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THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty's
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2021-04-27 at 9:13 PM UTCFox N-E-W-S Claims Not Needing To Fact Check...Should They Rename Themselves Fox F-I-C-T-I-O-N?
Business Insider
Fox News argues its hosts didn't need to fact-check election conspiracy theories from Trump's lawyers in response to Smartmatic defamation suit
jshamsian@insider.com (Jacob Shamsian)
Fox News is trying to dismiss a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic over election conspiracies.
It argues its hosts didn't have a legal responsibility to fact-check falsehoods from Trump's lawyers.
Election conspiracy theories have led to a tangle of legal consequences for right-wing media.
Attorneys representing Fox News once again asked a New York court to dismiss a defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic over conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, arguing its hosts didn't have a responsibility to fact-check the attorneys hired by Donald Trump.
"Smartmatic asks this Court to become the first in history to hold the press liable for reporting allegations made by a sitting President and his lawyers," the attorneys wrote in a brief filed to court Monday, later adding: "Smartmatic identifies no case in the history of our nation in which the press was held liable for reporting allegations made by or on behalf of a sitting President."
The lawsuit, filed in February, asks for $2.7 billion in damages and accuses Fox News of waging a disinformation campaign that irreparably damaged Smartmatic's reputation. It also targets three individual hosts - Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, and Lou Dobbs - who hosted Trump's attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
Powell and Giuliani had promoted conspiracy theories baselessly claiming that Smartmatic was secretly in cahoots with Dominion Voting Systems, a rival election technology company, in a complicated scheme to manipulate the 2020 presidential election that involved now-dead Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Dozens of lawsuits, audits, investigations, and recounts have found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
The false claims have led to a messy fallout. Trump fired Powell in late November, and Giuliani distanced himself from her even as he continued to advance conspiracy theories. Dominion sued Powell, Giuliani, Fox News, and other right-wing media figures that pushed those theories. And Fox News canceled Lou Dobb's show shortly after Smartmatic filed its lawsuit.
Fox News first asked a judge to dismiss the case a few days after it was filed. On Monday, the network's attorneys at Kirkland & Ellis LLP asked the judge to dismiss the claims against the individual hosts as well. The attorneys argue the legal standards for defamation don't require the hosts to investigate whether Powell's and Giuliani's claims are actually true.
"Smartmatic simply identifies information 'available to' the public that it thinks the Fox hosts should have researched. But such 'failure to investigate' claims do not rise to the level of actual malice," the attorneys wrote, citing other legal cases.
In earlier filings, Smartmatic said that the Fox News hosts' failure to push back against false claims from Powell and Giuliani was itself defamatory, and said that the media organization shouldn't receive legal protections normally given to journalists.
The new filings from Fox News spend dozens of pages going through individual claims from Bartiromo, Pirro, and Dobbs, arguing their comments were summaries of what Trump's lawyers said, opinions protected by the First Amendment, or statements that didn't directly mention Smartmatic and therefore didn't need to be defended in the lawsuit.
As one example, Fox News' attorneys cite a tweet included in Smartmatic's lawsuit where Dobbs wrote, "Read all about Dominion and Smartmatic voting companies and you'll soon understand how pervasive this Democrat electoral fraud is, and why there's no way in the world the 2020 Presidential election was either free or fair."
They wrote the statement was simply an opinion, and that statements on Twitter should not be taken seriously.
"New York courts have recognized that Twitter is not a natural setting in which a reasonable viewer would conclude that he is hearing actual facts about the plaintiff," the lawyers argue. -
2021-04-27 at 9:31 PM UTCur such a nigger lovin commie dumbass motherfuckerThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-27 at 9:32 PM UTCThe cockroaches and parasites are surprised and shocked their victims could get that close to them.
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2021-04-27 at 9:42 PM UTCRepublicans Are Victims?
