Amid a literal plague and widespread unrest over racial injustice in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Louisville, Kentucky, Donald Trump held a press conference Friday to address the nation.
It was supposed to be about Minneapolis, but he had gotten himself in hot water by quoting a white supremacist “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”.
So he pivoted.
“We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” Trump announced.
That’s right—no mentions of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor, no words intended to soothe the deep wounds currently afflicting this country. No questions. Just some World Health Organization bashing and then China, China, China. Trump spent most the brief announcement painting the World Health Organization (WHO) as a tool of the Chinese government and China as an enemy of democracy and global public health (never mind cutting off WHO funding amid a global pandemic).
“The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” Trump said. “China’s cover-up of the Wuhan virus allowed the disease to spread all over the world, instigating a global pandemic that has cost over 100,000 American lives and over a million lives worldwide.”
Translation: The 100,000 American deaths on my watch are all China’s fault. Trump also declared himself “100% correct” for implementing a travel ban from China earlier this year.
Newly declassified transcripts, released by the incoming Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, show that President-Elect Donald Trump’s designated National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, did, in fact, discuss Obama administration sanctions with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
During those conversations, Flynn at several points urged Kislyak to tamp down or limit to “reciprocal” any official Russian response to the newly-emplaced sanctions the Obama White House had put in place over Russian interference in the 2016 election. A Washington Post exposé in February 2017, based on a leak from an anonymous government officials, revealed that Flynn had denied discussing sanctions with the Russians. In the ensuing outrage sparked by the Post story, Flynn was fired by Trump for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his actions. An FBI counterespionage probe questioned Flynn about the conversations, and he was ultimately charged with lying to investigators. Flynn twice pleaded guilty in court to lying to the FBI, but earlier this year sought to recant his plea. In a highly controversial move, Attorney General Bill Barr recently directed federal prosecutors to abandon the case, but the judge has yet to officially dismiss the charge.
The declassified transcripts of the calls between Flynn and Kislyak were released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
In the calls, Flynn and Kislyak can be seen feeling each other out, trying to find common ground. But Flynn clearly communicates that he is asking for patience from the Russian diplomat for the incoming Trump administration. And his entreaties evoked comments made in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, where Obama said he would have “more flexibility” to deal with a foreign policy issue after the 2012 election.
“Please make sure that its uh — the idea is, be — if you, if you have to do something, do something on a reciprocal basis, meaning you know, on a sort of an even basis. Then that, then that is a good message and we’ll understand that message [emphasis in original],” Flynn told Kislyak. “And, and then, we know that we’re not going to escalate this thing.”
“And then what we can do is,” Flynn said, moments later. “When we come in, we can then have a better conversation about where, where we’re gonna go, us, regarding u, regarding our relationship.”
FLYNN: "And please make sure that its uh – the idea is, be – if you, if you have to do something, do something on a reciprocal basis, meaning you know, on a sort of an even basis. Then that, then that is a good message and we'll understand that message." pic.twitter.com/eQcqH5vrZa
KISLYAK, Dec. 31: "Your proposal that we need to act with cold heads is exactly what is invested in the decision … And I just wanted to telI you that we found that these actions have targeted not only against Russia, but also against the president elect." pic.twitter.com/4lg5Cps5dM
Cranked up the volume on his pointless cold wars with China and Iran
Turned mask wearing into a culture war campaign issue
Accused a TV host of murdering an intern
Declared war on voting by mail and accusing children of committing voter fraud
Insisted that James Comey and a variety of others should be in jail
Pushed an absurd “unmasking” non-scandal
Insisted that Barack Obama personally led a spying campaign against him
Retweeted a video saying “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat”
Retweeted QAnon conspiracy theories
Threatened to repeal First Amendment protections for social media
Quoted a segregationist about how to deal with rioting by African-Americans
All of this has happened in the midst of an enormous pandemic which should be occupying all his time. Instead he’s virtually ignoring it because he can’t figure out what to do aside from handing it over to his son-in-law and then hauling out his iPhone to tweet about something he heard on Fox & Friends.
Is Trump mentally unstable? I don’t know. But he’s sure not mentally all there, is he? What kind of leader decides he can just shut his eyes to a deadly pandemic and instead spend all his time plotting revenge on enemies both real and imagined? Only a mentally infantile one. When will the Republican Party finally realize just what kind of trouble they’ve gotten us into?
The popular theory, which I don’t discount, is that Trump is reacting to the election polls, which make one thing clear: Joe Biden is winning. Either he is reacting uncontrollably, or this his his desperate attempt to latch on to something that will ignite his base or even more.
I know positive polling data makes liberals cringe, dredging up horror memories from November 2016. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the current reality, and that current reality is that in the polls of polls, this is the state of the game:
Let’s just take those states in which presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads by a big four points, and we have this:
Biden already has an Electoral College victory, and he’s leading in the other four gray tossup states! And as I showed several days ago, Trump is losing ground with independents on a critical issue: jobs.
The brutal manslaughter of George Floyd by Minneapolis policemen has become a touchstone for so many societal hot spots. The most notable, of course, is the continued racial injustice by police in communities throughout the country. This is not new of course. We have seen it repeatedly over the years. I’m not sure anything I can say will add to the glaring and obvious problem of the white-authored, systemic oppression floated on POC in this country for centuries.
