TBR News November 14, 2018

Nov 14 2018

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. November 14, 2018:” One would think by now that the facts of the 9/11 attacks were well established. One would also think that the causes and effects of the Christmas Day SEA Tsunami would be equally established. Or that the increasing risk of serious hurricanes in the southeastern part of the United States is well understood.

It has become a burgeoning industry to invent reasons and excuses for various events that have an absolute basis in provable fact.

French writers have claimed that “Soviet missiles” struck the Pentagon.

They did not.

Other “experts” claim that the WTC disaster was caused by: the Chinese Communists, ex-KGB personnel, the Illuminati, the CIA, the United States Army, the notorious Hidden Hand, East German scientists, renegade Albanian goat herders, the Boy Scouts, the gay community, Satanists, trained lemurs, the Mossad, or the Mother Teresa Hate and Destruction Society of Hoboken, New Jersey.

It was not.

The same deluded people who eagerly find evil plots in earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorists, wildfires and chronic beach erosion also believe in the Return of Jesus, black helicopters, the Easter Bunny, the Bilderburgers, the Trilateral Commission, and the monumentally evil Skull and Bones society.

Such people exist in all societies and in all times. The Greeks believed in the gods walking around Greece, fornicating with civilians and goats, the Egyptians believed in Sacred Snakes and Scientologists believe that poor, crazy and fat L. Ron Hubbard was a God Incarnate.

At least once a week, some poor soul in Bad Seepage, Ohio, writes an email to me wanting me to publish a twenty page illiterate rant about how the CIA and the local YMCA are destroying her brain using “power waves” from microwave transmission towers or one gentleman in Yuma, Arizona who wants me to alert the nation to the “absolute fact” that an immense army of Chinese is poised at the northern Mexican border to invade America.

All of these fantasies are attested to by non-existent “experts” such as “Army Officers,” “Famous Scientists” or other ‘”experts,”  none of whom can ever be located, probably because they are Imaginary Friends such as small children speak with while playing in the sand box.”

 

The Table of Contents 

  • Donald Trump has said 2291 false things as U.S. president: No. 80
  • ‘Stop lying’ about Florida recounts, Democrats warn Trump
  • Trump Points to Polls in France, Where 80 Percent Say He’s a Dangerous, Incompetent Racist
  • White House hit with staff upheavals – again
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • UFOs spotted by pilots off Ireland coast
  • FBI: Reported hate crimes surged by 17 percent in US last year

 

Donald Trump has said 2291 false things as U.S. president: No. 80

August 8, 2018

by Daniel Dale, Washington Bureau Chief

The Toronto Star, Canada

The Star is keeping track of every false claim U.S. President Donald Trump has made since his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Why? Historians say there has never been such a constant liar in the Oval Office. We think dishonesty should be challenged. We think inaccurate information should be corrected

If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not teling the truth.

Last updated: Aug 8, 2018

  • Jun 20, 2018

“Just returning from the Great State of Minnesota where we had an incredible rally with 9,000 people, and at least 10,000 who could not get in – I will return!”

Source: Twitter

in fact: While there are no precise numbers available, “at least 10,000” is an exaggeration. The local Star Tribune put the number at “many hundreds.” Duluth Mayor Emily Larson, a Democrat, said in an email: “People on site who manage crowds believe a few thousand were left out of entry. To me, that is 2k to 3k…Our people on site are used to counting crowds since we have considerable tourism and large events in our city.”

Trump has repeated this claim 3 times

“And I think you saw the other day, we’re reopening NASA. We’re going to be going to space.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: NASA never closed.

“We have spent, because of horrible decision-making, $7 trillion in the Middle East. Think of it. Seven trillion.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: There is no basis for the “$7 trillion” figure. During the 2016 campaign, Trump cited a $6 trillion estimate that appeared to be taken from a 2013 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project. (That report estimated $2 trillion in costs up to that point but said the total could rise an additional $4 trillion by 2053.) Trump, however, used the $6 trillion as if it was a current 2016 figure. He later explained that since additional time has elapsed since the campaign, he believes the total is now $7 trillion. That is incorrect. The latest Brown report, issued in late 2017, put the current total at $4.3 trillion, and the total including estimated future costs at $5.6 trillion.

