Winter Patriot Community Blog

Donald Trump is a notorious golf cheater. And just like he desperately wants people to think he didn’t try to cheat his way into staying in the White House in 2021, he apparently has some desperate need to convince people he’s not a golf cheat, either.

So, in a convention that supposedly “showcases the very best of Wisconsin and the Republican Party,” the RNC dutifully gave John Nieporte, the head of Trump’s Palm Beach golf club, a speaking spot on the most coveted last night.

Sure enough, Nieporte did his fluffing job. “Donald Trump is a great boss and one hell of a golfer,” Nieporte gushed. “At our club championship in March, I watched President Trump hit a perfect 210-yard 4 iron to within 10 feet of the hole. Yep, he needed to sink that putt to win. Do you think he sank it? You better believe he sunk that putt.”

We saw a delighted Trump on the screen before Nieporte added, “Donald Trump: 21 club championships. Joe Biden: zero

Here’s what Nieporte left out or has missed, via The Palm Beach Post:

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The media is breathlessly reporting on calls for President Joe Biden to step down. They have to, though, you guys. The media does this for profit. Biden has a stellar record of achievements during his nearly four years in office. And he has surrounded himself with a more than capable team, including Vice President Kamala Harris.

Despite media speculation (hi, New York Times!), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries confirmed that he's all-in for Joe Biden to win another term. And Biden has earned a second term. Still, the media will continue to mind-fuck us.

"Biden, as I've said repeatedly, is our nominee," Jeffries told reporters. "He has a tremendous track record of success."

"He's one of the most accomplished American presidents in our history," he added. "And he has the vision, I believe, the ability, the capacity, and the track record to make a case to the American people that will result in us being successful in November."

Speaking of the New York Times:

In a letter to colleagues on Friday that notably did not endorse Mr. Biden’s decision to stay in the race, Mr. Jeffries did not reveal what he had told the President, but said he had passed along what he had been hearing from Democrats — many of whom have told him over the past week that the President must step aside.

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MSNBC's Joy Reid described Trump as a "diminished vaudevillian man in decline" after his speech at the RNC.

And she called out the "very serious Democrats" who are suddenly afraid of this bozo's campaign.

To paraphrase Eric Killmonger, 'MAGA, is this your king?'

If Joe Biden had given a rambling, shambling, all-over-the-place speech like that, elected Democrats would be demanding that the 25th Amendment be invoked immediately.

They would scramble even worse than they are now to jettison him as the candidate for president.

And we would be questioning his mental acuity.

Donald Trump went off that script for more than half of it.

We had this text in front of us.

He clearly was bored by the text and then became an old vaudevillian who much preferred his old schtick and was, therefore, reciting the schtick to the Daners.

That was proof that there's not just one old man in the race.

Donald Trump is an old man, clearly in decline, and we must start talking about him the same way that we are questioning Joe Biden.

Because Donald Trump cannot stay on message for even five to ten minutes, even telling a story about the most traumatic moments of his life.

He still eventually got to sharks.

He got to Hannibal Lecter.

He can't stop doing it because if you, you know, and I say this as somebody who absolutely adores senior citizens.

They're my favorite people.

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Fox and Friends hosted three supposedly "undecided" voters from Wisconsin on the Fox couch today. The topic was Trump's ridiculous and over-long acceptance speech at the RNC.

Only one of them thought Trump was boring, saying the same things over and over again with no vision for the future. (Which is the clip I used.) That "undecided voter" did admit he had attended two Trump rallies.

How are you "undecided" if you go to his Berlin rallies?

Jones: And how do you think the former president did in that speech?

Rick: I liked the beginning part, and then it turned into more of a rally speech, and I've seen two of his rallies in person.

And then I got bored, to be totally honest with you.

And I thought he kept looking back, saying, four years ago we did this, and I'm like, I want to know what's going on in the next four years.

I'm tired of hearing what you did.

I want to know what you're going to do.

And so it didn't push me closer to him.

But by the end of the segment, all three undecided voters said they would probably vote for Trump. If the speech didn't change Rick's mind, why would he say he's "undecided" if he will vote for Trump?

Another fraud perpetrated by Fox News. Case closed.

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MSNBC's political correspondent was horrified witnessing the reaction by the members of the Republican National Convention crowd partying with Trump's plan of deporting millions of people out of the country.

Jacob Soboroff reported from the convention floor on what had transpired.

Soboroff: I have to tell you, Rachel, it's an almost unspeakable feeling to be in a room that's such a celebratory nature and hear the man behind me talk about deporting more people than President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954 in operation with a name so racist that it's not appropriate to say on television.

