Tag: trump
Steve Bannon

Bannon And January 6 Organizer Now Pushing Anti-Immigrant Rallies

Podcaster and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon pushed the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory while hosting Tea Party Patriots leader Jenny Beth Martin, who was on to promote an anti-immigrant rally in Georgia.

Martin co-founded the Tea Party Patriots, a conservative grassroots organization formed in 2009 that has spread conspiracy theories and claims about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election. The group sponsored a pre-insurrection rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.

During the March 1 interview, Martin promoted a rally calling for “an end to the invasion on our border” and centers around the recent death of student Laken Riley. The suspect in Riley’s death is an undocumented person from Venezuela, a fact right-wing media have used to whip up hysteria about so-called “migrant crime.”

“We’re going to deport 10 million illegal alien invaders,” Bannon said. “They’re not going to sit here and continue to perpetrate crime on our cities, taking away health care, taking away the little education that is happening in the cities for these kids today.”

Later in the interview, Bannon invoked the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which asserts that migrants will replace white people in America and vote for Democrats. This conspiracy theory has previously motivated mass shootings against minority communities.

“This whole thing is to break the minority communities on wages, to destroy their schools, their education. They want to replace them,” Bannon said. “They want to replace the existing African American and Hispanic population in this country because, guess what, they understand they’re turning right.” While Bannon describes this imaginary replacement of Americans specifically as a threat to Black and Hispanic communities, his career laundering extreme racism into the mainstream belies this cheap slight of hand.

This interview continues Bannon’s extreme anti-immigrant crusade. Given Bannon’s prominence in the MAGA media universe, his show sometimes functions as a platform for message testing on issues that Trump-aligned figures hope to capitalize on ahead of the 2024 election.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Investor With Putin Ties Loaned $8 Million To Trump Entity Involved In Alleged Insider Trading

Investor With Putin Ties Loaned $8 Million To Trump Entity Involved In Alleged Insider Trading

A Russian businessman based in South Florida may have made millions off of insider trading in a scheme involving the parent company of former President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform.

The Miami Herald reported Wednesday that investor Anton Postolnikov — the nephew of a former staffer to Russian President Vladimir Putin — is mentioned in court documents from a 2023 New York securities fraud case prosecutors brought against three men from South Florida. Gerald and Michael Shvartsman, along with accomplice Bruce Garelick, allegedly pocketed $23 million from insider trading involving a 2021 merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the Miami, Florida-based Digital World Acquisition Corp.

Garelick and the Shvartsman brothers are accused of sharing non-public information with friends and colleagues in order to maximize their gains from the deal. Documents show Postolnikov loaned $8 million to Trump's company through a Caribbean bank he owns that frequently works with the pornography industry.

While neither Trump nor Postolnikov are facing any allegations of wrongdoing from the deal, the Herald reported that prosecutors could tack on more charges in a subsequent indictment. However, it remains unclear if Postolnikov will be added as an additional defendant. A separate filing by Tai Park — the defense attorney representing Michael Shvartsman — suggests that his client could face new charges of money laundering in response to his efforts to conceal his alleged insider trading profits.

Meanwhile, Garelick, who sat on the board of Digital World Acquisition Corp, is accused of making $50,000 from the merger in his work for Shvartsman's company, Rocket One Capital. Digital World is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, which is often used as a vehicle for entities seeking to become publicly traded companies, as it involves less regulatory oversight than a traditional initial public offering (IPO). The Herald reported that months before the merger was announced, Garelick wrote a message to Postolnikov that read "Anton, Good times last night! Following up on that Trump Media Group SPAC we mentioned. The deal is going to finalize this week. Please let us know if you are interested in investing."

The murky details of the merger may be partially why the deal has yet to be approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission after being on hold for more than two years. As a result of that delay, Trump Media and Technology Group has bled approximately $1 billion in investment commitments as of fall 2023. in the first three quarters of 2023, the company only posted $3.4 million in total revenue, which is far behind competing social media companies like Facebook and X/Twitter.

University of Florida business professor Jay Ritter — an expert on publicly traded companies — told the Herald that the fact that the merger is still on hold is "pretty unprecedented." He also likened the SPAC's performance to a "meme stock," in which social media sentiment drives a stock's performance more than other traditional business metrics.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump and DeSantis

How Bad A Candidate Was DeSantis? He Flunked Charm School

What can you say about the guy? That Ron DeSantis was obnoxious? That he came off as weird? His failure to replace Donald Trump as the likely Republican nominee for president seemed preordained. His mistake was copying Trump's penchant for cruelty without absorbing any of the ex-president's talents as a performer.