Salon
Fake burger bans and other people's masks: Republicans crawl deeper into their imaginary victimhood
Amanda Marcotte
In the real world, there are real problems that serious people are worried about: global pandemic, climate change, economic inequality, systematic racism, mass shootings, and gendered violence, just to name a few. The problem for Republicans, of course, is that they are, quite literally, on the wrong side of pretty much each of those issues, and spend their time either actively making problems worse or getting in the way of people who want to fix things. Outside of sociopaths, Fox News hosts, and people with "Pepe" memes in their Twitter profiles, however, few people want to look in the mirror and see a villain gazing back at them. So right-wing media, which has always been addicted to selling its audiences on imaginary threats and preposterous fairy tales of conservative victimhood, has only been escalating such nonsense in recent months as the Republican policy agenda has been increasingly exposed to be nonexistent.
If your "team" is on the side of the Capitol insurrectionists and Derek Chauvin, it's hard to suppress the haunting fear that you're the baddies. So Fox News is on hand to spoon out alluring fantasies that recast liberals as the bad guys and conservatives as the long-suffering heroes. Tucker Carlson — a Fox News host who clearly relishes being a cartoon villain (think: "Dan White Society") — coughed up an almost too-perfect sample of the form Monday night, when he encouraged his audience of millions to harass ordinary people minding their own business under the guise of "helping."
Using as cover the recent reports that much of outdoor masking is unnecessary to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, Carlson told his audience that people wearing masks outside are "the aggressors" and that "the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate" to get in their face and demand they remove the mask. Carlson claimed this can be done "politely but firmly," but of course, it's categorically impossible to "politely" boss other people around about choices that simply do not affect you. And no, his story about how masks "prevent intimacy and human contact" is not enough. Strangers on the street do not owe you "intimacy," despite what creeps who follow women around and demand smiles might wish to believe.
Carlson then escalated by asking his viewers to call the police when they see children wearing masks because it "should be illegal." Of course, Carlson also knows full well how dangerous such nuisance calls (which are actually illegal) can be if the target is a person of color — and likely, he's counting on it, Derek Chauvin defender that he is.
Skipping a mask outside does, indeed, seem to be mostly harmless, which means that the common-sense response is to simply leave other people alone while you also do what you want. But conservatives want revenge because they've been made to wear masks where it is necessary. Carlson is only too happy to feed them a narrative that allows them to pretend to be heroes while continuing to be jerks for no good reason whatsoever.
Over the weekend, we saw another comically over-the-top example of right-wing fake victimhood narratives when a totally fake — and obviously fake — conspiracy theory about President Joe Biden imposing severe beef rations tore through the right-wing media and exploded on social media.
Jon Skolnik explained here at Salon how right-wing media distorted a study about reducing meat consumption to impact climate change, pretended it somehow was part of Biden's infrastructure plan and ran wild with it. But what was truly remarkable wasn't just that the folks at Fox News and other outlets deliberately misled the public with false claims that Biden planned to "limit" beef consumption to four pounds a year. It was how this lie managed to spread rapidly, infecting every corner of the country, in record time.
"It's tempting to dismiss this attack as too absurd to be believed," Dan Pfeiffer wrote in his Message Box newsletter, but warned that, "But too often, Democrats focus on the absurdity of the specifics and ignore the believability of the general impression."
Indeed, watching the "Biden's banning beef" lie spread out over social media, boosted by supposedly "apolitical" Instagram influencers and other such conduits, it was easy to see how this worked. Many people — possibly most — had wholly emotional reactions when they heard or read the lie, and were too focused on lashing out angrily to think critically about the story. So many reactions online were variations of "how dare you criticize me" and "fake meat tastes bad," instead of the more helpful "is this even true?"
The best right-wing B.S. works in this way, by activating people's pre-existing guilt and making them feel defensive. A lot of Americans, even on the right, already feel bad about how much beef they eat. It's not just because it's bad for the environment, but because they know it's bad for their health, and American discourse around food and health tends to be highly moralistic. The Biden beef lie works first by activating that sense of shame and then giving people a story that makes them feel better about themselves, about how they're actually the good guys here. They get so focused on trying to make their defensive feelings go away that they don't stop to search Snopes or Politifact and find out if it's even true.
Carlson is playing the same game with his mask nonsense.
