Trump accused Fox News of 'pushing' Democrats' agenda and said if CNN 'went conservative,' it'd be an 'absolute gold mine' and he'd help Kelsey Vlamis Mon, September 5, 2022 Former President Donald Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.Mary Altaffer/Associated Press Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News and Karl Rove after Rove critiqued his handling of documents. Trump also said he would support CNN if the network decided to take a conservative approach. Recent exits at CNN suggest the network is trying to appeal to a wider audience. Former President Donald Trump tore into Fox News on Sunday, accusing the network of amplifying a Democratic agenda and going harder on Republicans than Democrats. "Wow! Fox News is really pushing the Democrats and the Democrat agenda. Gets worse every single day," Trump wrote on his social-media platform, Truth Social. "So many Dems interviewed with only softball questions, then Republican counterparts get creamed." It's unclear what interviews Trump was referring to, but he also specifically called out Karl Rove, a former GOP White House official who is now a Fox News contributor. "RINO Karl Rove is unwatchable, very negative, and on all the time - Has a big record of losing!" Trump said. "Not an easy place to be as a Republican, especially with all of the 'pervert' purchased ads." It's unclear which ads he was referring to. Rove served as a senior advisor and deputy chief of staff during the Bush administration in the 2000s. He has appeared on Fox News several times to discuss the Justice Department's investigation into Trump's handling of government records and the FBI's early-August search of Mar-a-Lago. "None of these documents are his to have taken," Rove said last week, citing the Presidential Records Act. While criticizing Fox News on Sunday, Trump also said that if the network's cable-news competitor CNN adopted a conservative approach, he would support it. "If 'low ratings' CNN ever went Conservative, they would be an absolute gold mine, and I would help them to do so!" Trump said. Trump's comments about CNN — a popular target of his since the early days of his presidency — come as the network appears to be shifting its strategy to try to attract a wider range of viewers. On Friday, the longtime CNN White House correspondent John Harwood abruptly parted ways with the network shortly after calling Trump a "dishonest demagogue" and saying that President Joe Biden's characterization Thursday of Trump's MAGA movement as a threat to democracy was "true." Brian Stelter also had a sudden exit from CNN last month. Stelter, whose show and newsletter "Reliable Sources" covered media, was openly critical of Fox News and other right-wing outlets. The shake-ups come after Chris Licht took over as CEO of CNN earlier this year following the departure of Jeff Zucker. Several unnamed CNN employees and former staffers told The Washington Post they viewed the recent string of exits as evidence of plans by Licht to reposition CNN as an ideologically neutral network by limiting voices critical of Trump. Representatives for Fox News and CNN didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider. Read the original article on Business Insider
‘Giant Backfire’: Trump’s Demand for Special Master Is Looking Like a Mistake The former president failed to derail the criminal investigation into his hoarding of sensitive documents and is stuck paying for a costly process that threatens to undermine his public claims. An appeals court ruling last week against former President Donald J. Trump suggests the benefits of his bid for a special master are eroding.Credit...Hannah Beier for The New York Times By Charlie Savage Sept. 28, 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/us/politics/trump-special-master-mar-a-lago.html WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump’s request that a judge intervene in the criminal investigation into his hoarding of government documents by appointing a special master increasingly looks like a significant blunder, legal experts say. “Maybe from Trump’s point of view, creating delay and chaos is always a plus, but this has the feel of a giant backfire,” said Peter M. Shane, a legal scholar in residence at New York University and a specialist in separation-of-powers law. Initially, Mr. Trump’s demand that an outside arbiter sift through the materials the F.B.I. seized from his Florida estate seemed to turn in his favor. His lawsuit was assigned to a judge he had appointed, Aileen M. Cannon of the Southern District of Florida, who surprised legal experts by granting his request. In naming a special master suggested by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, she effectively froze the Justice Department’s investigation and gave the arbiter a broad mandate. The judge, Raymond J. Dearie of Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York, would filter the materials not just for attorney-client privilege, which is not unusual, but also for executive privilege, which is unprecedented. But Mr. Trump’s apparent triumph would prove short-lived. An appeals court ruling last week and a letter the Justice Department filed late Tuesday about subsequent complaints his legal team has apparently filed under seal to Judge Dearie suggest that the upsides to obtaining a special master are eroding and the disadvantages swelling. A lawyer for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment. The appeals court freed the Justice Department to resume using about 100 documents marked as classified in its investigation, while telegraphing that the court thought Judge Cannon likely erred by appointing a special master. In blocking part of Judge Cannon’s