Trump has repeated this claim 17 times

“And for the first time in 20 years, wages are rising.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Wages have been rising since 2014. In May, the month before Trump spoke, average hourly earnings rose by 2.7 per cent, the same as in Obama’s last month in office, December 2016.

Trump has repeated this claim 25 times

“And by the way, we passed another one. It’s called ‘Right to Try.’ You know what Right to Try is? Very proud of it. Right to Try. These are people that are terminally ill. It’s sad. They travel all over the world if they have the money. If they don’t, they don’t know what to do. If we have drugs that haven’t been approved yet but are showing tremendous promise, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how sick you were, where you were. You couldn’t get it. And the reason was, they didn’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt you. You’re not going to be around for five weeks. In five weeks — I kept saying, ‘Why can’t we do something?’ If people had the money, they’d travel to Africa, to Asia, to Europe trying to find the cure. It was called hope. They wanted hope. And they couldn’t get it. I said it’s ridiculous. I got involved.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Trump was exaggerating how dire the situation was before this Right to Try legislation passed. It is not true that patients “couldn’t get” experimental treatments. Rather, they simply had to ask the Food and Drug Administration for approval first. While many patients objected to this requirement, which the Trump-backed new legislation removed, the FDA approved 99 per cent of all patient requests, the Trump-appointed head of the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, testified to Congress in October 2017. The Government Accountability Office confirms: “Of the nearly 5,800 expanded access requests that were submitted to FDA from fiscal year 2012 through 2015, FDA allowed 99 per cent to proceed,” the GAO wrote in a July 2017 report. “FDA typically responded to emergency single-patient requests within hours and other types of requests within the allotted 30 days.” Further, the new legislation will not help the patients whose requests for experimental treatments have been rejected by drug companies themselves. The legislation does not compel the companies to provide access.

Trump has repeated this claim 5 times

“We just secured a record $700 billion in funding to rebuild our military, which was in very sad shape.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Trump’s $700 billion defence budget is not the largest ever. As the New York Times noted, Obama signed a $725 billion version of the same bill in 2011.

Trump has repeated this claim 11 times

“Chrysler is coming back. Chrysler just announced they’re coming back.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: “Just announced” is inaccurate. Chrysler announced five and a half months prior, in January, that it was moving production of Ram trucks back from Mexico to the United States. Trump regularly describes good news as having occurred more recently than it actually did.

“In 500 days, we’ve cut more regulations than any President in the history of our country, whether it’s four years, eight years, or in one year — in one case, 16 years. We’ve cut more regulations in 500 days than any president, even our 16-year president.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: No president has served for 16 years. The longest-serving president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, served just over 12 years, dying shortly into his fourth term.

Trump has repeated this claim 9 times

“By the way — so, a few days ago, it was 500 days. So now it’s like 511. In 500 days, we’ve cut more regulations than any President in the history of our country…”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Trump was speaking on the 517th day of his presidency.

Trump has repeated this claim 2 times

“We have a horrible deal, as an example, with NAFTA and Mexico. Horrible deal. They make over a hundred billion dollars on that horrible trade deal where factories were emptied.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Trump is off by at least $31 billion, or at least $29 billion if you give him the benefit of the doubt. The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was $71 billion in 2017 when counting goods alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Including trade in services, the net deficit was $69 billion, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis said in a report released the same month Trump spoke. (The Bureau of Economic Analysis uses a different method of calculating deficits and surpluses than the Census Bureau.)

Trump has repeated this claim 34 times

“So we’ve already started the wall. We got $1.6 billion. The wall has been started. San Diego and lots of different places.” And: “We will have the greatest borders, the greatest walls. We’ve already started, but it’s a lot tougher than it needs to be.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started. When he has made this claim in the past, Trump has appeared to be referring to a project in which a 2.25-mile stretch of existing wall in California is being replaced by a taller wall. That project was proposed in 2009, and the Los Angeles Times reported that Border Patrol spokesperson Jonathan Pacheco told reporters in March: “First and foremost, this isn’t Trump’s wall. This isn’t the infrastructure that Trump is trying to bring in. … This new wall replacement has absolutely nothing to do with the prototypes that were shown over in the San Diego area.” The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction.