Conservatives obviously have a lot of sublimated guilt over refusing to take the pandemic seriously and are therefore on a hair-trigger for defensive reactions. So they're ready to hear how someone else wearing a mask is a judgment on them, about how they're the "real" victims, and mask-wearers are the "real" bad guys. Truth and common sense are crowded out by these over-the-top emotional reactions, driven by their own — in many cases, completely earned — sense of shame.
As Pfeiffer notes, the only way to push back on nonsense like this is for ordinary people to confront those who are spreading it on social media. The problem is that these right-wing freakouts are fueled by conservatives feeling angry, ashamed, and judged — frankly often because they deserve to feel bad about their behavior. Unfortunately, that means that the smarter reactions are ones that turn the temperature down, not up. It can help a lot for interlocutors to focus on facts, instead of moral judgments about things like mask-wearing or beef-eating, and save the moral discussion for another time, when folks are in a less defensive mindset.
Either way, the amount of culture war debris that the right-wing media will be churning out is going to be immense over the next few years. Conservatives have a lot of guilt for their terrible behavior and beliefs, and therefore will be easy marks for any and every story that lets them believe they're the victims and not the victimizers. Right-wing media, as these examples show, is incredibly good at kicking up fake controversies that feed off those defensive feelings. Conservatives are addicted to these lies, and like most addicts, they need increasingly stronger stuff to get their fix. Be prepared. -
2021-04-27 at 9:54 PM UTCYou can tell stl1 is triggered when he starts spamming the jedi wall-texts.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-27 at 9:55 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-27 at 10:52 PM UTCDemocrats are set to lose a shit ton of electoral votes and House seats over the next 10 years, due to the mass exodus of residents and businesses over the nutjob Democrat policies like higher taxes, rioting, looting, ultra-socialism and manufactured race baiting. The less citizens in a state, the less electoral votes they get, the less House seats they get. Inversely, Republican states are set to increase electoral votes and house seats, due to the massive influx of new residents. Everything these crazies do blows right up in their ugly faces.
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2021-04-28 at 5:19 AM UTCThe LA Times
Opinion: Don't let Republicans play the 'whatabout' game with a Jan. 6 probe
Michael McGough
In February House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol by crazed Trump bitter-enders. The idea was widely endorsed, including by the Los Angeles Times editorial board, but it has stalled because of partisan bickering.
Pelosi has acceded to one Republican request — that the two parties have an equal say in appointing members of the panel — but now some prominent Republicans are making an additional, absurd demand: that the commission also be tasked with investigating previous incidents outside of the halls of Congress, including violence conservatives attribute to the Black Lives Matter movement.
On Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace asked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) about a “special committee” to investigate the Jan. 6 riot.
McCarthy’s response: “Since Good Friday we just had Officer [Billy] Evans killed in the Capitol. For the last year we've had political violence across this country and in this city. I think we should look at all of that.”
The killing of Evans on April 2, when a driver rammed into him and another Capitol Police officer, is arguably connected to the Jan. 6 riots because both incidents implicate Capitol security measures. But the idea that a Jan. 6 commission would look at “political violence across the country and in this city” is bizarre.
Why not throw in Benghazi, Whitewater and the John F. Kennedy assassination while we’re at it?
This whataboutism isn’t surprising coming from McCarthy. After a brief moment in which he acknowledged that Trump bore responsibility for the riots, the Republican leader has been engaged in a cringe-making effort to cozy up to the former president, including by traveling to Mar-a-Lago to enlist Trump's aid in the GOP's drive to regain control of the House next year.
In Sunday's interview with Wallace, McCarthy took revisionist history to a new level, saying: “I was the first person to contact [Trump] when the riots was going on. He didn't see it. What he ended the call was saying — telling me, he'll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that's what he did, he put a video out later.” His assertion that Trump had been unaware of the riots strains credulity; a timeline assembled by the New York Times suggests Trump was well aware of the chaos by the time they spoke. And as for Trump putting out a video later, Wallace aptly replied: “Quite a lot later. And it was a pretty weak video.”