The fire at the MPD’s 3rd Precinct was only at one corner 5 minutes ago. It’s now spread across the entire building. With no firefighters on scene… that building will likely be destroyed tonight. pic.twitter.com/t6p3Yv1KYV
But it has lead us to the brink of another issue, and one that can only be possible in the Trump Administration: an attempt to violate the First Amendment.
In the early hours of the morning, rioters took to the streets of Minneapolis-St.Paul, and burned and looted large sections of that community. Trump took to Twitter:
You see that? Twitter put a warning on one of his tweets (although it made it visible “in the public interest”). This is what it said.
….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
You’d think Donald Trump would have more sympathy for looters, being a looter himself. The president has helped himself to money from the U.S. Treasury, using political power to direct public money to his personal businesses. It’s not as visual as a riot, but until 2017 it would have been regarded as equally criminal.
For what it’s worth, the policy of shooting looters in unconstitutional.
As the legal scholar Orin Kerr noted, “Actually following a policy of ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’ would violate the 4th Amendment, for starters.”
He’s right. Tennessee v. Garner.
That case originated in Memphis, where two police officers, including Elton Hymon, were dispatched to catch a prowler. In the backyard of a house, Hymon saw a suspect he judged to be 17 or 18 run to a back fence. “Halt,” he said, “police.” The suspect tried to climb over the fence to escape. Hymon shot him in the back of the head and recovered a purse with $10 in it. He later cited a Tennessee statute that said, “If, after notice of the intention to arrest the defendant, he either flee or forcibly resist, the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest.”
The Supreme Court’s holding in the 1985 case sets forth a different standard:
The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable. It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect. A police officer may not seize an unarmed, non-dangerous suspect by shooting him dead. The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against such fleeing suspects.
That is the law of the land.
The decision goes on to note that:
where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force. Thus, if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used if necessary to prevent escape, and if, where feasible, some warning has been given.
More succinctly: Cops can’t just shoot someone looting gadgets from a Target or whiskey from a liquor store.
Trump swore to protect and defend the Constitution. He just violated that oath. When he wrote “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he implicitly urged law enforcement to adopt an approach that would transgress the Constitution, violate Fourth Amendment rights, and cause unlawful deaths. Rioting is abhorrent. Trump’s incendiary call for illegal acts is more likely to fuel than stop it––especially if any police act on his irresponsible words.
But I digress. Back to Twitter’s warning.
This comes a two days after Twitter appended a “get the facts” notice to a Trump tweet about mail-in ballots…
… and one day after Trump threatened to revoke Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which gives social media platforms immunity from lawsuits for content posted by users.
“Today, I am signing an Executive Order to protect and uphold the free speech and rights of the American people.” pic.twitter.com/agTIJ2KR6C
Note that Trump explicitly tied his executive order to his displeasure with the speech of Twitter in fact-checking his tweets:
Government action in retaliation for upsetting political speech. That is core First Amendment activity and a blatant constitutional violation.
Can Twitter be accountable for any defamation that appears in their fact checks? Sure. Does the fact that they edit Trump’s tweets to include a link to a fact check mean that they are now a “publisher” for all purposes, subject to lawsuits by Trump or any Twitter user because their “status” as a “publisher” has gone poof? No. This appears to be the wet dream of “conservatives” eager to regulate speech they don’t like as long as it appears on a social media platform, but it’s no more legally accurate than any other wet dream they might have.
I know you see this everywhere — and now Bill Barr is saying it (which ought to be a clue that it’s dishonest) — but don’t take my word for it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a useful page with some guidelines that might help educate you on the topic:
Can my commenters sue me for editing or deleting their comments on my blog?
Generally no, if you are not the government. Section 230 protect a blog host from liability for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” This would include editing or deleting posts you consider objectionable, even if those posts would be protected by the First Amendment against government censorship.
Sweet, I can edit the comments on my blog to change the meaning and make commenters I don’t like seem like crazed defamers.
Not so fast. As noted above, Section 230 protects actions taken in good faith, and you may be liable for new information you create. The ability to edit comments is strongly protected, but you should not abuse that power.
Under current law, Twitter, Facebook, and the like are immune as platforms, regardless of whether they edit (including in a politicized way). Like it or not, but this was a deliberate decision by Congress. You might prefer an “if you restrict your users’ speech, you become liable for the speech you allow” model. Indeed, that was the model accepted by the court in Stratton Oakmont. But Congress rejected this model, and that rejection stands so long as § 230 remains in its current form.
In response to this morning’s Twitter admonishment, Trump went on a rampage, doubling down on his Section 230 repeal non-starter:
Trumpists want to be able to lie and not get called out for it. And they make themselves the victims.
Here’s an excellent Twitter exchange:
In the same event where the president said Twitter is inappropriately cracking down on free speech, he says he would be willing to shut Twitter down if he could.
But this is false. Twitter is immune from being sued for things that *third parties* say on its website; Twitter is not immune from being sued for things *Twitter* says. This is also true for CNN, which can be sued for its speech, but not its commenters’. https://t.co/yIz9YtTwwx
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) May 29, 2020
No, it's not wrong. If CNN has a comments section, CNN is not liable for any defamation spread by its commenters. The law applies equally to it as to Twitter.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) May 29, 2020
Ok, Charles, you want a legal debate. Cool.
