segment on him, and called it his “application” to become AG.

“Dear President Trump,” Davis wrote. “Here’s my application to serve as your next Attorney General. (And if you pick me, I promise to put @mehdirhasan on Lists 2, 4, and 6.)”

Watch Hasan’s segment below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump

Financial Analyst Exposes Kushner's Unprecedented Saudi Grift

During Monday's segment of MSNBC's Morning Joe, economic analyst Steve Rattner left panelists astounded after providing an in-depth look into the root of ex-President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's "$3.1 billion cash haul."

Rattner shared a chart displaying a breakdown of the sources of Kushner's money via Twitter Monday, writing, "Jared Kushner spent much of his White House tenure cozying up to MBS [Mortgage-Backed Securities] & Saudi Arabia. Six months after leaving Washington, his private equity firm landed $2 billion in investments from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund."

During the show segment, MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire noted how Kushner's "background in real estate" does not exactly qualify him "as a hedge fund magnate or peace broker in the Middle East."

"You're right, Jonathan. Jared Kushner did work in the White House," Rattner said. "He worked very hard. It's becoming less clear what he worked hard at, because after he left the White House, he went out and raised $3.1 billion -- that's billion with a 'b' -- for a private equity fund and he's not a private equity guy, he is a real estate guy. So where does the money come from? Some of it we know from filing. Some from press reports.What we know for a fact is that he raised $3.1 billion and only about $30 million of it actually came from investors in the United States all the rest of it is foreign money. And of that foreign money, $2 billion came from the Saudis."

The analyst emphasized, "I've been in this business 40 years. I've never seen somebody get two-thirds of their money from a single investor. Usually a single investor might be a few percent of the fund, might be 5 percent, occasionally 10 percent — I've never seen this. Another $200 million we believe came from Qatar and another $200 million from the United Arab Emirates and then the $625 million from foreign investors that we don't even know who they are. So what was Jared Kushner doing in the White House? And, by the way as a fun fact, on January 6, the famous January 6, Jared Kushner was in the Middle East."

Morning Joe panelist Elise Jordan then asked Rattner, "There's not much out there on how Jared has actually been able to execute his funding. He has all this money, but his background is not in private equity and I've seen only one news report of a small European investment. He's sitting on all this money. Are the Saudis investing with him just to hedge their bets politically in case Trump comes back into office?"

Rattner emphasized, "We haven't seen him do a lot with this money. He has hired some people, I do know that. I've seen nothing else about what he's actually done with the money. It is normal to invest this money over a period of several years, so I don't think we can draw a firm conclusion yet. But, again, we're going back to a guy who's a real estate guy, and frankly not a particularly good one at that, who's suddenly got $3 billion trying to do private equity deals competing against people who've been in this business for a long time. And I wouldn't, if I were the Saudis, count on making a lot of money from this any time soon."

Rattner concluded, "U.S. private equity firms still raise the vast bulk of their money from U.S. investors. This is extraordinary — unprecedented — I've never seen anything like it."

Watch the video at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Who Is 'Kitara Ravache'? Ask Drag Queen George Santos

Who Is 'Kitara Ravache'? Ask Drag Queen George Santos

Rep. George Santos (R-NY), also known as Anthony Devolder, or George Anthony Devolder Santos, or Anthony Zabrovsky, may have one more name: Kitara Ravache.

Journalist Marisa Kabas, an opinion columnist for MSNBC, has the scoop.

“Eula Rochard, a Brazilian drag queen who was friends with George Santos when he lived near Rio,” she writes, referring to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, “said everyone knew him as Anthony (*never* George), or by his drag name, Kitara, and confirms this photo is from a 2008 drag show at Icaraí Beach.”

“Eula saw a story about Santos on Brazilian news and was sure was it was him. She shared the news with a group of friends and everyone doubted her. So she looked for an old picture to confirm, and she decided to post it to social media to prove to her friends that she was right,” Kabas says.

In her Substack newsletter Kabas has begun a feature called “The Daily Santos,” where she tracks the latest revelations about the serial liar.

“The important context here is that Santos ran as a far-right candidate, and continues to align himself with transphobes/homophobes who target drag shows with violence,” she says, explaining why this latest development is significant. “Drag is beautiful. Hypocrisy and anti-drag/anti-trans bigotry are not.”

The Republican Party has devolved into a massive anti-LGBTQ and especially an anti-transgender and anti-drag queen activist group. They falsely paint LGBTQ people, and especially transgender people and drag queens as “groomers” who want to sexually assault children. Right wing activists including the Proud Boys protest at drag queen story hours across the country and force school boards and libraries to ban books with LGBTQ themes.

Santos has closely aligned himself with some of that party’s most virulent anti-LGBTQ activists, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Lauren Boebert (R-CO).

“I conducted my interview with Eula along with a translator—a friend of mine from Brazil—so the responses I’m sharing are English translations from Portuguese,” Kabas notes. “Eula says she met Santos when he was 16 or 17 years old and became friends because they were both gay and enjoyed drag.”

NCRM has not confirmed that Santos was a drag performer.

Eula Rochard posted the photo to her Facebook page, writing (translated by Facebook), “Me with the American Republican congressman who didn’t leave my house who said I was a liar bite your tongue.”


Bruna Benevides, whose has been described as a Brazilian LGBTIQ+ activist and the first trans woman active in the Brazilian navy, on January 1, tweeted to The New York Times to ask Santos “about ‘Kitara Ravache’. His name in drag and peagent Queen.”

Last month she made the same suggestion to Ana Navarro-Cárdenas.

As for the “Anthony Zabrovsky” name, The Daily Beast reports former Santos acquaintance Gregory Morey-Parker, “who’d previously described Santos’ ‘delusions of grandeur’ to CNN, told Anderson Cooper on Tuesday evening that he knew the New York representative as Anthony Devolder when the two lived together for a few months. He then revealed that besides Devolder, a name Santos had used elsewhere, the newly minted GOP lawmaker would also refer to himself as Anthony Zabrovsky.”

Why Zabrovsky?

A former roommate, The Daily Beast adds, says that “according to Santos, ‘the Jews will give more if you’re a Jew.'”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Morning Joe Hosts Mock Trump's Jumbled Mess Of An Attack On Them

Morning Joe Hosts Mock Trump's Jumbled Mess Of An Attack On Them

While most presidents usually stay out of the spotlight upon leaving office, former President Trump knows only his ego and finding any platform that will host his web of lies and bullsh*t to nurse said ego back to health. Ever since he was booted off all major social media platforms for inciting violence and posting non-stop lies about the 2020 election results, Trump has taken to old-fashioned press statements and recorded messages to air his never-ending lies and petty grievances.

Well, the former "defeated" president's latest message was an attack on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

“Will Morning Joe be canceled,?" began Trump's statement. Adding, " He and Mika’s ratings are very low—they are having an extremely hard time finding an audience to listen to the Fake News they spurn. Losing them would be very sad—hope it doesn’t happen! On another front, looks like Unjoy Reid, the racist commentator on MSDNC (MSNBC), is toast. Her stupidity is only surpassed by her absolute lack of television persona. She never had it, and never will. The only thing she’s good at is spewing racist hate but obviously, no one is listening!”

Morning Joe co-host Mika Brezinski was quick to point out Trump's hilarious misusage of the word 'spurn.'

“We do spurn Fake News,” Mika Brzezinski responded.

After reading that verbal word salad on air, Scarborough sarcastically remarked, “I never heard him talk about spurn, using that has a word. I don’t use the word, it’s new vocabulary! Secondly, he can’t quit us!”

Perhaps Trump should've just stuck to covfefe.

Watch The Entire Exchange Below: