I warned you. I was called a lunatic and ignored by ex-liberal friends. I’ve had a wonderful life, and will be gone when THE WORST GETS HERE! Christianity has become a Red Meat Monster that must keep feeding on its prey, and any prey will do.
John Presco
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Governor Gavin Newsom joins Donald Trump’s Truth Social to call out ‘Republican lies’
Gillian Brassil, Lindsey Holden, McClatchy Washington Bureau – Yesterday 8:15 PM
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom has joined former President Donald Trump’s social media application, Truth Social.
© Xavier Mascareñas/The Sacramento Bee/TNSGov. Gavin Newsom in September 2021. Hes joined former President Donald Trumps social media platform, Truth Social.
Newsom, a Democrat, wrote on his personal Twitter account on Thursday that he was “going to be on there calling out Republican lies.”
“This could get … interesting,” he added.
The move is the latest addition to Newsom’s portfolio as an outspoken critic of conservative states’ policies on issues like abortion and guns. He’s said he wants California to be a “reproductive freedom state” in the face of abortion bans. Following the recent mass shootings, he pushed for more rigorous gun control policies.
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Such national messaging from a governor is often an indication of presidential aspirations. But Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board last month that he had “sub-zero interest” in the job.
“Governor Newsom is fed up with Republican leaders embracing misinformation and conspiracy theories to score political points and further divide the nation. Facts matter,” Alex Stack, a spokesman for the governor, said in a statement sent to The Bee. “The Governor will be providing folks on this platform a reprieve with facts and truth, like how commonsense gun laws reduce gun deaths.”
In his first post — a “Truth,” as the company calls it — Newsom questions why eight of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates are classified as red states.
“I know we’re all on this platform in search of the ‘truth,’” he said in the video that he also posted on Twitter, “but the truth is, I’ve not been able to find a simple explanation for the fact that we have a red state murder problem.”
The statement draws from a report that cites a correlation, rather than causation, between states with the highest murder rates per capita and ones that voted for the Republican candidate in presidential elections since 2000.
In an alert to one of these reporters’ phones at 6:13 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday, Truth Social wrote ”California Governor Gavin Newsom joins Truth Social! Don’t Miss his first post.”
As of that time, Newsom had 1.74k followers and had a verification check, much like the kind used on Twitter for political figures, celebrities and news affiliates.
“Please welcome the Governor of California @realgovnewsom40 to Truth Social! Welcome to freedom Governor thank you for joining Truth Social!” posted former Congressman Devin Nunes, the social media company’s chief executive, on Thursday.
By Friday at 11 p.m., Newsom had more than 17.9k followers.
Truth Social’s woes
Trump’s media company, Trump Media and Technology Group, launched Truth Social in February 2022, promoting it as a place for free speech in a social media world where, Nunes said, it is too often suppressed.
“Honestly, it’s just, it’s actually very moving for me to see people that are on the platform that have had their voice canceled,” Nunes told Fox News of Truth Social’s launch in February. “And that’s our main goal here is to give people their voice back.”
Nunes, who represented the area around Tulare in the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly two decades, left office to become CEO in January 2022.
The social media app closely mirrors Twitter, which banned Trump following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Newsom is one of a few Democrats on Truth Social.
In an October 2021 Morning Consult/Politico poll of registered voters, 72% of Democratic respondents said that they did not expect to use the then-upcoming Truth Social at all. Eighty percent of Republicans queried said that they would use the application at least a little.
This week, a couple of Democrats who said that they posted about the ongoing January 6th Committee hearings reported that they had been suspended from Truth Social. The company denied these claims in a statement to The Washington Times.
The app claims the right to ban anyone “for any reason or for no reason” under its Section 19, “term and termination,” of its terms of service.
Potential users have been barred for other reasons. Mike Ortega, a web developer, attempted to sign up for the app as “DevinNunesCow.” The handle is a nod to the Twitter account owned by a person Nunes is trying to sue for defamation.
“This incident clearly demonstrates Trump and Truth Social’s claims to protection of free speech is a bunch of bull. The platform is nothing more than right-wing extremism’s safe space,” Ortega told The Bee in April.
A spokesperson for Truth Social’s parent company did not respond to a request for comment.
Red states and murder rates
Newsom’s post is drawn from a March 2022 report published by Third Way, a think tank that describes itself as “center-left,” that found eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for a Republican in each presidential election since 2000.
The group gathered murder data from all 50 states from 2019 and 2020, the most recent years that comprehensive data was available, drawing from government crime reports and local news sources. They compared the calculated per-capita murder rate and categorized the states by their 2020 presidential pick.
Third Way’s analysis doesn’t align with other data.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the 10 states with the highest homicide rates in 2020 were Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Illinois and New Mexico.