It’s obscene to suggest a symmetry between the Jan. 6 riots, which sought to overturn the results of a presidential election, and other acts of violence, however deplorable. Pelosi should continue to insist that a commission focus on the insurrection, and she should challenge Republicans to support that effort.
One Republican leader, House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming, already has broken with McCarthy. Although she said she was concerned by ”the BLM, the antifa violence last summer,” Cheney said that “it’s very important that the Jan. 6 commission stays focused on what happened on Jan. 6, and what led to that day."
Precisely. Every Republican in Congress must be pressed to say whether they agree with her or with McCarthy. -
2021-04-28 at 6:47 AM UTCI wish u wood stroke out already
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2021-04-28 at 2:21 PM UTCKamala Harris Is Getting Rich...EAT GOYA BEANS ! ! !
The Guardian
New York Post reporter quits citing pressure to write incorrect story about Kamala Harris
Jim Waterson
A reporter at Rupert Murdoch’s New York tabloid has resigned after she claimed she was forced to write an incorrect front page story about migrants and Kamala Harris.
The New York Post published an article on 23 April headlined “Kam on in”, which claimed that migrant children were being given welcome packs that contained copies of the US vice-president’s 2019 children’s picture book, Superheroes Are Everywhere. A follow-up article claimed thousands of copies had been distributed.
In reality, officials said a single copy of the book had been donated by a member of the public as part of a call for presents to give to unaccompanied child migrants.
Despite this, the story was followed up by several rightwing outlets including Fox News. One of the cable channel’s reporter’s even asked the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, about the supposed mass distribution of Harris’s book by the government, while Republican politicians suggested it was part of a plot to direct government funds into Harris’s pocket.
The New York Post falsely claimed it was being handed out to migrant children in California.
Laura Italiano, a long-serving New York Post reporter, was credited with writing the article. On Tuesday she announced she was quitting at the tabloid.
“Today I handed in my resignation to my editors at the New York Post,” she said. “The Kamala Harris story – an incorrect story I was ordered to write and which I failed to push back hard enough against – was my breaking point.”
She added: “It’s been a privilege to cover the city of New York for its liveliest, wittiest tabloid – a paper filled with reporters and editors I admire deeply and hold as friends. I’m sad to leave.”
The false story is one of the first major challenges for the New York Post’s newly-arrived British editor-in-chief, Keith Poole, who until last month was based in London as deputy editor of the Sun. He has been tasked with increasing traffic to the tabloid’s website, which has come under criticism for writing click-chasing stories casting doubt on the safety of Covid-19 vaccines.
The New York Post’s false story about Harris was based on a single photograph of the book taken at a temporary immigration facility at Long Beach in southern California.
The article was briefly taken off the Post’s website but later reinstated with a footnote: “The original version of this article said migrant kids were getting Harris’s book in a welcome kit but has been updated to note that only one known copy of the book was given to a child,” the editor’s note said.
Before the story was partially retracted, leading Republicans used it to hint public funds were being misused. Senator Tom Cotton asked if the Biden administration was forcing taxpayers to buy Harris’s book to give to those illegal immigrants.
Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, also asked: “After learning officials are handing out Kamala Harris’s book to migrants in facilities at the border, it’s worth asking … Was Harris paid for these books? Is she profiting from Biden’s border crisis?”
The Washington Post revealed that the single copy of the book had turned up at the Long Beach facility as part of a book and toy drive for migrant children.
“The city of Long Beach, in partnership with the Long Beach convention and visitors bureau, has a city-wide book and toy drive that is ongoing to support the migrant children who are temporarily staying in Long Beach at the US Department of Health and Human Services shelter,” city spokesman Kevin Lee told the paper. “The book you reference is one of hundreds of books that have already been donated. The book was not purchased by HHS or the city.” -
2021-04-28 at 2:25 PM UTC
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2021-04-28 at 2:35 PM UTCAnd this is the "member of the public" they are referring to...