order, the appeals court panel, including two Trump appointees, allowed investigators to again scrutinize the material that poses by far the gravest legal threat to Mr. Trump. Potential crimes include unlawful retention of national security secrets, obstruction and defying a subpoena demanding all sensitive records that remained in his possession. But the Justice Department acquiesced for now to the remainder of the special master process, meaning that an outside arbiter would still assess some 11,000 unclassified records and other items seized from Mr. Trump’s Florida compound, Mar-a-Lago. Since that review is no longer delaying or diverting the criminal inquiry, it is not clear what benefits remain for Mr. Trump. For one, a special master will cost a lot of money. Judge Cannon rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal that taxpayers should foot half the bill of the review, instead saying he would be solely responsible. That includes the full cost of a vendor who will scan all the materials, as well as support staff for Judge Dearie, like an assistant who bills $500 an hour. Mr. Trump will also have to pay his own lawyers’ fees as they filter thousands of pages of records and then litigate disputes about which ones can be withheld as privileged. And far from indulging Mr. Trump, as his lawyers likely hoped in suggesting his appointment, Judge Dearie appears to be organizing the document review in ways that threaten to swiftly puncture the former president’s defenses. For example, the judge has ordered Mr. Trump to submit by Friday a declaration or affidavit that lists any items on the inventory “that plaintiff asserts were not seized” in the search. But if Mr. Trump acknowledges that the F.B.I. took any documents marked as classified from his personal office and a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, as the inventory says, that would become evidence that could be used against him if he were later charged with defying a subpoena. Requiring Mr. Trump’s lawyers to verify or object to the inventory also effectively means making them either affirm in court or disavow a claim Mr. Trump has made in public: his accusation that the F.B.I. planted fake evidence. While it is not a crime to lie to Fox News viewers or on social media, there are consequences to lying to a court. Essentially, Judge Dearie is telling Mr. Trump’s legal team “to put up or shut up,” said Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown University professor of white-collar law. Late Tuesday, the Justice Department indicated to Judge Dearie that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were balking at his request that their client verify the property inventory at this stage, before the documents could be categorized or reviewed for privilege. They apparently expressed such objections in a document filed under seal. “They thought it was a win to win the first battle, but they didn’t think through what winning that battle would mean with any reputable judge who is appointed as special master,” Ms. Sullivan said. “They can’t anticipate that every judge will give them a complete pass despite the law. It was a political or a public relations strategy, not a legal one.” Another issue centers on Mr. Trump’s public insistence that he declassified everything he took to Mar-a-Lago, a claim for which no credible evidence has emerged. His lawyers have not repeated that claim in court. They have instead merely insinuated that he might have done so by emphasizing that a president has broad declassification powers without asserting that he actually used them on the files. At a hearing this month, Judge Dearie said that Mr. Trump’s legal team would need to submit evidence of any declassification — like a sworn declaration or affidavit — or he would conclude that they remained classified. “I guess my view of it is,” he said, “you can’t have your cake and eat it.” In exempting the documents marked as classified from the special master’s review, the appeals court also focused on the disconnect. There was “no evidence that any of these records were declassified,” the three-judge panel wrote, noting that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had “resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents.” The Justice Department’s letter indicated that Mr. Trump, through his lawyers, is chafing at other orders from the special master. For example, Judge Dearie has said they must categorize each document Mr. Trump claims is subject to privilege. They are to say whether they mean attorney-client or executive privilege. If they claim executive privilege, then they must distinguish between records that are merely shielded from disclosure to people outside the executive branch and those the executive branch itself supposedly cannot review. They must also explain why each document qualifies for such status. Judge Dearie is effectively trying to force Mr. Trump’s lawyers to confront a weakness in their theory that executive privilege is relevant to the case. Many legal experts doubt a former president can invoke the privilege against the wishes of the current president, preventing the Justice Department from reviewing executive branch materials in a criminal investigation. But for now, Mr. Trump’s legal team evidently wants to say only that various items are privileged, leaving it at that. For its part, the Justice Department appeared to relish Mr. Trump’s growing discomfort. “Plaintiff brought this civil, equitable proceeding,” it wrote. “He bears the burden of proof. If he wants the special master to make recommendations as to whether he is entitled to the relief he seeks, plaintiff will need to participate in the process” that Judge Dearie laid out.