If you (3rd Party) write an op-ed in NYT & it’s defamatory, NYT can be sued.
If you post identical defamatory op-ed on Twitter or FB, they can’t be sued—that’s sec 230.
Moreover, the NYT is permitted to delete your comments as it sees fit—without losing the liability shield that attached to them. If it responds to them, or flags them, it is liable for its own words, but not for the third party's. This is also true of Twitter. (2)
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) May 29, 2020
What you are doing here, @tedcruz, is similar to what Hillary Clinton does when she says that the PLCAA prevents gun manufacturers from being sued per se. It does not. It prevents them from being sued for the unapproved actions of third parties. That's Section 230, too. (4/4)
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) May 29, 2020
(Also, Cruz says that "Congress did that because they were 'neutral.'" This isn't true. Section 230 applies to National Review as equally as to The Nation. The purveyor does not have to be "neutral"; the question centers on the sort of speech, not its content.)
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) May 29, 2020
Interesting theory, but false. All NYT has to do to be liable is make the editorial judgment to publish. The rest that you list (commissioning, editing, etc.) are not required.
Big Tech used to be neutral, allowing free speech. Now, they shadow ban & decide what to publish. https://t.co/jkMbMlW0qf
“It is the policy of the United States…to preserve the vibrant and competitive FREE MARKET that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”
The attempt to retcon a vague, prefatory desire for a "free market" and "diverse" internet, "unfettered by Federal or State regulation," into a legal mandate that all websites be "neutral" or lose government protection is a silly one, and I suspect that Cruz knows it. (2/2)
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) May 29, 2020
Yup. Cooke wins. But that hasn’t deterred Cruz:
Speaking of other Minneapolis riot-related First Amendment suppression, look at what else happened this morning:
A CNN reporter & his production team were arrested this morning in Minneapolis for doing their jobs, despite identifying themselves – a clear violation of their First Amendment rights. The authorities in Minnesota, incl. the Governor, must release the 3 CNN employees immediately.
President Trump has signed an executive order against social media companies, days after Twitter called two of his tweets “potentially misleading” https://t.co/0d1EBdQ30Q
Trump is set to announce an executive order against social media companies on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters https://t.co/vJ8jSXCYQo
Attorney General William Barr has tasked a US attorney with reviewing instances of “unmasking,” an issue that President Trump has seized on to underpin unfounded allegations about his predecessor https://t.co/odcux0EIhk
Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about a very real family, whose members have already mourned and grieved the loss of their loved one and find themselves grieving all over again because, in an effort to smear MSNBC on-air host Joe Scarbarough, our deranged president has insinuated in a series of indefensible tweets that foul play was involved in the death of Lori Klausutis, and that Joe Scarbarough was at the heart of it.
Klausutis was an employee who was found dead in Joe Scarbarough’s then-congressional office:
A little after 8 a.m. on July 20, 2001, a couple arriving for an appointment opened an unlocked front door at an office in the Florida panhandle town of Fort Walton Beach and discovered a woman lying on the floor, dead. Her name was Lori Kaye Klausutis and she was just 28.
The police said they found no signs of foul play. The medical examiner concluded her lonely death was an accident. She had fainted, the result of a heart condition, and hit her head on a desk, he said.
In an attack on Joe Scarbarough, Trump posted a number of tweets referencing the death of Klausutis, in which he smeared her by implying there might have been an affair, and asked intentionally suggested that Scarbarough had gotten away with murder. Here are Trump’s tweets from the past weekend and today:
A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough. So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called investigator? Read story! https://t.co/CjBXBXxoNS
….about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?
In a moving letter, the surviving husband of Lori Klausutis implored Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, to delete the tweets involving the death of his wife. Via the NYT, I am posting the letter in full because I think it’s important we get a full picture of inordinate cruelty of Trump’s comments:
21 May 2020
Jack Dorsey, CEO Twitter Inc. 1355 Market Street Suite 900 San Francisco, California 94103 Via email: jack@twitter.com
Mr. Dorsey:
Nearly 19 years ago, my wife, who had an undiagnosed heart condition, fell and hit her head on her desk at work. She was found dead the next morning. Her name is Lori Kaye Klausutis and she was 28 years old when she died. Her passing is the single most painful thing that I have ever had to deal with in my 52 years and continues to haunt her parents and sister.
I have mourned my wife every day since her passing. I have tried to honor her memory and our marriage. As her husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life. There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died. I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, unfortunately it is the verifiable truth. Because of this, I have struggled to move forward with my life.
The frequency, intensity, ugliness, and promulgation of these horrifying lies ever increases on the internet. These conspiracy theorists, including most recently the President of the United States, continue to spread their bile and misinformation on your platform disparaging the memory of my wife and our marriage. President Trump on Tuesday tweeted to his nearly 80 million followers alluding to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough. The son of the president followed and more directly attacked my wife by tweeting to his followers as the means of spreading this vicious lie.
I’m sure you are aware of this situation because media around the world have covered it, but just in case, here it is:
When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!
“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE
I’m a research engineer and nota lawyer, but I’ve reviewed all of Twitter’s rules and terms of service. The President’s tweet that suggests that Lori was murdered — without evidence (and contrary to the official autopsy) — is a violation of Twitter’s community rules and terms of service. An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.