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2021-04-28 at 2:46 PM UTCNBC News
Officer injured in Capitol riot criticizes politicians who continue to downplay attack
Wilson Wong
A Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police officer who was assaulted during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot criticized elected officials for "downplaying" the mob's violence and said he now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
In an interview with CNN's Don Lemon on Tuesday, Michael Fanone said: "I experienced the most brutal, savage, hand-to-hand combat of my entire life, let alone my policing career, which spans almost two decades."
"This was nothing that I had ever thought would be a part of my law enforcement career, nor was I prepared to experience."
Daniel Rodriguez was indicted earlier this month after federal authorities said he attacked Fanone with an "electroshock weapon." Another man, Thomas F. Sibick, was accused of assaulting the officer and "forcibly" taking his badge and radio, prosecutors said.
In the months since the attack, Fanone, who suffered a heart attack and a concussion during the riot, said he started to "experience some of the more psychological injuries — PTSD."
The officer said it was "difficult seeing elected officials and other individuals kind of whitewash the events of that day or downplay what happened."
"Some of the terminology that was used, like 'hugs and kisses,' and 'very fine people,' is like very different from what I experienced and what my co-workers experienced on the 6th," he said. Fanone's comments appeared to reference former President Donald Trump's false claims in a Fox News interview last month where he said some rioters were "hugging and kissing the police," a contrast to videos showing a mob storming the Capitol.
The attack led to the unprecedented second impeachment of Trump, who held a rally before the riot occurred promoting falsely claimed fraud and a stolen election lie. He was acquitted in the Senate.
Hundreds of people across the country have been arrested in connection with the attack.
Both Rodriguez and Sibick were charged with several federal counts, including knowingly entering a restricted building, violent entry or disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, impeding, obstructing, or interfering with a law enforcement officer during the commission of a civil disorder, and assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.
Fanone urged the public not to erase the violence that unfolded on Jan. 6, which left five dead, including a Capitol police officer.
"I want people to understand the significance of Jan. 6. I want people to understand that thousands of rioters came to the Capitol hell-bent on violence and destruction and murder," he said.
“I don’t know how you can watch my body-worn camera footage and deny that Jan. 6 was anything other than violent and brutal." -
2021-04-28 at 2:49 PM UTClolThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-28 at 2:51 PM UTCBusiness Insider
A DC police officer who was beaten and dragged at the Capitol riot says he got PTSD and slammed Republicans who downplayed the violence
sbaker@businessinsider.com (Sinéad Baker)
An officer who policed the Capitol riot criticized politicians who "downplay" the event's violence.
Michael Fanone was beaten and stun-gunned at the riot, and suffered a heart attack.
He told CNN he had PTSD and said it was hard seeing officials "whitewash the events of that day."
A Washington, DC Metropolitan Police officer who was attacked at the Capitol riot has said he was left with post-traumatic stress disorder and slammed the politicians who "whitewash" the violence.
In an emotional interview to CNN's Don Lemon on Tuesday, Michael Fanone said: "I experienced the most brutal, savage hand-to-hand combat of my entire life, let alone my policing career, which spans almost two decades."
"This was nothing I had ever thought would be a part of my law-enforcement career."
Prosecutors say that Fanone was stun-gunned several times, dragged down the steps, and beaten with a flagpole during the insurrection, and that he suffered a heart attack.
The attack by former President Donald Trump's supporters forced lawmakers to evacuate while voting to certify Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. Five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died as a result of the riot.
Fanone said that a few weeks after the event, he "started to experience some of the more psychological injuries, PTSD, some of the emotional trauma from what I experienced that day."
He described himself as a "pretty apolitical" person, but criticized some politicians who had been downplaying what happened: "It's been very difficult seeing elected officials and other individuals kind of whitewash the events of that day or downplay what happened."
He said: "Some of the terminology that was used, like 'hugs and kisses,' and 'very fine people,' is very different from what I experienced and what my coworkers experienced on the 6th."
Fanone did not name any of lawmakers in his CNN interview, though Trump had falsely claimed last month that some of the people that breached the Capitol were "hugging and kissing the police and the guards, they had great relationships."