Trump has repeated this claim 20 times

“So the Democrats want open borders. ‘Let everybody come in. Let everybody pour in. We don’t care. Let them come in from the Middle East; let them come in from all over the place. We don’t care.'”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: We usually let Trump get away with his regular claim that Democrats support “open borders,” though it is not literally true, since it can be viewed as metaphorical language rather than a literal claim. But it is false to specifically claim that Democrats want anybody in the world, including people from the Middle East, to be able to freely enter the country without restrictions.

Trump has repeated this claim 2 times

“And it would be great if the cameras could take a shot of the arena. So usually they don’t do it. And I usually go home and my wife would say, ‘How was the crowd?'” And: “But usually they don’t show the arena. They just show my face. So people would say, ‘Did you have many people there?’ Um, didn’t you see? ‘No, no. They’ve only showed your face.’ And we all have ego, but I don’t want to show my face. I want to show the crowds.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Television stations regularly show images of Trump’s crowds, often while he is complaining that they never show his crowds.

Trump has repeated this claim 7 times

“Chairman Kim will turn that country into a great, successful country. And let me tell you, and let me tell you — let me tell you this: a year and a half ago, nobody thought that was possible. In fact, before I was elected, everybody assumed we were going to war.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Perhaps some observers thought Trump would go to war with North Korea, but it is certainly false that “everybody assumed” this.

Trump has repeated this claim 1 times

“We got back our great fallen heroes, the remains. In fact, today already 200 have been sent back (from North Korea).”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: No remains had been sent back. U.S. officials said they expected Kim Jong Un to return 200 remains, but they did not know precisely when Kim would do so.

Trump has repeated this claim 4 times

“But the beauty was this: so we had a meeting. It was an incredible success. And they said, ‘The president gave away so much. He met with them.’ I said, ‘What else?’ That was — I met. What am I supposed to do? I had to meet. Right? ‘He met.’ Now, sentence one says: ‘a total denuclearization of North Korea.’ That’s what it says.”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: No sentence in the agreement between the U.S. and North Korea says “a total denuclearization of North Korea.” The first sentence certainly doesn’t — that first sentence is, “President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a first, historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018” — but neither do the substantive sections. The sentence about denuclearization says, “Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” It’s important, not semantic, to note that the phrase used is “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and not “total denuclearization of North Korea”: the North Korean side has often used “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” to mean a removal of U.S. troops from South Korea, not unilateral denuclearization.

“So we’ve created 3.4 million new jobs since Election Day — 3.4. And I’ve said before, if I would have said that to you during the campaign, those very dishonest people back there, the fake news…Very dishonest. They would have said, ‘He’s exaggerating.'”

Source: Campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: It is not true that the media would have accused him of exaggerating if he said 3.4 million jobs would be created over this period (November 2016 through May 2018). That is a 19-month period. The number of jobs created over the previous 19 months, under Obama, was 4.1 million.

Trump has repeated this claim 16 times

“You know, I say it so much and it’s so sad, but we have $7 trillion in the Middle East. You might as well throw it out the window. Seven trillion dollars.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: There is no basis for the “$7 trillion” figure. During the 2016 campaign, Trump cited a $6 trillion estimate that appeared to be taken from a 2013 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project. (That report estimated $2 trillion in costs up to that point but said the total could rise an additional $4 trillion by 2053.) Trump, however, used the $6 trillion as if it was a current 2016 figure. He later explained that since additional time has elapsed since the campaign, he believes the total is now $7 trillion. That is incorrect. The latest Brown report, issued in late 2017, put the current total at $4.3 trillion, and the total including estimated future costs at $5.6 trillion.

Trump has repeated this claim 17 times

“And I will tell you, I’ve had — the head of U.S. Steel called me the other day, and he said, we’re opening up six major facilities and expanding facilities that have never been expanded. They haven’t been opened in many, many years.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: At the time Trump spoke, U.S. Steel had only announced a major development at one facility since Trump introduced his steel tariffs: it said it was restarting two shuttered blast furnaces at its plant in Granite City, Illinois. Chuck Bradford, an industry analyst who follows U.S. Steel, said he was “not aware” of the company opening any other facilities. U.S. Steel did not respond to repeated requests for comment about this supposed phone call.

Trump has repeated this claim 13 times

“In the meantime, we’re working on laws, on making them very strong. But we have to make them compassionate. We hire thousands of judges. No other country does this. Judges. We don’t want judges; we want Border Patrol. I want Border Patrol.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Other countries do have judges adjudicate immigration cases.

Trump has repeated this claim 2 times

“Mexico doesn’t stop the people. Well, we’re not going to put up with it, and I’m going to make it a part of NAFTA that they have to. In the meantime, we’re working on laws, on making them very strong. But we have to make them compassionate. We hire thousands of judges.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: The U.S. does not have thousands of immigration judges. At the time Trump spoke, Congress had allocated money for 484 immigration judges; fewer than 400 were actually in place. Nobody in Congress was proposing to hire thousands of judges.

Trump has repeated this claim 12 times

“Mexico, which makes over $100 billion a year with us — but we’re changing that — Mexico, with the NAFTA deal, makes a fortune.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Trump is off by at least $31 billion, or at least $29 billion if you give him the benefit of the doubt. The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was $71 billion in 2017 when counting goods alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Including trade in services, the net deficit was $69 billion, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis said in a report released the same month Trump spoke. (The Bureau of Economic Analysis uses a different method of calculating deficits and surpluses than the Census Bureau.)

Trump has repeated this claim 34 times

“So we have fair and reciprocal trade for American workers. We want to be treated in a reciprocal way — it’s so important. We have other people that will charge, as an example, 375 per cent tariff on dairy products, and we charge very little. That’s not reciprocal.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Trump was referring to Canada. He exaggerated the dairy tariffs: Canada’s tariffs are high, but they are under 300 per cent. (Trump had always previously given an estimate in the vicinity of 300 per cent.)

Trump has repeated this claim 2 times

“We’re now an exporter of energy for the first time. We’re actually selling energy, which we hadn’t done.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: The U.S. has exported energy for decades — the U.S. government’s website includes oil-export data dating back to 1920 — so, taking Trump’s claim in the most literal way possible, it is false that the U.S. has just now started selling energy. What he was clearly suggesting, though, is that the U.S. has now become a net exporter of energy — exporting more than it imports. But that is also false; the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration estimated in early 2018 that it could happen around 2022. (It is true that U.S. exports have increased significantly in the Trump era to hit an all-time high, but this is not what Trump said.)

Trump has repeated this claim 9 times

“We’ve cut out massive numbers of regulations. More regulations than any president in the history of our country. And that’s four years, eight years, or, in one case, 16 years.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: No president has served for 16 years. The longest-serving president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, served just over 12 years, dying shortly into his fourth term.

Trump has repeated this claim 9 times

“The heart of our America First economic agenda are massive tax cuts, which we got we got with Kevin and all of the folks up here. We got approved — not since Ronald Reagan.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Trump’s history was inaccurate even if he was only talking only about his own party’s tax cuts. In claiming that presidents after Ronald Reagan were “never able to pass tax cuts,” he again ignored the passage of George W. Bush’s major tax cuts.

Trump has repeated this claim 11 times

“Wages are rising for the first time. So the employers — I’m not sure the employers are too happy about that, but it’s a good thing. Wages. For years — I mean, I’d go out and I’d campaign, I’d talk about people making more money 21 years ago than they made today. Well, now, their wages, for the first time in about 19 years, are going up.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Wages have been rising since 2014. In May, the month before Trump spoke, average hourly earnings rose by 2.7 per cent, the same as in Obama’s last month in office, December 2016. Wage growth for production and non-supervisory employees was slightly higher in May, at 2.8 per cent, than it was in Obama’s last month in office, 2.5 per cent, but, again, the growth did not begin under Trump.

Trump has repeated this claim 25 times

“Our economy is booming. We’ve created more than 3.4 million jobs since the election. If I would have said that during the election, those people back there — fake news — I would have — they would have said there’s no way. ‘Look, he exaggerates.’ I would have said 3 — I wouldn’t have said 3.5. I would have said 2. I would have said 1 million jobs. We created 3.4 million jobs since the election.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: It is not true that nobody would have believed 3.4 million jobs could be created over this period (November 2016 through May 2018). That is a 19-month period. The number of jobs created over the previous 19 months, under Obama, was 4.1 million.

Trump has repeated this claim 16 times

“I want to also thank Mayor Robert Vlaisavljevich. This is a great group of names they gave me. And by the way, you were so fantastic. You were given a quote today in the New York Times about helping this incredible state. I appreciate it, Robert.”

Source: Roundtable in Duluth, Minnesota

in fact: Vlaisavljevich, the mayor of Eveleth, Minnesota, complimented Trump in the New York Times on April 4 — two and a half months before Trump’s event, not “today.”

“We should have never allowed our past leaders — should have never allowed China to get to a point where there’s a $500 billion trade deficit with the United States.”

Source: Meeting with members of Congress

in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017.

Trump has repeated this claim 51 times

“But before it was held up, everyone assumed that the DACA would not be held up. But we had a deal with the Democrats. It was a deal that everybody agreed to. It was $25 billion. We were going to build a wall. We would take care of many, many different things, including loopholes. And it was all done, except when this judge ruled in favor of DACA, meaning that it could continue until we get to the Supreme Court, all of a sudden, they weren’t there anymore. And that’s what happened, and that’s why we’re in this mess — because we had a couple of court decisions, which is going to force an issue to the Supreme Court that shouldn’t be forced to the Supreme Court.”

Source: Meeting with members of Congress

in fact: This is an inaccurate recounting of what happened with a DACA deal that failed. Even after a judge ruled in favour of DACA in January, a bipartisan group of senators came to an agreement on a bill that would have allocated $25 billion to border security, granted a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, and made several other changes. But Trump threatened to veto the bill, arguing instead in favour of a plan that would have made significant cuts to legal immigration, and the compromise bill was defeated. The failure was not because “they,” Democrats, “weren’t there anymore.”

“President Obama signed DACA. When he signed it, he said, ‘I’m really not allowed to sign this,’ and I’m going to sign it anyway. But he actually said, ‘I’m not allowed to sign this, never going to hold up.'”

Source: Meeting with members of Congress

in fact: Trump’s timeline is off. Obama did not say, at the moment he created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative to protect “DREAMer” unauthorized immigrants, that he was not allowed to create the initiative, or that it was never going to hold up. Rather, Obama had previously expressed skepticism that he had executive powers to protect unauthorized immigrants without the approval of Congress; he regularly noted that being president was not like being “king.” (In addition, there was not an Obama “signing” for DACA at all. Though it is sometimes mistakenly called an executive order, it was actually created through a policy changed by the Department of Homeland Security.)

Trump has repeated this claim 3 times

“Our Border Patrol agents and our ICE agents have done one great job. ICE is throwing — we’re throwing, by the thousands, MS-13. They come into the country. We’re liberating towns on Long Island and other places. We’re throwing them out by the thousands.”

Source: Meeting with members of Congress

in fact: “By the thousands” is an exaggeration; it is more like “by the hundreds,” or “by the dozens.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement told PolitiFact that its investigations division arrested 405 MS-13 members in the first quarter of fiscal 2018. The acting director of ICE, Thomas Homan, said in December that “a renewed focus on IDing and dismantling the ultraviolent MS-13 gang led to nearly 800 arrests in (fiscal year) 2017, for an 83 per cent increase over last year.” That figure is disputed, as some of the people arrested may not be actual members of the gang. Even if they are, though, that number is far from “thousands.”

Trump has repeated this claim 15 times

“We’re having a lot of problems with Democrats. They don’t want to vote for anything. They don’t care about lack of security. They really would like to have open borders, where anybody in the world can just flow in, including from the Middle East. From — anybody, anywhere, they can just flow into our country.”

Source: Meeting with members of Congress

in fact: We let Trump get away with his regular claim that Democrats support “open borders,” though it is not literally true, since it can be viewed as metaphorical language rather than a literal claim. But it is false to specifically claim that Democrats want anybody in the world, including people from the Middle East, to be able to freely enter the country without restrictions.