Illinois and Maryland have gone to Democrats in all presidential elections since 1992, according to 270toWin, which tracks election data. New Mexico went to Republican George W. Bush in 2004 but has otherwise narrowly gone for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1992.
Newsom’s first ‘Truth’
Here’s what Newsom says in the video under the heading, “Here’s the truth…”:
“Hey everybody, it’s Governor Gavin Newsom, and I know we’re all on this platform in search for the ‘truth,’ but the truth is, I’ve not been able to find a simple explanation for the fact that we have a red state murder problem.
“Eight of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates happen to be red states. The question is simple: What are the laws and policies in those states that are leading to such carnage?”
Mitt Romney likens Trump’s false claim that he won in 2020 to the ‘delusion that leads people to feed money into slot machines’
ngaudiano@insider.com (Nicole Gaudiano) – Yesterday 11:21 AM
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© Provided by Business InsiderFormer President Donald Trump, left, and Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. From left, Seth Herald/Getty Images and Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
- Sen. Mitt Romney called Donald Trump’s false election claims “a classic example of denial.”
- He likened it to the “delusion that leads people to feed money into slot machines.”
- Romney said leadership is the cure for “wishful thinking,” but he’s not looking to Trump or giving Biden high marks.
1 of 17 Photos in Gallery©Davidoff Studios/Getty Images
Here are all the famous people Jeffrey Epstein was connected to
- Jeffrey Epstein was known for jet-setting with the likes of Bill Gates, President Bill Clinton, and Prince Andrew.
- Wall Street billionaire Leon Black paid Epstein at least $50 million in consulting and other fees, The New York Times reported.
- Epstein was found dead of an apparent suicide in a Manhattan jail on August 10, 2020, as he awaited trial on charges of sex trafficking minors.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Former L Brands CEO Les Wexner may have been Jeffrey Epstein’s only confirmed client, but he was far from the only billionaire paying the convicted sex offender.
Epstein, who pleaded guilty to charges of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors for prostitution in Florida in 2007, ran a years-long “trafficking pyramid scheme” from the US Virgin Islands, prosecutors alleged in a lawsuit against the former wealth manager’s estate in January 2020.
Meanwhile, the convicted sex offender maintained a vast social and professional network both on and off the Islands, which even included the wife of the US Virgin Islands’ former governor.
In October 2020, Wall Street billionaire Leon Black acknowledged to The New York Times through a spokesperson that he hired Epstein as an advisor and paid Epstein at least $50 million in consulting and other fees between 2012 and 2017.
Epstein, a former hedge-fund manager, kept his client list under wraps, but he often bragged of his elite social circle that included presidents and Hollywood stars.
“I invest in people — be it politics or science,” Epstein was known to say, according to New York Magazine. “It’s what I do.”
Epstein, 66, died by apparent suicide in a Manhattan jail on August 10, 2020, as he awaited trial on charges of sex trafficking of minors. He had been in police custody since his arrest on July 6, shortly after exiting his private jet in New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport. He pleaded not guilty on July 8 and was being held without bail in New York City, where he was already on suicide watch after an earlier reported suicide attempt that had led to his hospitalization, at the time of his death.
Here’s what we know about the famous people who crossed paths with Epstein.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Sen. Mitt Romney says a “classic example of denial” comes from former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, defeating President Joe Biden in a landslide victory.
“Perhaps this is a branch of the same delusion that leads people to feed money into slot machines: Because I really want to win, I believe that I will win,” Romney, a former GOP presidential nominee who represents Utah in the Senate, wrote in a July 4 essay in The Atlantic.
The essay takes aim at “wishful thinking” across the political spectrum and the nation’s “blithe dismissal of potentially cataclysmic threats.”
Related video: Biden urges unity in speech; Sen. Romney says U.S. is a country in denial
Liberty is not assault assault both here and abroad.
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Biden urges unity in speech; Sen. Romney says U.S. is a country in denialUnmute
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“More and more, we are a nation in denial,” he wrote. “I have witnessed time and again—in myself and in others—a powerful impulse to believe what we hope to be the case.”
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He cited other examples of denial: drought as part of a reversible cycle, the debt taking care of itself with economic growth and the January 6 insurrection being a “false-flag operation.”
“When entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesn’t end well,” he warned. “During the past half century, we Americans have lived in a very forgiving time, and seeing the world through rose-colored glasses had limited consequences.”
Romney, who voted twice to convict Trump in his impeachment trials, said leadership is the cure for “wishful thinking.” But he’s not looking to Trump or giving Biden high marks.
“President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man, but he has yet been unable to break through our national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust,” he wrote. “A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable.”
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