that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Diaper Duty" and it went up tonight.
President Trump and his party never cared a bit about whether Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted women.
Kavanaugh's 2018 confirmation to the Supreme Court was going to be rammed through no matter what, a new report shows.
Trump was not exactly the kind of executive for whom allegations of sexual assault would ever be a deal breaker. He has since been found liable for what a judge described as “rape” and had previously boasted about sexually assaulting women just because he could.
And thanks in part to Kavanaugh’s elevation to the high court, we now live in a country where reproductive rights have been ripped away from women and a president could arguably get away with murder.
To refresh your memory, after Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings began, two women stepped forward with claims that the FBI had missed in its routine background checks.
In a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Christine Blasey Ford, a California college professor, alleged that while they were in high school, a drunken Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as his friend looked on.
Deborah Ramirez, a Kavanaugh classmate at Yale, said he drunkenly exposed himself to her at a dorm room party. Kavanaugh’s possibly unhealthy relationship with beer, which he memorably denied while acknowledging his affection for the beverage, was also an issue during the confirmation hearings.
The Senate Judiciary Committee decided to give the FBI a week to conduct a “supplemental background investigation” into the claims. Kavanaugh histrionically denied them, saying at one point that they were concocted as "revenge on behalf of the Clintons." Kavanaugh had been a member of the team, led by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, that investigated sexual misconduct by President Clinton.
The FBI, which could have interviewed many witnesses who may have helped corroborate the allegations against Kavanaugh, severely limited the scope of its supplemental investigation, interviewing only 10 people. They did not include Ford, whose attorney had repeatedly requested an interview, or Kavanaugh.
The bureau disclosed in 2021 that it received more than 4,500 calls and messages related to Kavanaugh. According to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who requested the information, none of them was investigated.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Monday:
New report details how the Trump White House restricted FBI investigators and lied to the American people about the investigation and tip line. Six-year-long Senate inquiry was hampered by repeated executive branch obstruction.
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, today released a report detailing disturbing shortcomings in the supplemental background investigation conducted after allegations of sexual misconduct emerged during the 2018 confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Whitehouse’s report is the culmination of a six-year-long investigation hindered by executive branch obstruction, particularly during the Trump Administration.
Whitehouse released the following statement on the report:
“In 2018, I pledged to Christine Blasey Ford that I’d keep digging, for however long it took, and not give up or move on from the Trump White House’s shameful confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh. A full, proper investigation is the bare minimum that victims who come forward – like Dr. Ford and Deborah Ramirez – deserve. This report shows that the supplemental background investigation was a sham, controlled by the Trump White House, to give political cover to Senate Republicans and put Justice Kavanaugh back on the political track to confirmation.
“The lack of FBI investigative standards helped the Trump White House thwart meaningful investigation of the allegations against Kavanaugh, denying Senators information needed to fulfill their constitutional duties. The FBI must create real protocols so Senators and the American people get real answers – not manufactured misdirection – the next time serious questions about a nominee emerge late in the confirmation process.”
President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court in July 2018. After the Senate Judiciary Committee’s regular hearings on his nomination in early September 2018, senators learned of accusations by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while the two were in high school. After Dr. Ford came forward, further allegations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh emerged. None of the accusations were uncovered during the FBI’s “full-field” background investigation in Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
The Judiciary Committee held an additional hearing on September 27, 2018, where Ford and Kavanaugh both testified. After this hearing, the Judiciary Committee asked for a supplemental background investigation to resolve the new allegations against Kavanaugh. The supplemental background investigation raised immediate concerns from Democratic senators that the FBI’s review had been curtailed by the Trump White House.
The four key findings of Whitehouse’s years-long investigation into this episode are:
- The supplemental background investigation was completely controlled by the Trump White House. The FBI was never given “free rein” to conduct a thorough, complete investigation. Statements to the contrary from former President Trump and White House and Department of Justice officials were false.
- Trump White House and FBI assertions that the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation was conducted “by the book” according to standard FBI procedures were false and misleading, failing to disclose that there are no standard procedures for supplemental background investigations. Instead, FBI practice, which the Trump Administration never disclosed, requires step-by-step instructions from the White House. This practice may be appropriate for handling many routine, minor questions that can arise after an initial background investigation, but it was uniquely inappropriate for investigating the serious, high-profile allegations against Kavanaugh.