He's talking about removing more than 10 million people from this country who have been here, many of them since they were little children, contribute to this society, contribute to this economy, live in all of our neighborhoods and communities, and now we're throwing balloons around as if this is a party.

He talked about the Democrats, again, 'cheating.' Cheat was the word he used in the last election. After saying he was here to unify the nation, and it's a bizarre feeling that I'm not sure I'm able to fully articulate right now.

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I know this will shock you, but the felon's rambling, crazy-time 90-minute speech at the Republican National Convention, where he accepted the GOP nomination to be King, put quite a few of his supporters to sleep. Trump's RNC speech was just a rehash of every rally he has subjected us to. He spoke of the "China virus" just after calling for unity the previous day, then gave the leader of the Taliban a shoutout for complimenting him by calling him "Your Excellency."

Trump hasn't changed. A narcissist is incapable of that, but the media previously fawned over the twice-impeached President's toned-down rhetoric that wasn't toned down. It was so repetitious that some of his supporters were seen dozing off.

Tim Alberta of The Atlantic wrote on Xitter about the lack of enthusiasm on display.

I’m standing 10 feet from the stage, in a sea of diehards, and some are getting restless. Checking phones, stealing glances at the teleprompter, whispering about when it will be over. pic.twitter.com/7Y7qDfH5fs

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) July 19, 2024

This right here:

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Judging just by the look on Trump's face, he's as puzzled by this one as the rest of us. If I had to guess, I'd say it was Tyra Banks or maybe Chrissy Teigen. Or perhaps another porn star that Trump slept with while Melania was pregnant.

Some very clever satire here, as that is Gary Petersen but is a reworked picture from another Trump artist, Al Manica. He presented a picture of Melania to Trump last year and tweeted about it in December.

Source: The Poke

It’s a sign of the unprecedented times we live in that some people still think Donald Trump ‘superfan’ Gary Petersen is the real deal.

That, and the incredible attention to detail that Petersen – @GaryPetersenUSA over on Twitter. He’s so good, in fact, that even as we write that we’re beginning to doubt ourselves.

We mention him because Gary has just gone viral again with this magnificent portrait of Melania which he may or may not – who the hell can tell anymore? – have presented to Donald Trump.

And the real deal or not (surely not one) it’s really, really funny, made even better by the vast number of people who still believe.

Petersen, who has done dozens and dozens of paintings of Trump on his Twitter page and website, posted his latest pièce de résistance yesterday.

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed that it is legitimate to attempt to prosecute Barack Obama over his acts as President if Trump's bizarre immunity claim fails at the Supreme Court.

Another day and another effort to defend Donald Trump from any and all prosecutions and criminal acts.

Q: Attorney General Paxton, on the off chance that the Supreme Court comes back and does not say presidents are immune from official acts, do you think your administration would pursue charges against, say, Barack Obama for the drone strikes and murdering of three American citizens?

Paxton: Yeah, so every state's different. I don't actually have the authority, unfortunately, in my state I cannot prosecute unless it's referred by a district attorney, but I certainly think that if there's no immunity, that that ought to be considered.

Paxton: That both sides ought to be treated exactly the same, and so if somehow Barack Obama should be prosecuted just like Donald Trump, they should be treated the same, and whatever the law is, it should apply equally to everybody.

Republicans are trying every trick to subvert Trump's culpability for any illegal and immoral act he takes.

The drone argument is laughable on its face (even though it is tragic), but that's all the MAGA cult has to work with.

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Hey there, procrastination nation! You know what today is? That's right, it's Anti-Procrastination Day. The day of the week when we're supposed to finally get around to all those nagging tasks we've been putting off.

We've got the perfect anti-procrastination activity for you progressive web surfers - celebrating 20 amazing years of Crooks and Liars by becoming a paid subscriber!

For two decades now, this fiercely independent liberal site has been serving up raw, unfiltered commentary while mercilessly mocking the cringeworthy hypocrisy of the far-right fringe. Led by the one and only John Amato, Crooks and Liars pulls no punches in dismantling bad faith partisan hacks and calling out the disinformation machine.

From skewering Fox News propaganda to elevating crucial stories the mainstream media buries, this platform has provided an invaluable voice of truth in an increasingly Orwellian political landscape. And they've done it all without bankrupting billionaire benefactors or shady backers - just grassroots support sustaining the resistance.

Now it's time for you to join the ranks! Stop procrastinating and take the plunge by becoming a paid Crooks and Liars subscriber today. When you do, you'll get an ad-free browsing experience across the entire site. That's uninterrupted access to all the scathing political commentary, multimedia takedowns, and must-see humor without any corporate ad disruptions.