I am now angry as well as frustrated and grieved. I understand that Twitter’s policies about content are designed to maintain the appearance that your hands are clean you provide the platform and the rest is up to users. However, in certain past cases, Twitter has removed content and accounts that are inconsistent with your terms of service.
I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain. I would also ask that you consider Lori’s niece and two nephews who will eventually come across this filth in the future. They have never met their Aunt and it pains me to think they would ever have to “learn” about her this way.
My wife deserves better.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Timothy J. Klausutis, Ph.D.
Scarbarough’s on-air co-host and real life wife Mika Brzezinski has been vigorously attacking Trump for his outlandish tweets, as well as imploring Twitter to delete them. Last week, she said that a phone call between her and Jack Dorsey was being set up:
“Donald, you’re a sick person. You’re a sick person, to put this family through this, to put her husband through this, to do this just because you’re mad at Joe, because Joe got you again today,” she said. “Because he speaks the truth, and he speaks plainly about your lack of interest and empathy in others and your lack of ability to handle this massive human catastrophe, the fact that you have made it worse and you make it worse every day. And that you won’t even wear a mask to protect people from your germs.”
Brzezinski said Twitter should not be allowing the tweets and that they should be taken down. “You will be hearing from me on this, because this is B.S.” she said. She later tweeted at Dorsey, “@jack At what point is @Twitter a part of this? TAKE DOWN TRUMP’s ACCOUNT— the world world be safer. Retweet if you agree.”
Today Twitter responded to requests that President Trump’s tweets be deleted, saying that they did not violate its terms of service:
Twitter spokesperson told Mediaite, “We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family.”
“We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly,” they added.
For your information, Twitter rules on abusive behavior are here:
Abuse/harassment: You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm.
…
In order to facilitate healthy dialogue on the platform, and empower individuals to express diverse opinions and beliefs, we prohibit behavior that harasses or intimidates, or is otherwise intended to shame or degrade others. In addition to posing risks to people’s safety, abusive behavior may also lead to physical and emotional hardship for those affected.
I would like to know the process that Twitter went through to arrive at the conclusion they did. I would also like to see Twitter rules applied equally to all of its users.
Mostly, I am just so sorry for the pain that Mr. Klausutis, a private citizen, is needlessly experiencing because the President of the United States is such an abysmal individual.
This morning, perhaps buoyed by Twitter’s lackluster response, Trump was at it again:
Psycho Joe Scarborough is rattled, not only by his bad ratings but all of the things and facts that are coming out on the internet about opening a Cold Case. He knows what is happening!
I know Joe Scarborough. Joe is a friend of mine. I don't know T.J. Klausutis. Joe can weather vile, baseless accusations but T.J.? His heart is breaking. Enough already.
For the first time, Twitter has flagged a tweet by the President. It added a line to the tweet telling users to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” https://t.co/60YymL8RUw
A Minnesota man is dead after being handcuffed and pinned under the knee of a police officer in front of numerous onlookers. Video of the encounter appeared on social media Monday, and the Star Tribune reports that an attorney for the man’s family has identified him as George Floyd. The video shows Floyd lying facedown on the cement, almost under the back wheel of the police vehicle, with a white police officer pressing his knee down—with his body’s full weight—onto the back of Floyd’s neck. According to sources who spoke to the Tribune, the officer in question is Derek Chauvin.
Floyd can be heard pleading with the officer to let up on him, telling the officer he cannot breathe, that “My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts.” Bystanders also plead with the officer to let up off of Floyd, as there is nowhere for him to go at this point. A couple of minutes into the video, Floyd seems to pass out, at which point the crowd becomes more incensed at the officers who refuse to let up on the now completely unresponsive man. The officer does not let up on Floyd until paramedics come and put the unresponsive Floyd onto a stretcher. Floyd was later declared dead. Police say he suffered a “medical episode.”
Early in the video, the police officer can be heard telling an angry onlooker that Floyd was fine, saying “if he’s talking, he’s fine.” The crowd continues to berate the officer, justifiably so, and when it becomes clear that Floyd is completely unresponsive, the crowd becomes even angrier. At one point the officer, still yet to be identified, grabs for mace from his holster as the crowd surges. He never relieves any pressure from Floyd’s neck.
According to the Tribune, “several officers” have been relieved of duty pending an investigation. This includes an officer identified as Tou Thao, who is believed to be the officer standing between the man applying the egregious knee chokehold and the crowd. Minneapolis Police spokesman John Elder told the news that “In my years as an officer, that would not be what I would ever consider a chokehold.”
According to Elder, the case had been turned over to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), and the FBI had been asked to help with the investigation. Police initially told reporters that the reason the ambulance came was because the police considered Floyd to be in “medical distress,” also prompting the question as to how and why the unnamed officer thought kneeling with his full weight on a person in medical distress was a humane idea.
Police were reportedly called to the area after reports of some kind of argument between someone matching Floyd’s description and a store owner. One report says it included counterfeit money. Police say they found Floyd sitting on the hood of his own car. According to Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, the officers were wearing body cameras.
To be clear, if George Floyd was running around hacking at people with a machete and every time someone stopped him and handcuffed him he got up and broke free from his handcuffs and resumed attacking people, then maybe you would want someone to hold him down using their knees and body weight. According to Heavy, Chauvin has been with the Minnesota police department since 2001 and has been involved in two police-related shootings.