Trump has repeated this claim 2 times

“Had a great meeting with the House GOP last night at the Capitol. They applauded and laughed loudly when I mentioned my experience with Mark Sanford. I have never been a fan of his!”

Source: Twitter

in fact: According to several Republicans in the room, there was no applause or loud laughter in response to Trump’s jab at Sanford, a Republican member of Congress, in a private Republican meeting; several news outlets reported that the Republicans in the crowd responded with a mix of silence and groans. Michigan Rep. Justin Amash wrote on Twitter: “”Nobody applauded or laughed. People were disgusted.” Reported the Washington Post: “‘There was absolutely no applause,’ said Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (Idaho). ‘Silence,’ said Rep. Mark Amodei (Nev.). Trump ‘makes up a lot of things,’ said Rep. Walter B. Jones (N.C.). ‘I think when people found out what he was saying . . . they were very upset, but they didn’t know how to react.'”

 

‘Stop lying’ about Florida recounts, Democrats warn Trump

Republicans deploy army of lawyers and baselessly claim fraud as Senate and governor’s recounts approach Thursday deadline

November 13, 2018

by David Smith in Fort Lauderdale

The Guardian

Democratic leaders have demanded that Donald Trump “stop bullying, harassing and lying” about election recounts in Florida before American democracy is put at risk.Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, called on Republican governor Rick Scott to recuse himself from overseeing his US Senate race against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson.

The Senate minority leader’s stand came as Trump, Scott and Republicans pursue a scorched earth strategy in Florida, deploying battalions of lawyers and throwing out baseless claims of fraud.

Troubled recounts in Senate and gubernatorial elections in Florida are now barreling towards a Thursday deadline amid an increasingly acrimonious fight that has echoes of the famous 2000 presidential recount. The White House – in the form of Trump’s Twitter feed and public comments – has also plunged into the fray.

For Trump, Florida is personal. His luxury Mar-a-Lago estate, dubbed the “winter White House”, is in Palm Beach and he has many business associates there. He raised the stakes again on Tuesday, implying, without evidence, that officials in two pivotal counties are trying to rig the election. “When will Bill Nelson concede in Florida?” he tweeted. “The characters running Broward and Palm Beach voting will not be able to ‘find’ enough votes, too much spotlight on them now!”

Schumer responded forcefully, suggesting that Trump and Scott are “dead set” against counting every vote because they are worried that Nelson will prevail.

He said: “It’s just plain wrong. It’s un-American. Attempts to bully, threaten and cajole officials into not counting every vote is a large and dangerous step away from the democracy we all cherish. Trump and Scott must stop now.”

He called for Scott to recuse himself from the recount, noting that Republican Brian Kemp quit his post as secretary of state in Georgia as his apparent victory in the governor’s race is challenged. Schumer said of Scott: “He’s a contestant in this election and can’t possibly be trusted to be a neutral and fair arbiter as the votes are tallied.”

Recalling Florida’s pivotal role in the disputed 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore, Schumer added: “We will not have a rerun of 2000. That cannot happen again.”

Standing at Schumer’s side, Nelson agreed that Scott, who has previously railed against “unethical liberals” trying to “steal” the election, should recuse himself.

Nelson said: “He’s been using his power as governor to try to undermine the voting process.”

After defeat in the Senate in Arizona on Monday night, Republicans are scrambling to shore up Florida, a Senate seat they thought was assured. More than 100 staff members from the Republican National Committee have reportedly flown to Florida along with thousands of volunteers.

Trump and Scott have been backed by far-right media and other conservative figures in sowing mistrust about the electoral process. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, used Twitter to share a headline that read: “Nearly 200,000 Florida Voters May Not Be Citizens.” He did not mention the article, regarding voter rolls, was published more than six years ago. The source, NBCMiami.com, subsequently attached an update that made clear the initial list of 180,000 names was whittled to 2,625 and then 85.

The state elections department and the Florida department of law enforcement, which are run by Republican appointees, have said they have seen no evidence of voter fraud. A Broward county judge challenged anyone who has evidence of fraud to file a report.

