Bannon is really losing it.Understandable though as he was hoping for a Trump pardon after his border wall fraud conviction.
Twitter permanently suspends Steve Bannon account after talk of beheading https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/05/tech/steve-bannon-twitter-permanent-suspension/index.html Twitter permanently suspended an account belonging to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon after he suggested Thursday morning that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded. His comments were made in a video posted to his Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter accounts. Bannon falsely claimed President Trump had won reelection, despite several key states still being too close to call, and said that he should fire both Fauci and Wray. He then said he would go further: "I'd put the heads on pikes. Right. I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone." The comments came during a livestream of Bannon's "War Room: Pandemic" online show. The video was live on Bannon's Facebook page for about 10 hours Thursday and had been viewed almost 200,000 times before Facebook removed it, citing its violence and incitement policies. CNN has reached out to Bannon for comment. Earlier Thursday evening YouTube removed the video for violating its policy against "inciting violence." Twitter said it had permanently suspended the account of Bannon's "War Room" podcast for glorifying violence. Bannon's comments came as other supporters of President Trump also used violent and militaristic rhetoric to back Trump's baseless claims of a rigged election and to condemn his perceived political opponents. In a tweet Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. called for his father "to go to total war over this election." "It's time to clean up this mess & stop looking like a banana republic!" he added. Trump Jr. also repeated multiple baseless claims undermining the integrity of the election in the tweet, which was labeled by Twitter as "disputed and might be misleading." During the campaign, he had touted baseless rigged-election claims to recruit an "army" for his dad, as CNN has previously reported. CNN has reached out to a spokesperson for Trump Jr. for comment. Earlier on Thursday, Facebook shut down a pro-Trump group called "Stop The Steal," which amassed hundreds of thousands of members and had been coordinating protests that sought to challenge the election's legitimacy. Some members of the group posted about civil war and revolting against the government should Trump lose the election, according to a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a London-based think tank that monitors extremism. "So IF they give this to Joe, how do we go about over throwing [sic] the government?" one member of the group asked in a post. Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst with ISD, said that, although such posts may be hyperbolic, Facebook groups can be used to coordinate offline protests or events that could turn violent. "It was possible for this group to become a hub for potentially violent behavior," O'Connor said. One of the administrators of the "Stop the Steal" group, Dustin Stockton, told CNN he did not see any messages within the group "calling for violence outside of what is common political hyperbole." He said Facebook's removal of the page was "out of line and they should restore it immediately." A Facebook spokesperson told CNN, "In line with the exceptional measures that we are taking during this period of heightened tension, we have removed the Group 'Stop the Steal,' which was creating real-world events." The spokesperson added, "The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group." Researchers say the controversy over the vote count is particularly fertile soil for extremists to spread their messages. "A contested election creates the perfect conditions for extremists to create chaos, to sow division, and to try to undermine our democratic institutions," said Oren Segal, a vice president of the ADL's Center on Extremism. "All those are foundational goals for extremist movements across the board." Even if comments from political influencers do not directly call for violence, war-like symbols and veiled references can valorize violence and potentially inspire people to action, said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University. She said President Trump's comments at his first debate with Biden, in which he told the far-right group the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by," for instance, could have been perceived as a call to action, regardless of his intent.
These people have no idea the fire they're playing with: Donald Trump Jr. calls for ‘total war’ in clueless tweet https://nypost.com/2020/11/05/terrified-donald-trump-jr-calls-for-total-war-over-election/ Donald Trump Jr. on Thursday fired off a tweet calling for his dad to wage “total war over the election” — while parroting the same allegations of voter fraud that his father has used to explain away his dwindling hopes of staying in the White House. Twitter quickly hid the message from view for spreading false information about the election. Trump Jr., who has a long history of using Twitter to fuel conspiracy theories, hit the send button amid a flurry of lawsuits filed by his father’s campaign to turn the election — including one in Pennsylvania that sought to stop vote counting. “The best thing for America’s future is for @realDonaldTrump to go to total war over this election to expose all of the fraud, cheating, dead/no longer in state voters, that has been going on for far too long,” Trump Jr. wrote, repeating several conspiracy theories about the election and seemingly calling for Americans to go to war with one another. “It’s time to clean up this mess & stop looking like a banana republic!” he added. Twitter flagged the tweet minutes after it was posted for violating its “Civic integrity policy.” A number of key battleground states have not been called since the 2020 presidential election wrapped Tuesday night, including Pennsylvania and Georgia, which Trump needs to carry to get to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. His campaign has filed a number of lawsuits in both states, including one in Chatham County Georgia, which was tossed by a judge Thursday.
Jared Kushner called Rupert Murdoch in a desperate bid to overturn the network calling Arizona for Biden, report says https://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-murdoch-demand-fox-retract-arizona-call-nyt-2020-11 Jared Kushner contacted Fox News' Rupert Murdoch directly over his network's calling Arizona for Joe Biden on Tuesday night, The New York Times reported. The Trump campaign was incensed by the call and lobbied Fox to retract it, the report said. But Fox held firm. It was the first to project that Biden would win the state, and it justified its decision on air. Insider and Decision Desk HQ have not yet projected a winner in Arizona, where votes were still being counted early Thursday. Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's aide and son-in-law, contacted Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, in a desperate bid to overturn the network's calling Arizona for Joe Biden on Tuesday, according to The New York Times. Fox was the first to call Arizona on election night. It dented the momentum of the Trump campaign, which had been declared the winner in Florida and Texas, Republican-leaning states where polls had suggested Trump was losing support. The Fox call infuriated members of Trump's team. Jason Miller, a campaign advisor, disputed it on Twitter and called network executives in a bid to get it to retract the projection, The Times reported.
Would you like some toast with those MAGAtears ? Biden takes the lead over Trump in critical Pennsylvania Washington (CNN)Former Vice President Joe Biden has taken the lead in his birth state of Pennsylvania as the number of outstanding ballots has dwindled, putting the Democrat within striking distance of the 270 electoral votes that he needs to win the White House.