According to Fox 9, Chauvin is now being represented by attorney Tom Kelly, known for his defense of officer Jeronimo Yanez in the shooting death of Philando Castile.
The video, which can be watched below, is very graphic and tough to view.
….about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?
I really don’t know what you do about a president like this. And it has become so normalized (at least for Trump) that this barely makes news.
NBC:
Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top Trump ally, and two House Republicans from Michigan called for the never-penitent president to say he’s sorry. “If he said that I think he should apologize,” Graham told reporters Thursday morning. He said he hadn’t seen the remarks, but “that would be a bad thing to say.” “John Dingell is a fine, fine man,” Graham said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also said “what the president misunderstands is that cruelty is not wit.”
“Just because he gets a laugh for saying the cruel things that he says doesn’t mean he’s funny,” Pelosi said. “It’s not funny at all. It’s very sad.”
The widower of a woman whose 2001 death has become fodder for baseless conspiracy theories spread by President Donald Trump is appealing directly to the head of Twitter to take down the president‘s tweets.
“I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” Timothy J. Klausutis wrote in a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, which was dated last week but gained attention Tuesday when the New York Times’ Kara Swisher published it in an op-ed.
Klausutis’ late wife, Lori, died at age 28 from a fall precipitated by an undiagnosed heart condition, as confirmed by the medical examiner and police. Nineteen years later, her death is making headlines because of her employer at the time: then-Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.). She was working in a Florida office, while Scarborough was in Washington at the time of her death.
But now Scarborough is an outspoken — and, thanks to his MSNBC talk show “Morning Joe,” prominent — critic of Trump. So fringe conspiracy theories that have circulated in the past began to bubble up again, intimating he might have murdered Lori Klausutis. The president and his family were quick to pick up on the thread in multiple tweets this month.
In his letter, Klausutis suggested to Dorsey that “Twitter’s policies about content are designed to maintain the appearance that your hands are clean.” Per his reading of Twitter’s terms of service, he said, other users would be banned for tweets like Trump’s.
Klausutis also wrote of the enduring pain his wife’s loved ones feel over her early death, and how the conspiracy theories have made it harder for them to move on.
“I have mourned my wife every day since her passing. I have tried to honor her memory and our marriage,” he wrote. “As her husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life.”
Twitter last year said it would begin marking politicians’ rule-breaking tweets with warnings, but the company has been reluctant to remove them out of free speech and censorship concerns. An October blog post laid out company executives’ thinking, positing that leaving world leaders’ tweets up may serve the public interest even if they violate policies.
A powerful letter and a simple request from Timothy J. Klausutis: “The President of the United States has taken something that does not belong him–the memory of my dead wife–and perverted it for perceived political gain…My wife deserves better.” https://t.co/Zd55y8jh5D
Twitter statement re: Trump’s tweets about Lori Klausutis: “We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements… are causing the family.” Changes are in the works to “expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward” pic.twitter.com/JxiYmaYYL4
This episode is not unlike other infamous stories floating around social media, like the inhumane speculation about the death of a Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, or the ocean of nasty misinformation about the murders of the children of Sandy Hook Elementary that got Alex Jones deservedly thrown off several platforms.
But this mess is perhaps the high tide of that endless spew of toxic bile because it is being relentlessly amped up by the leader of the free world.
Tweeting misinformation is not new for Mr. Trump, who uses the service as his political cudgel to govern, campaign, wage petty digital wars and, more recently, peddle dangerous medical advice about Covid-19. All of this Twitter has allowed, because it has deemed even the most inane of the president’s utterances as “newsworthy.”
At least Mr. Trump is consistent in his lowering of the bar. As the number of Americans who have died from the coronavirus approached 100,000, the president declined to address the virus’s tragic toll and chose instead to keep up the series of tweets about Ms. Klausutis, all aimed at attacking Mr. Scarborough, who is now a high-profile MSNBC host.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Scarborough have been engaged in a very public brawl for a long time, but it turned heinous when the president decided to tweet the much-debunked and vile conspiracy theory about Ms. Klausutis’s death. In reality, she had an “undiagnosed heart condition, fell and hit her head on her desk at work,” wrote her husband in the letter to Twitter, but Mr. Trump ignored those facts.
When Mr. Scarborough’s co-host and wife, Mika Brzezinski, addressed the issue on the air and on Twitter, calling for the platform to ban Mr. Trump from the service, all hell broke loose. Some claimed First Amendment rights for the president (even though Twitter is a private company and not a public square), while others correctly pointed out that Twitter often blocks or bans users for much lesser offenses. Others who simply abhor Mr. Trump or Mr. Scarborough and Ms. Brzezinski used the situation to bash their preferred bugbear.
But, hate them or not, the Trump-Scarborough duo matters less here: They are both famous and have to suffer the slings and arrows of that trade, even if Mr. Trump is falsely accusing Mr. Scarborough of an affair and murder.
The real issue is the very serious collateral damage of this fight, which is the post-mortem libel of Ms. Klausutis and the ensuing suffering of her husband and family. They are the victims, of Mr. Trump and of Twitter’s inability to manage its troubled relationship with him.
The company tends to be hands-off when a Trump controversy erupts, relying on a tenet that he is a public figure and also that it cannot sort out what is truth and a lie and is therefore better off letting its community argue it out. While that might work when it comes to some issues, it has broken down here.