Are Republicans more likely to die from COVID-19 than Democrats? Here’s what researchers found Partisan differences over virus can have ‘life and death consequences,’ BYU professor says By Lisa Riley Roche Oct 8, 2022 https://www.deseret.com/utah/2022/1...-covid-than-democrats-ohio-florida-study-yale Nurse Aydan Elzinga prepares a COVID-19 booster shot at the Kearns Library in Kearns on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. Ben B. Braun, Deseret News Republicans are dying at a higher rate from COVID-19 than Democrats, new research suggests. A working paper from the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research by Yale University researchers estimates “substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats” in Ohio and Florida from 2018 to 2021. Excess deaths are defined as those above what would normally be expected and have been used to measure the true toll of COVID-19 since the number includes those who died indirectly from the virus, for example, because the pandemic kept them from accessing needed health care. Between March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and December 2021, researchers said average excess death rates were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in the two states studied. But that gap increased to a 153% difference after April 2021, when all adults were eligible for COVID-19 vaccines in Florida and Ohio. And although data on the political affiliation of those vaccinated was not available, researchers said differences in Republican and Democratic attitudes toward the shots as well as other efforts against COVID-19 have been established in other studies. So, they concluded the “sharp contrast in the excess death rate gap before and after vaccines were available suggests that vaccine take-up likely played an important role,” using county-level vaccination rates found “evidence that vaccination contributes to explaining differences in excess deaths by political party affiliation.” It’s not clear what the study means for other states, including those like Utah that are dominated by the GOP. “The study examined data from Ohio and Florida, so we don’t know exactly how well it might generalize to other states in different regions,” said Chris Karpowitz, co-director of Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. “It does indicate, however, that partisan differences in rhetoric about vaccination and about the pandemic more generally can have very real life and death consequences,” the political science professor told the Deseret News, noting the partisan gap in death rates is concentrated in places where vaccination rates are low. That means “anything that elected leaders can do to increase vaccine uptake more generally will likely reduce partisan differences,” Karpowitz said. “Studies like this also prompt questions about whether Americans are paying enough attention to staying up to date with their vaccinations, including with the new bivalent booster.” Utah’s COVID-19 vaccinations lag behind the U.S. rate, with 64.3% of all Utahns completing the initial series of shots compared to 68% nationwide. But less than 31% have gotten a booster shot, while just under 49% nationwide have had a first booster shot. As of Monday, more than 116,000 Utahns had received the new, updated booster shot, called bivalent because it targets currently circulating COVID-19 omicron subvariants, as well as the original version of the virus. Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 11.5 million people had gotten the shot as of Thursday. The authors of the new study said vaccine hesitancy among Republicans may be the biggest reason for the partisan gap in deaths. “In counties where a large share of the population is getting vaccinated, we see a much smaller gap between Republicans and Democrats,” Jacob Wallace, an assistant professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health, told NBC News. “We really don’t see a big divide until after vaccines became widely available in our two states,” Wallace said. A research letter posted online in The Lancet Infectious Diseases in August found Massachusetts, a Democratic stronghold with one of the nation’s highest COVID-19 vaccination rates, had a big drop in excess virus-related deaths following the omicron surge earlier this year. NBC pointed out that another, broader study by researchers in Maryland and California, published in Health Affairs in June, came to a different conclusion about the impact of vaccine hesitancy on differing death rates between Republicans and Democrats. The June study said vaccine uptake explained only 10% of the partisan gap in deaths because their “findings suggest that county-level voting behavior may act as a proxy for compliance with and support of public health measures that would protect residents from COVID-19,” such as masking and social distancing “Vaccination does play a role in the difference that we’ve observed in excess mortality between red and blue places, but it is not the whole story,” Neil Jay Sehgal, an author of that study and an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, told NBC News. “When you have less transmission, you have fewer cases and you have less mortality. And you have less transmission in general by instituting protective policies like mask requirements when we had them, or capacity limits in businesses,” he said. Sehgal acknowledged that what the new research found may be the case in the two states studied. “It may very well be that in Ohio and Florida, because of the nature of Ohioans and Floridians, vaccine uptake may have played a greater role than [in] the country at large,” Sehgal told NBC. Neither researcher said their studies should be seen as blaming Republicans for COVID-19 deaths, according to the network. “This is not saying: If Republicans were in fact Democrats, they’d be less likely to die,” Wallace told NBC. But he also said that when it comes to the overall consequences of vaccine hesitancy, “we’re talking about a lot of preventable death and morbidity.”
Nearly four out of 10 Republicans and one in four Democrats say they’ll blame election fraud if their party doesn’t win control of Congress in November, in the latest wave of the Axios-Ipsos Two Americas Index.
Newsmax TV Severs Ties with Lara Logan After She Says World Leaders ‘Dine on the Blood of Children’ https://www.mediaite.com/news/newsm...-world-leaders-dine-on-the-blood-of-children/
Kristina Karamo (R), the Trump-backed candidate for Michigan secretary of state, “once expressed support in 2020 for one of QAnon’s most outlandish conspiracies: that elites drink the blood of children and ‘sell baby body parts’ after abortions,” Vice News reports. Said Karamo, on an audio recording: “If you go to the Satanic temple website, they have an entire five-minute video explaining why abortion is a religious ritual. They literally say that it is a sacrifice, it is a religious ritual for them to have an abortion, it is sick. And as you mentioned, the baby body parts… they sell the organs. There’s a ton of money involved in freshly harvested organs. There’s so much evidence out there.”
Ultra-MAGA 'Hot Babe' who claimed Obama is a Illuminati lizard turns out to be a Chinese spy Another pro-MAGA activist has been outed as a Chinese spy, according to the Washington Post. Twitter uncovered three China-based operatives pretending to be influencers in American politics as part of an effort to polarize Americans ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. The newly announced batch of suspensions promoted, in May, that former President Barack Obama was a “lizard person who is a member of the Illuminati.” The author went by the name Ultra MAGA BELLA Hot Babe, and had 26,000 followers with more than 400,000 likes and 180,000 retweets. The account has since been suspended. One network that was removed from Twitter showed 22 users that tweeted more than 250,000 times from April to October and generally promoted Donald Trump, along with conspiracy theories about the pandemic and vaccines. She also pushed out memes with false 2020 election conspiracies like a photo of someone holding a paper bag near a drop box. She claimed, “MULE TAKING PICS! PROOF OF CRIME REQUIRED TO GET PAID BY THE DNC.” In June, that account also tweeted the idea that children with gender dysphoria were being abused by their parents. Read the full report at the Washington Post.