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The evangelical Christian right MAGA movement has a hard time rationalizing their beliefs with actual scientific facts.

Kirk brought on Randy Guliuzza, President of the Institute for Creation Research to "educate" his followers about actual dinosaurs and claim that some made it onto Noah's Ark.

"How should we think about dinosaurs?" Kirk asked. As if that's a conundrum to ponder.

Guliuzza made sure to posit that there were real dinosaurs on the planet before he began.

Well, hopefully everybody believes that there are dinosaurs or were dinosaurs on this planet.

You can see fossils of them buried by the thousands and thousands all over the world.

They were different types of creatures.

I think the best evidence indicates they were not reptiles directly themselves, but they were very reptilian in behavior, in form, that they were created.

The flying ones were created on day five, land ones created on day six, just as the Bible says, that they coexisted with humans up until the time of the flood, of which the vast, vast majority of them were destroyed.

They probably weren't destroyed by some asteroid or hitting the planet and killing mostly just the dinosaurs, but not many other creatures.

So the vast majority were destroyed in the flood.

Some were obviously taken onto the ark by Noah, brought there.

They populated the earth, many parts of it, post-flood.

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CNN's Donie O'Sullivan featured Rachel Powell, the infamous Bullhorn Lady in his hour-long documentary “MisinfoNation: The Trump Faithful." We've done a few posts on her at C&L as well. On October 17, 2023, Powell was sentenced to 57 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release. (The good Christian grandmother had used an ice pick to break into the Capitol building and later assaulted police officers.) Powell began serving her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Hazelton on January 9, 2024. According to O'Sullivan, she's entirely unrepentant for her actions.

And who knows, she may get her wish if the American public decides they've had enough of the democratic experiment and opt for Trump instead. He's said he'll consider blanket pardons for all the January 6 insurrectionists.

Source: Mediaite

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Sarah Matthews, a former Trump assistant press secretary, slammed Trump and the dissenting conservatives who still kiss his ass, saying “a lot of Republicans” that she has spoken to, including top elected officials, “will bash him privately, but many of them will not even say it publicly.” Via The New Republic:

“A lot of times what they often say is that they’re supporting him because of the policies, that they want the conservative agenda. And where I get really frustrated is that they’re treating this like it’s a normal election, a normal Republican candidate, and a normal Democratic candidate. Well, this couldn’t be anything further from the case,” Matthews said Monday night.

But when push comes to shove, conservative policy arguments don’t matter when the GOP presidential nominee is someone who refuses to acknowledge that he lost the last election, and who has not set aside the possibility of utilizing mob violence for his own political gain in November. For that reason, Matthews explained, she will be voting for President Joe Biden.

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The Justice Department said yesterday that it had recommended easing restrictions on marijuana in what would be a major change in federal policy. Yes, it will take a while and no, it won't make it legal, but it's movement. Via the New York Times:

Even though the move, which kicks off a lengthy rule-making process, does not end the criminalization of the drug, it is a significant shift in how the government views the safety and use of marijuana for medical purposes. It also reflects the Biden administration’s effort to liberalize marijuana policy in a way that puts it more in line with the public as increasingly more Americans favor legalizing the drug.

[..] It could also lead to the softening of other laws and regulations that account for the use or possession of cannabis, including sentencing guidelines, banking and access to public housing.

People familiar with the recommendation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland planned to tell the White House Office of Management and Budget that the government should change the drug’s categorization. After the office assesses the recommendation, it will still face a long road before taking effect, including being subject to public comment.

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As bad as the things he admits to are, the ones he won't admit are even scarier. Because it means he knows people will hate him for it, he just doesn't care. Mika Brzezinski talks about Trump's Time Magazine interviewL

"The former president was asked about his stance on abortion issues and he mostly dodged the questions," she said.

"He was asked whether women should be able to get the abortion pill mifepristone. Trump said he has an opinion on that, but would not explain, adding that he has strong views and that he would probably release it over the next week. Trump was then pressed further on the issue, who highlighted that some of the former president's allies want to use the Comstock Act to block the mailing of abortion drugs.

"Trump replied, quote, 'I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days.' He also avoided giving an answer on whether states should monitor women's pregnancies, so they can know if a woman has had the procedure after they are banned in a state. Trump said, quote, 'I think they might do that again, you'll have to speak to the individual states. The former president then said it was irrelevant whether he was comfortable with women being prosecuted for getting abortions after a ban, because states are going to make those decisions. Good Lord," Brzezinski said.

"The Biden/Harris campaign released a new video this morning in response to Donald Trump's comments about abortion to Time magazine."