How to fix it is the digital equivalent of a Gordian knot, except there is no cybersword of Alexander the Great to slice it in half. Banning Mr. Trump outright, the most extreme move, seems to be a nonstarter, given Mr. Dorsey’s belief that less is more when it comes to governing. While it worked when Mr. Jones was tossed off, a move that Mr. Dorsey came to last among the social media giants, doing the same to Mr. Trump would be quite different.
While I had thought throwing Mr. Trump off Twitter was not the worst idea — after all, what would the president do without his raging addiction to Twitter? — I have come to believe that a Trump ban would be pointless and too drastic. The firestorm it would set off would alone be disastrous for Twitter to manage and probably come with deep financial repercussions. If you think that is not a good enough reason, I invite you to visit the reality of living as a public company in the digital age.
Another solution being discussed inside Twitter is to label the tweets as false and link to myriad high-quality information and reporting that refute the tweets’ sinister insinuations. Sources told me that after initial hesitance in dealing with Mr. Trump’s tweets about Ms. Klausutis, the company has accelerated work on a more robust rubric around labeling and dealing with such falsehoods.
Again, top company executives hope that this placement of truth against lies will serve to cleanse the stain. I think this is both naïve and will be ineffective — most people’s experience tracks with that old axiom: A lie can travel halfway around the world while truth is still getting its shoes on.
In the digital age, that would be to the moon and back 347 times, of course, which is why I am supportive of the suggestion Mr. Klausutis makes in his letter to simply remove the offending tweets.
While the always thoughtful Mr. Dorsey has said previously that he has to hew to Twitter’s principles and rules, and that the company cannot spend all of its time reacting, its approach up until now results only in Twitter’s governance getting gamed by players like Mr. Trump, in ways that are both shameless and totally expected.
So why not be unexpected with those who continue to abuse the system? Taking really valuable one-off actions can be laudable since they make an example of someone’s horrid behavior as a warning to others. While it is impossible to stop the endless distribution of a screenshot of the tweets, taking the original ones down would send a strong message that this behavior is not tolerated.
Or, if he must, Mr. Dorsey could set up an independent content board as Facebook has recently done, which could take on thorny questions like this and remove them from his purview. This might seem like a cop-out, but putting these questions up for a more measured debate might be the exit that the company needs to focus on the rest of its business.
Perhaps such a board could include Mr. Klausutis, who might know more than most people about the price of all this.
“I have mourned my wife every day since her passing. I have tried to honor her memory and our marriage,” he wrote to Mr. Dorsey, with the kind of enduring dignity that would be nice to see more of from our leaders. “There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died. I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, unfortunately it is the verifiable truth. Because of this, I have struggled to move forward with my life.”
It’s long past time to let him do that and, most of all, to let Lori Klausutis rest in peace.
And even more stupid….partying in the Ozarks:
Pandemic or no pandemic, there’s a lot of nasty stuff being passed around at that party. pic.twitter.com/ZCHSTXetJE
Crowds pack venues in Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks, ignoring social distancing https://t.co/kqezd69SBl
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 24, 2020
In response, St Louis County health officials asked all the swimmers to quarantine for two weeks (they won’t) and issued a travel advisory:
Update — Twitter schools Trump, but not about the Scarborough tweets.
Twitter on Tuesday slapped a fact-check label on President Trump’s tweets for the first time, a response to long-standing criticism that the company is too hands-off when it comes to policing misinformation and falsehoods from world leaders.
The move, which escalates tensions between Washington and Silicon Valley in an election year, was made in response to two Trump tweets over the past 24 hours. The tweets falsely claimed that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. Twitter’s label says, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” and redirects users to news articles about Trump’s unsubstantiated claim.
Even as the number of deaths in North Carolina trends down, the head of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services on Saturday reported “a notable and concerning increase” in novel coronavirus cases. The state recorded the “highest one-day COVID-19 cases reported with 1,107 additional cases” just as the state opened its restaurants to indoor dining under Phase 2 of the governor’s plan. Masks are not required.
Trump has been screeding a lot, including this “threat” to NC:
Statement from Gov. Cooper’s spokesperson on today’s comments about the Republican National Convention: pic.twitter.com/xDuNWstqjQ
On a personal note, I found out last week that I tested POSITIVE for the ANTIBODIES to Covid-19, indicating that I had the virus at some point. The test was part of a Wake Forest University School of Internal Medicine Study, and it was NOT part of an FDA-approved test. Still, it is kind of a relief to know that I might be immune.
But returning to Trump, let’s review what our president has been up to in the past few days:
With the death toll from covid-19 about to top 100,000, Trump has offered almost nothing in the way of tributes to the dead, sympathy for their families, or acknowledgement of our national mourning. By all accounts he is barely bothering to manage his administration’s response to the pandemic, preferring to focus on cheerleading for an economic recovery he says is on its way, even as he feeds conspiracy theories about the death toll being inflated. This weekend, he went golfing.
In a Twitter spasm on Saturday and Sunday, Trump retweeted mockery of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s weight and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) looks, along with a tweet calling Hillary Clinton a “skank.”
Eager to start a new culture war flare-up, he urged churches to open and gather parishioners in a room to breathe the same air, threatening that he would “override” governors whose shutdown orders still forbade such gatherings. The president has no such power.