Fanone also appeared to be referencing Trump's remarks after the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump, who was president at the time, blamed "many sides" for the deadly violence and said there were "very fine people" on "both sides."
Fanone made his views on the Capitol rioters clear, telling CNN: "I want people to understand the significance of January 6. I want people to understand that thousands of rioters came to the Capitol hell-bent on violence and destruction and murder."
In a January interview with CNN, Fanone gave a simple message to rioters who shielded him from other insurrectionists who were trying to attack him: "Thank you, but f--- you for being there."
He also previously recalled attackers saying "kill him with his own gun." -
2021-04-28 at 2:56 PM UTClol
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2021-04-28 at 3:17 PM UTCFair and Balanced...MY ASS
Business Insider
Right-wing media has pushed 3 completely false narratives in less than a week
insider@insider.com (Eliza Relman)
Fox News heavily promoted a false claim that the Biden administration would force Americans to cut their red meat intake by 90%.
The network falsely reported that a migrant shelter was distributing Kamala Harris' book in "welcome packs."
Fox also ran stories inaccurately claiming the Virginia department of education is moving to eliminate advanced math classes in high schools.
Right-wing media, most prominently Fox News, has promoted three major false stories in just the last few days.
Last Friday, The New York Post published a cover story claiming that copies of Vice President Kamala Harris' 2019 children's book, "Superheroes Are Everywhere," was being gifted to migrant children at a Department of Health and Human Services shelter in Long Beach, California. The Post provided no evidence for the claim aside from a single Reuters photograph of Harris' book propped against a backpack on a table.
The story was picked up by a host of right-wing media, including Fox News, which co-authored a follow-up story with The Post reporter, Laura Italiano, who wrote the original piece. A slew of prominent Republican lawmakers, including GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, promoted the Post's story.
But the Post's story was quickly debunked. The Washington Post fact-checker, which gave the Post story "four Pinocchios" on Tuesday, reported that The Post based its entire story on a photo of one copy of the book donated to the shelter by a community member. The Post deleted its two stories on the matter and later republished them with corrections and editor's notes added.
Spokespeople for Fox News did not respond to Insider's comment about the network's reporting, but the network quietly added an editor's note to its story about the White House's response to the Post's reporting and deleted Italiano's byline.
Also last Friday, Fox News ran multiple segments falsely claiming that President Joe Biden's administration would require Americans to radically reduce their red meat consumption under Biden's climate policy. Fox's on-air discussions relied on a Daily Mail story that reported the Biden administration "could" require Americans to cut their red meat consumption by 90%, citing academic studies showing that reductions in animal products help cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In reality, Biden has no plan to require Americans eat less red meat.
Fox chyrons read, "Bye-Bye Burgers Under Biden's Climate plan" and "90% of Red Meat Out With Biden Climate Plan." One graphic falsely stated that "Biden's climate requirements" include a maximum of four pounds of red meat consumption a year and "one burger per month." A slew of conservative lawmakers promoted the false claims and lashed out at the Biden administration. Donald Trump Jr. claimed he'd likely eaten four pounds of red meat the previous day.
"Joe Biden's climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a year. Why doesn't Joe stay out of my kitchen?" Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted on Saturday.
Fox host John Roberts acknowledged in a brief on-air correction on Monday that the claims were wrong. Roberts said the network's graphic and script "incorrectly implied" that reducing red meat consumption "was part of Biden's plan for dealing with climate change."
Fox and other right-wing media also ran with a story that Virginia's public schools were moving to eliminate accelerated high school math courses to improve racial equity, "effectively keeping higher-achieving students from advancing as they usually would in the school system."
The stories, which were amplified by Fox's opinion side, were false and overblown. Virginia's superintendent of public instruction, James Lane, told The Washington Post that the state's department of education is beginning a regular evaluation of its math curriculum and is not eliminating any advanced classes. -
2021-04-28 at 3:39 PM UTCHey...I Was Just Kidding, Polecat. What, You Took Me Seriously, Dummy?