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Before there was Fox News, before there was Rush Limbaugh, before there was the sprawling rightwing ecosystem of fake news and vicious smears we so enjoy today, there was the National Enquirer.

For most of our lives, the Enquirer stared up at us from the checkout aisle of our local supermarket. Somehow, we never made the connection that its readers would one day fit the stereotype of the Trump voter — under-educated, gullible, malleable, easy targets for disinformation.

The Enquirer nurtured those targets over many decades, got them to believe virtually anything, and helped lay the groundwork for the sort of know-nothing insurgency that brought Trump into all our lives.

Decades ahead of its time, the Enquirer was peddling fake news long before it was fashionable. It appealed unapologetically to humanity’s baser instincts, the ones most of us try to rise above. It was always flamboyantly sleazy, and always there in plain sight, something we could dependably look down on.

The Enquirer has owned that supermarket space for as long as I can remember, yet I never stopped to think what impressions were being made on impressionable people, people simply standing on that line, reading the covers.

Each cover featured screaming headlines, dripping with innuendo and smarm, dedicated to the proposition that celebrity scandal is a basic food group. Even if you never bought the paper, even if you never looked inside one, you still saw those headlines. You might not believe them, but you couldn’t un-see them.

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You Might Notice a Trend: The threat of Trump's atrocities.

The Mahablog: The unwise men who need correction.

Dispatches from a Collapsing State: J.D. Vance, the right, and the center.

The Cottage: The great divorce, evangelical style.

Finally, for May Day (which is Labor Day or Workers' Day in some countries), Billy Bragg's version of "The Internationale."

This installment by Batocchio. E-mail tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

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Yesterday, in making a pitch for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Bernie noted that “while it is critically important we do everything we can to defeat Donald Trump, it is just as important we work to elect progressives this November.” Amen!

And it’s what Blue America does.

Our endorsement page for incumbents is skimpy this cycle. But two members who have lived up to their promise AND who need the help, Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) are both on that list.

The two of them are the primary target of the pro-genocide lobby, led by AIPAC, which recruited and is lavishly financing 2 genocide-friendly candidates.

Back to Bernie for a second. He wrote that “Today, the US House of Representatives has a stronger progressive presence than at any time in modern American history. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has nearly 100 members, including dozens of very strong progressives, who are taking on powerful special interests every single day.” That’s a low-key acknowledgement that not all the members are “strong progressives.” The chair, Pramila, deputy chair, Ilhan and whip, Greg Casar, are.

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The collection of mooks that make up the current MAGA roster is what many of us saw coming years ago. It's been a long death spiral, highlighted by "I'm not a witch" and "2nd Amendment solutions," "palling around with terrorists" and "s*thole countries."Most recently, a puppy killer.

So in principle it's not shocking to know that irritable bowel syndrome spokesperson Matt Gaetz so personally targeted a GOP colleague, Rep. Tony Gonzales, that the latter felt compelled to go on tv and go after him for "minors" and "sex" and "drug parties." And, oh, yeah, he had more to say. A lot more. You should really watch the video...

I have no love for Gonzales, who is awful like virtually every elected Republican (a few are only mostly awful). But Gaetz, who led the ousting of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, is a boy serving in a role best handled by a man or woman. He takes it to a different level. He's special.

So MAGA is at war with itself, with the fire of petty feuds burning among many of its membership. Get ready for us to hear a lot more talk like what Tony Gonzales said. B/c as one might say of a movie sequel, among this group of ill-mannered children fighting over the playground swing, "this time, it's personal."

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Adolf Hitler, who rose to power on the backs of anti-Semitic scumbags, crackpots and German nationalist zealots finally ended his reign of terror by killing himself.

On April 30, 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich.

Hitler also poisoned his dog Braun, which seems apropos since it's all the rage with Kristi Noem.

The rise of Hitler and the Nazi party eerily echoes the rise of Trump and his MAGA fanatics.

Just saying...open thread y'all.

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The second week of the Donald Trump criminal trial testimony began with a bang!

First up, a ruling on the gag order. Trump was found in criminal contempt and fined $1k for each of the 9 violations. He was also ordered to remove the offending 9 posts by 2:15pm (which he complied with) AND warned that he will be incarcerated (maybe) for future violations.

Reminder: there is a 2nd gag order violation hearing scheduled for this Thursday morning.

BREAKING:

Judge Merchan threatens Trump with jail time for further violations of his gag order.

"Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will…

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 30, 2024

BREAKING: Donald Trump has just complied with the order from Judge Merchan to remove social media posts from his Truth Social page and his campaign website that the judge deemed in violation of the gag order.

Trump had less than 30 minutes to go, as the deadline to remove the… pic.twitter.com/BDJWnq1PSR

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