He all but accused talk show host Joe Scarborough of murdering a young woman who died in 2001 in the then-congressman’s district office, bringing untold torture to her family from the conspiracy theorists who will respond to his accusation.
He has repeatedly insisted that the upcoming election is being “rigged” because states run by both Republicans and Democrats are making it easier to vote by mail, seeking to delegitimize a vote that has yet to occur, despite the substantial evidence that mail voting advantages neither party.
The truth is that Trump is not much more despicable of a human being than he has always been; it’s just that standard Trumpian behavior becomes more horrifying when it occurs during an ongoing national crisis. It is reality that changed around him, and he was incapable of responding to it.
Perhaps the most troubling is that Trump is ALREADY casting doubts on the election results.
Now, it’s true — Biden’s lead in the presidential race is pretty solid and that we could afford to feel a little bit hopeful about the election in November. Here’s the other side of that coin.
I think we’ve all contemplated the idea that Trump might refuse to accept the results of the election. After all, he said last time that he would only accept the results if he won/ Its not as if he’s been discreet about his thinking.
However, I suspect we all thought it was fairly unlikely unless the vote was super close like it was in Florida 2000. But the pandemic changes the calculation. Trump has shown a willingness to use “emergency” powers to jack his trade policy and build his stupid wall. Are we sure he won’t do it if a second wave of COVID hits during the weeks around the election? I’m not.
Anyway, the New York Times reports on some people doing some disaster planning around this idea:
In October, President Trump declares a state of emergency in major cities in battleground states, like Milwaukee and Detroit, banning polling places from opening.
A week before the election, Attorney General William P. Barr announces a criminal investigation into the Democratic presidential nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
After Mr. Biden wins a narrow Electoral College victory, Mr. Trump refuses to accept the results, won’t leave the White House and declines to allow the Biden transition team customary access to agencies before the Jan. 20 inauguration.
Far-fetched conspiracy theories? Not to a group of worst-case scenario planners — mostly Democrats, but some anti-Trump Republicans as well — who have been gaming out various doomsday options for the 2020 presidential election. Outraged by Mr. Trump and fearful that he might try to disrupt the campaign before, during and after Election Day, they are engaged in a process that began in the realm of science fiction but has nudged closer to reality as Mr. Trump and his administration abandon longstanding political norms.
The anxiety has intensified in recent weeks as the president continues to attack the integrity of mail voting and insinuate that the election system is rigged, while his Republican allies ramp up efforts to control who can vote and how. Just last week, Mr. Trump threatened to withhold funding from states that defy his wishes on expanding mail voting, while also amplifying unfounded claims of voter fraud in battleground states.
“In the eight to 10 months I’ve been yapping at people about this stuff, the reactions have gone from, ‘Don’t be silly, that won’t happen,’ to an increasing sense of, ‘You know, that could happen,’” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor. Earlier this year, Ms. Brooks convened an informal group of Democrats and never-Trump Republicans to brainstorm about ways the Trump administration could disrupt the election and to think about ways to prevent it.
But the anxiety is hardly limited to outside groups.
Marc Elias, a Washington lawyer who leads the Democratic National Committee’s legal efforts to fight voter suppression measures, said not a day goes by when he doesn’t field a question from senior Democratic officials about whether Mr. Trump could postpone or cancel the election. Prodded by allies to explain why not, Mr. Elias wrote a column on the subject in late March for his website — and it drew more traffic than anything he’d ever published.
But changing the date of the election is not what worries Mr. Elias. The bigger threat in his mind is the possibility that the Trump administration could act in October to make it harder for people to vote in urban centers in battleground states — possibilities, he said, that include declaring a state of emergency, deploying the National Guard or forbidding gatherings of more than 10 people.
Such events could serve to depress or discourage turnout in pockets of the country that reliably vote for Democrats.
“That to me is that frame from which all doomsday scenarios then go,” he said.
To ward off such a scenario, Mr. Elias is engaged in multiple lawsuits aimed at making it easier to cast absentee ballots by mail and making in-person voting more available, either on Election Day or in the preceding weeks.
“Since 2016, Donald Trump has shown that he is always ready to sacrifice our basic democratic norms for his personal and political interests,” said Bob Bauer, a Biden senior adviser who is the campaign’s chief lawyer. “We assume he may well resort to any kind of trick, ploy or scheme he can in order to hold onto his presidency. We have built a strong program to plan for and address every possibility to ensure that he does not succeed.”
Mr. Trump has said he expects the election to be held on Nov. 3 as scheduled, and under federal law he does not have the power to unilaterally postpone it. But a recent comment by the president’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner about whether the election would be held as scheduled — “I’m not sure I can commit one way or another,’’ he said — renewed fears that Mr. Trump would try to move the election, or discredit the balloting process, if he thought he was going to lose.
Ms. Brooks’s group at Georgetown is not the only one forecasting doomsday scenarios for the election. Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonprofit group dedicated to resisting authoritarian government, last year convened the National Task Force on Election Crises, a bipartisan 51-member group that includes Republicans such as Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary. The group is dedicated to envisioning and presenting plans for scenarios that could wreck the 2020 presidential election.
***
The task force began with 65 possibilities before narrowing the list early this year to eight potential calamities, including natural disasters, a successful foreign hack of voting machines, a major candidate’s challenging the election and seeking to delegitimize the results, and a president who refuses to participate in a peaceful transfer of power.