- The investigation was directed by the Trump White House to pursue only first-hand evidence and not corroborating evidence. Senate Republicans then cited the absence of corroborating evidence to justify confirming Kavanaugh.
- The FBI’s public “tip line” investigation was a fake. No tip was ever investigated; Kavanaugh-related tips were delivered straight to the Trump White House without FBI investigation. Indeed, the Trump White House could have used tip line information to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory evidence.
These major failings in the FBI’s supplemental background investigation made it unworthy of reliance by the Senate for advice and consent. This must never reoccur, so the report recommends that better standards be established for FBI supplemental background investigations—particularly for situations where major misconduct allegations come to light after an initial background investigation is complete.
Senator Whitehouse and other Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats spent almost six years seeking information about these failures from the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the White House, via written correspondence, live and written questioning during committee hearings, and meetings with executive branch officials. The senators’ inquiries were blocked by obstinate executive noncompliance. During the Trump Administration, the executive branch provided no information to this investigation, while providing a fast lane for Crossfire Hurricane information to Senate Republicans. Even when cooperation improved during the Biden Administration, senators struggled to secure complete and timely answers to oversight requests.
The full report is available here.
Press Contact
JD Vance couldn’t muster up a defense of Donald Trump’s repeated mischaracterizations of migrant issues in Aurora, Colorado, on Sunday, so he resorted to a familiar one for a successful author: semantics.
This Week host Martha Raddatz questioned Vance about Trump’s Springfield, Ohio-esque assailment of the town and the subsequent pushback by its Republican mayor Mike Coffman. Trump had claimed the city was “conquered” by Venezuelan gangs, while Coffman said Trump’s descriptions “have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety.”
With the clouds and the stars to read
Dreaming of the pleasure I'm going to have
Watching your hairline recede
My vain darling
Watching your hair and clouds and stars
Sebastian Murdoch (HUFFINGTON POST) reminds, "On Thursday, Trump gave a long, rambling speech in Detroit, where he trashed the city he was speaking in, attempted to define the word “grocery” and got defensive about the crowds at his events" while OK! notes, "The Republican recently raised concerns after he dubbed Election Day on November 5 will be 'Liberation Day' for the United States and that he would hunt down" and deport undocumented immigrants if he wins the 2024 election." Ashleigh Fields (THE HILL) notes:
Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) told viewers that former President Trump “does not have the ability to tell the truth” during a Saturday appearance on MSNBC.
“Even those people that are in need in North Carolina, or Georgia, or Tennessee, or whatever state, Florida, that they’re in need, they literally are harming themselves because he does not have the ability to tell the truth about what it takes to get help, and he thinks it’s going to help him in the campaign,” the Harris-Walz campaign co-chair said on air.
“At the end of the day, you cannot say that you’re a leader when you’re absolutely seeking to harm people, and that’s who he is,” she added.
And Igor Bobic and Arthur Delaney (HUFFINGTON POST) note:
Even by the usual Donald Trump standards, this week was bonkers.
The Republican presidential nominee went on unhinged, racist rants against women and immigrants, denigrated one of the largest majority-Black cities in the U.S., threatened news networks with retaliation and spread falsehoods about critical assistance to people devastated by back-to-back hurricanes that ravaged several states.
The former president flooded the zone with so many ridiculous and offensive things that individual comments struggled to break through the noise. Some Republicans pushed back against a few of the most outrageous lies, without calling Trump out, while the overwhelming volume of garbage forced the media to move on.
What's going on? Juliann Ventura (THE HILL) quotes Jared Polis, Governor of Colorado, stating, "I don't know if it's, you know, some say it's cognitive decline, whatever — whatever it is." Rachel Sharp (INDEPENDENT) notes Chris Christie declared, "I saw decline in his skills in '20 from '16, and you see significant declines still." Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) reports:
Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" debated whether Donald Trump's mental fitness should be more of a campaign issue.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski started off Friday morning's episode with a profane takedown of the former president's rambling haranguing in Detroit, and she convened a panel later on to discuss whether Trump is showing signs of age-related mental illness.
"I want to point out, it never was a huge story that Donald Trump promised a day of violence to solve crime," Brzezinski said. "What is that? What are you talking about? A day of violence, are people going to run around shooting people in the country? I'm actually serious. Take a look at what has already happened in a Trump administration, even if it was on the end of it, where he had people being beaten in [Lafayette] Park. There was Jan. 6. This was when there were a modicum of restraints. He is going to hire who he wants to hire. You can bring up Project 25 and have people knock it down, saying Trump has nothing to do with it. He does. You can also listen to what he says. A day of violence? I'm scared."