When they were handing out the charm, DeSantis was off drowning kittens.

The apparent rationale for the Florida governor's campaign was that he would be right-wing like Trump without the baggage of having lost an election and supporting an insurrection. But then he broke into the Samsonite store and loaded up on a set of carry-ons, garment bags and a steamer trunk.

Leaders sometimes have to be tough. They have to put forth tough policies that some won't like because certain things have to be done. DeSantis made tough decisions simply because they looked tough. Worse, they were also stupid.

Exactly why he launched a holy war against Covid vaccines remains a mystery. He even mocked Trump for his program to fast-track development of the vaccine, one of the administration's few glories.

He said about Dr. Anthony Fauci, advocate of the shots and medical adviser to President Joe Biden, "Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac." He's quite the hombre.

DeSantis pushed through a law that forbids private companies from mandating that employees be vaccinated. In another intrusion into business decisions, he backed a measure to stop cruise lines from requiring that passengers be vaccinated. This is an industry that serves many older, medically vulnerable passengers and packs them in close quarters. And there was a pandemic going on.

The annals of American politics offer few equivalents of DeSantis' attack on The Walt Disney Co. Not only was the basis for it absurd; it wasn't even explainable. Disney's "sin" was publicly disagreeing with DeSantis on some piece of legislation regarding gay people. The governor couldn't let the company disagree.

He sent the lawyers after Disney, stripping it of an agreement that the state had made giving the entertainment company special status. The argument that it gave Disney unfair power could have been made, but this was a transparent act of revenge over nonsense. DeSantis imagined he had scored some ugly points by punishing the state's largest private employer, one that's associated with family fun.

He also seemed to think that the public enjoyed his threats against Miami hoteliers for letting drag queens perform on their private property.

In trying to squeeze to Trump's right, DeSantis leaves Florida with some of the debris. To win over a pro-life minority, he made abortion nearly illegal in that state. And that means the following: Middle-class Floridians wanting to end an unwanted pregnancy can obtain an abortion elsewhere. Poor or dysfunctional women, on the other hand, are being forced to have children that they don't want and can't afford.

Abortion bans have proven to be highly unpopular even in socially conservative states. Florida's cosmopolitan mix of opinions is undoubtedly even more supportive of reproductive rights.

DeSantis signed a law letting residents carry concealed loaded weapons without a permit. Just what Florida does not need, more lunatics walking around with hidden guns. DeSantis tried to gussy up the measure by calling it "Constitutional Carry."

You wonder whether DeSantis could even get reelected governor of Florida, especially if Democrats put up a breathing candidate next time.

Trump may be corrupt, treasonous, and losing his marbles, but he knows how to entertain his crowds, whereas DeSantis hasn't a clue. After pulling out of the race, DeSantis, of course, obediently endorsed Trump.

Perhaps he can use the freed up time to repeat some grades in charm school.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Ronna McDaniel

Rove: RNC Chair 'In Trouble' Over 'Highly Inappropriate' Call With Trump

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel “is in trouble” after she was recorded on a phone call with former president Donald Trump pressuring two Michigan electors to change their votes certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to GOP strategist Karl Rove.

Speaking with Fox News’ John Roberts, Rove was asked about recent reporting from the Detroit News about “a recorded phone conversation between former President Donald Trump, the RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and two Wayne County Board of Election officials.”

Roberts notes the Detroit News reporters described a conversation “about certifying the 2020 presidential election,” in which Trump is quoted “as saying ‘We’ve got to fight for our country. We can’t let these people take our country away from us.'"

In the recording, McDaniel tells the election workers, “If you can go home tonight do not sign it, we will get you attorneys.”

“We will take care of that,” Trump adds, according to the Detroit News.

The election workers subsequently “tried to rescind their votes,” Roberts notes.

“I think the former president’s got a problem with this,” Rove said. “They had voted to certify the election, he attempted to force them to change their decision, which they tried to do. I think this is what we would call ‘election interference.’”

Rove noted that same behavior got Trump “into trouble in Georgia.”

“This is a problem, the former president should not have been doing this,” Rove said.

“This is not a good move if accurate and if this tape is true,” he added. “The former president’s created another problem for himself.”

Asked if it creates “a problem for Ronna McDaniel,” Rove said the RNC chair could be in hot water because of the leaked phone call.

“I think it is, I think the chairman is in trouble here,” Rove said, calling the conversation “highly inappropriate.”

Watch the videos below or a this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.