Among the scenarios they eliminated when making final cuts in January, ironically, was a killer pandemic that ravaged the country and kept people homebound before Election Day. After the coronavirus struck, the group reconstituted to publish pandemic-related recommendations for state governments to follow.
The group also produced a 200-page document, which has not been made public. Several members said they had worked on specific scenarios but had not seen the complete draft. They said that while many of the possibilities envisioned an incumbent president’s using the forces of government to his advantage, the report’s authors had been careful not to make the document explicitly about Mr. Trump.
“We hope there are safeguards in place,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who participated in the task force. “Let’s face it, those safeguards ought to include the Senate of the United States and the Justice Department. There’s reason to be nervous.”
After reading that I was tempted to write something like “I never thought I’d see the day when serious people would be contemplating such things in the United States of America.” But that wouldn’t be true. It was only 20 years ago that a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court majority decided a presidential election based on a dubious result in the Republican winner’s state which just happened to be run by his own Republican brother. Anyone who protested that was shushed by the media and everyone in politics and told to “get over it.” 9/11 happened just a few months later and that was that.
They have been preparing the ground for years.
Do we have any reason at all, after all we’ve seen from this administration — the acquiescent potted plants known as the GOP establishment, Trump’s corrupt Justice Department and now a pliant Intelligence Community run by an unqualified flunky — to believe it’s impossible that they’ll find some rationale for suppressing the vote or denying their loss in November? It clearly is not.
The United States cannot have all Mail In Ballots. It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history. People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries and “force” people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use Covid for this Scam!
Ironically, it’s also a reason that he *really* hates mailed-in ballots. It makes it harder for him to contest on the basis of fraud, since there is a paper trail that can be recounted. He’d prefer obsolete electronic ballots that can’t be audited to contradict his claims. https://t.co/bsQlGnyZZY
President Trump rails against North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, saying the 2020 Republican National Convention will move if the arena can't be filled to capacity https://t.co/FuiAfAIIST
This week, Trump fully transitioned from leader to salesman, leaving the states to fend for themselves, while he promoted a “transition to greatness.” After a week when two White House employees tested positive for the coronavirus, Trump made the remarkable claim he has been taking hydroxychloroquine prophylactically — leading public health experts to sound the alarms to American citizens not to follow Trump’s lead. Days later, the largest study yet on the drug’s efficacy to date found no benefit, but severe cardiac risks for Covid-19 patients.
This week, Trump continued campaign stops at battleground states, visiting a Ford Motor plant in Michigan that had been reconfigured to manufacture ventilators. Despite requests from the company and demands by the state’s attorney general to abide by restrictions requiring a face mask, Trump refused, later saying, “I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”
Trump also battled with Michigan’s secretary of state (notably Michigan’s governors, SoS, and AG are all women), and with Nevada, over those states offering voters the option to vote by mail given the pandemic. Without offering any evidence or proof, Trump made accusations of voter fraud and threatened both states with withholding federal funding — something he cannot do. Days later he commanded houses of worship to reopen immediately as “essential,” and similarly threatened governors not to get in the way — another power he does not have.
As the week came to an end, and the death toll neared 100,000 Americans in less than three months, Trump started Memorial Day weekend by golfing at one of his clubs.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted an image of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dressed as Supergirl, and a video clip from the 1996 movie “Independence Day” with his head superimposed on Bill Pullman’s.
As the death toll neared 90,000, Trump also tweeted, “Doing REALLY well, medically, on solving the CoronaVirus situation (Plague!). It will happen!” It was unclear what he meant.
On Monday, a Morning Consult poll found 89% of Americans support 14-day quarantines, 88% support social distancing measures, and 78% support stay-at-home measures.
On Monday, 49 states had relaxed stay-at-home orders, even as some states continue to see a continual rise in daily cases and deaths. More than 90,000 Americans had died.
On Tuesday, unveiling an agricultural aid package, Trump declared, “We’re going after Virginia, with your crazy governor…They want to take your Second Amendment away. You’ll have nobody guarding your potatoes.”
On Tuesday, retailer Pier 1 announced it would close all its stores for good, after filing for bankruptcy reorganization in February, citing the impact of the coronavirus.
Of those invited, just 14% were diplomats or foreign officials. Roughly 23% were associated with media or entertainment (of which 39% were from Fox News), 29% from the corporate world, and 30% government.
The co-hosts glorified store owners reopening, saying, “some businesses are going to essentially dare the state to arrest them, to shut them down.” The four spoke virtually as Fox News remained closed until at least June 15.
On Thursday, Michael Cohen was released from prison, and will serve his remaining prison sentence from home due to the pandemic. Reportedly, Trump was irked by reports of Cohen’s early release.
Birx added, “You can go to the beaches if you stay six feet apart.” Birx said if you do not feel well, do not go to church, just moments after saying 40% of cases may be asymptomatic.
Uncharacteristically, Sessions shot back, tweeting, “I know your anger, but recusal was required by law. I did my duty & you’re damn fortunate I did…Your personal feelings don’t dictate who Alabama picks as their senator.”
As the week came to a close, there were 5,260,624 worldwide cases and 339,627 dead from the coronavirus. The U.S. had 1,608,298 cases (30.6%), 96,283 deaths (28.4%), and a mortality rate of 6.0%.