The only thing worse than the Convicted Felon are the racists who support him and the disgusting people he wants to build an administration with.
Let's start with his racist followers first. Kathleen Culliton (RAW STORY) reports:
Former President Donald Trump has ramped up his campaign rhetoric by taking it back to a terrifying time in global history — 1930s Germany, experts told Politico Saturday.
Trump's claims that migrants have "bad genes" and will "cut your throat" mimic the lies and feed on the prejudices that scholars say Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler exploited ahead of the Holocaust.
“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements," said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute. "These are actual Nazi sentiments."
Jones
comment came in response to Politico's analysis of 20 recent Trump
rallies that found not only that his rhetoric is dark — but it's much
darker than it used to be, and more specific.
"He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States," Politico wrote. "Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations."
[. . .]
Jones told the outlet Trump's increasingly threatening language has close similarities to Hitler's and, should Trump win the presidential election, he could take the nation to a similar place.
“Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews," Jones said. "These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
And Will Carless (USA TODAY) reports:
At a campaign event last week for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, attendees waved placards emblazoned with a slogan that is also used by a notorious white supremacist group. Meanwhile, anti-drag and anti-LGBTQ hate sees a resurgence this week, and a new report shows extremists and conspiracy theorists spinning up lies in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
It’s the week in extremism, from USA TODAY.
At a Trump/Vance campaign rally in Saginaw, Michigan, late last week, attendees held up placards bearing the slogan “Reclaim America.” That’s the main slogan of the Texas-headquartered white supremacist hate group Patriot Front, which took to social media to question whether the signs were a tacit endorsement.
- Video from the event shows Trump supporters waving placards with the “Reclaim America” slogan behind the speakers.
- Patriot Front, which specializes in spreading white supremacist propaganda and holding events where chino-clad masked men march around chanting and waving flags, portrays itself as a protector of “European heritage.” Leaks and infiltration of the group have revealed it is a hardcore racist neo–Nazi organization.
- Members of Patriot Front have been charged with conspiracy to riot and the organization is being sued in at least two high-profile cases.
- This week, the official Patriot Front Telegram channel proudly announced the Trump campaign had “adopted” the reclaim America slogan, posting: “The phrase "Reclaim America" is a well-known slogan of Patriot Front. It remains unclear whether the Trump campaign is aware of this connection and PF's use of the phrase, especially since a simple Google search of the slogan will return a plethora of results featuring the organization.”
- The Trump/Vance campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Davis spoke to far-right pundit Benny Johnson one year ago about what he would do as acting attorney general — or as he referred to it, his “three-week reign of terror.”
“Before
I get chased out of town with my Trump pardon, I will rain hell on
Washington, D.C.,” he told Johnson, reminding him how they’d discussed
the subject in the past.
Davis listed his main objectives: fire “a lot of people” in the executive branch; indict Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election; deport “10 million people and growing,” or about 3% of the country’s population; detain “a lot of people” in Guantanamo Bay and “the D.C. gulag”; and pardon those charged over the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We’re going to put kids in cages. It’s going to be glorious,” Davis said of migrant children.
The former president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and far-right pundit Steve Bannon both sang Davis’ praises in a profile of the “Make America Great Again” loyalist published last month in Politico. In front of reporter Adam Wren, Trump Jr. told Davis he wanted him to be attorney general “all four years” of a second Trump term.
As outrageous as Mike Davis is, he does fit in with the psychos around Trump. Evan Williams (TAG24 NEWS) reports:
Roger Stone, a long-time ally of former-President Donald Trump, was caught on tape calling for "armed guards" to be deployed at polling stations in the upcoming election.
In audio published by Rolling Stone, Roger Stone tells an undercover reporter: "We have to fight it out on a state-by-state basis, but you have to be ready,"
"When they throw us out of Detroit, you go get a court order, you come in with your own armed guards, and you... and you dispute it. Instead, our guys just left," he says.
[. . .]
In 2019, Stone was indicted on charges of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress.
Since 2020, he has been a leading voice in a campaign to delegitimize the results of that year's election, and has regularly lent his voice to false conspiracy theories of Trump being "robbed" of a second term.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Kamala Harris' Univision townhall2 days ago
-
ELSBETH and MATLOCK2 days ago