The Washington Post
Trump supporter argues alleged death threats against leading Democrats were fueled by pandemic boredom
Shayna Jacobs
NEW YORK —A fervent supporter of former president Donald Trump on trial on charges of making death threats to prominent elected Democrats before and shortly after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol insisted Tuesday that his statements on social media and in private messages were not to be taken seriously.
Brendan Hunt blamed his comments on pandemic-induced boredom and depression when he took the witness stand to testify in his own defense in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn and was confronted by prosecutors with violent, racist and antisemitic statements that he argued did not reflect his beliefs.
Hunt’s case is seen as a test of how far violent speech can go before it is a crime and is no longer constitutionally protected as free speech. Hunt did not participate in the riot at the Capitol building, but he is one of hundreds of people charged by the Justice Department in response to the attack by Trump supporters.
Hunt was arrested Jan. 19 after a tipster called the FBI about one of his videos. He faces up to a decade in prison if convicted of making threats to assault and murder a United States official.
The 37-year-old Fordham University graduate, a onetime actor and amateur documentarian, said he was “lonely” and “isolated in my apartment” during quarantine and turned to frequent marijuana and alcohol use. Hunt, who had an administrative job in the New York state court system before his arrest, had been mostly working from home, according to his testimony.
[Evidence in Trump supporter’s trial suggests he espoused Nazi ideals]
Hunt said he was obsessively following news reports and “masking that frustration with a lot of drinking and smoking” when he demanded in a video that “patriots . . . put some bullets” in the heads of members of Congress, according to testimony.
Hunt described himself as a performer on social media forums — not someone who was actually trying to encourage violence. “I’m sort of a YouTube guy who makes controversial content and clickbait videos,” Hunt said under questioning by his attorney Jan Rostal.
In a video posted two days after the riot titled “KILL YOUR SENATORS: Slaughter them all,” he called for a revolt against members of Congress on Jan. 20, the day of President Biden’s inauguration. He encouraged his social media followers to “get your guns, show up to D.C. and literally just spray these [expletive],” he said in the clip.
In an earlier posting entered into evidence at the trial, he called specifically for the execution of then-Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Hunt said his comments were “outlandish . . . precisely because I didn’t want people to take me seriously in that respect.” He said that he was “playing along with this sort of rhetoric going on at the time” and that “there wasn’t any intent on my part to sort of galvanize a militia.”
Prosecutors offered evidence of racist and xenophobic comments to support their theory that his alleged threats represented his real beliefs and intentions.
In text messages to his father, John Hunt, a former family court judge in Queens, the younger Hunt argued that the family should move to a “red state with a decent white population that upholds the Constitution,” and he referred to New York City as a “jungle,” lamenting its diverse population and using slurs for Blacks, jedis, Latinos and Asians.
Hunt also complained to his father that he couldn’t find “a suitable white pro-American mate” with whom to procreate in New York.
[Trial opens for Trump supporter accused of threatening Democrats in case tied to Jan. 6 insurrection]
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Kessler pressed Hunt on the contents of a folder on his computer hard drive where he had saved Internet memes with Nazi propaganda-like depictions of jedis that mocked the Holocaust.
“I thought it was immature humor,” Hunt said.
In another message shown to the jury, he called immigrants “low I.Q. mongoloids.”
The U.S. attorney’s office has argued that Hunt made specific and explicit threats and called on other Trump supporters to take up arms and prevent the transition of power.
Prosecutors also asked Hunt about a message he sent to his cousin in December in which he threatened to “stick a knife” in the relative’s newborn baby. The comment was in response to his displeasure that the relative had dropped Hunt as a friend on Facebook.
In summations late Tuesday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Richardson said Hunt crossed the line and “made explicit, graphic, vivid threats against members of Congress for doing their jobs.”
Leticia Olivera, another of Hunt’s attorneys, argued that his post-riot video was treated as nonsense by Hunt’s followers. “No one takes this seriously,” she said.
Jury deliberations are to begin on Wednesday. -
2021-04-28 at 5:48 PM UTC
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2021-04-28 at 6:13 PM UTCPoley, are you even able to read?
Or...should I only post cartoons so you can understand?