Unlike Scott, former Congressman Ron DeSantis, whose gubernatorial election against Democrat Andrew Gillum is also undergoing a recount, has kept a lower profile despite his own vocal allegiance to Trump.

But the ghosts of 2000 have risen in Florida. Palm Beach county had admitted that it will not finish its recount by the Thursday deadline because its 11-year-old tallying machines are not fast enough, while in Broward County, additional sheriff’s deputies were sent to guard ballots and voting machines.

Nate Silver, founder and editor in chief of the FiveThirtyEight website, tweeted that Trump’s outbusts “trying to delegitimize election results is awfully dangerous. Maybe the most openly authoritarian move he’s made so far.”

A former elected official in Florida, who did not wish to be named, said on Tuesday: “It’s disgusting. It’s so un-American. [Trump] just uses it to gin up his base; if Bill Nelson wins, this is about delegitimising the race. But you have to live and die by the rule and law and not change the game in the middle.”

Even Human Rights Watch, a non-government organisation more commonly associated with violations in authoritarian regimes, said: “Voters in Florida must be heard. Failure to do so goes against a fair and equitable electoral system and, most importantly, undermines the rights of those Floridians who voted.”

State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is less than 0.5%. In the Senate race, Scott’s lead over Nelson was 0.14%. In the governor’s contest, unofficial results showed DeSantis ahead of Gillum by 0.41%. Once the recount is complete, if the differences in either race is 0.25% or less, a hand recount will be ordered, meaning a further delay.

 

Trump Points to Polls in France, Where 80 Percent Say He’s a Dangerous, Incompetent Racist

November 13, 2018

by Robert Mackey

The Intercept

On Tuesday morning, the President of the United States encouraged Americans to study opinion polls in France, apparently unaware of a recent survey there showing that 8 of 10 French citizens consider him to be a dangerous, incompetent racist.

According to the polling, conducted last week for Le Figaro, a conservative newspaper, just 20 percent of French citizens call Donald Trump competent, while 84 percent agree that he is “racist” and 83 percent say he is “dangerous.” His overall approval rating comes in at 10 percent.

Trump accidentally called attention to his vast unpopularity in France after enduring a weekend of harsh criticism for his conduct during a visit to Paris to mark the anniversary of the end of the First World War — specifically his decision to skip a ceremony honoring Americans who were killed in the conflict because it was raining.When he finally responded on Tuesday — the sort of delayed reaction the French call “l’esprit d’escalier,” when you come up with what seems like the perfect retort but only when it is too late to deliver it in person — Trump could think of no better comeback than to lash out at his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, by pointing to his low approval rating among French voters.

Macron apparently earned Trump’s ire by using his speech to dozens of world leaders on Armistice Day to warn of the dangers of a resurgent nationalism across the globe.

“The old demons are rising again, ready to complete their task of chaos and of death,” Macron said on Sunday, a year and a half after he defeated the French nationalist Marine Le Pen for the presidency.

By the time Trump had returned to Washington, even the French military had joined in, with a mocking reference to his aversion to rain on its official Twitter account.

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” Macron said later in the speech, in remarks that were widely interpreted as a critique of Trump’s strident nationalism and “America First” slogan. “In saying ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others,’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important — its moral values,” Macron said as Trump grimaced.

Having essentially subtweeted Trump to his face, Macron ensured that the American president would get the message by posting an English translation of the comments on his favorite communications platform, Twitter.

The French president’s frank words seemed to echo his offer, after Trump withdrew from the global climate accord negotiated in Paris last year, to subsidize American climate scientists trying to “Make Our Planet Great Again.”

When Trump finally responded, he claimed that Macron — by criticizing the nationalist ideology that tore Europe apart twice in the past century — “was just trying to get onto another subject,” to deflect attention from his “very low approval rating in France” of 26 percent. “By the way, there is no country more Nationalist than France, very proud people — and rightfully so!” Trump added.

The President of the United States concluded his Twitter rant by unleashing the caps lock and suggesting that he would like to see the pro-European Macron ultimately toppled by Le Pen’s nationalists.

Macron’s office refused to comment, but France’s ambassador in Washington, Gérard Araud, noted on Twitter that another insulting tweet posted by Trump, in which he claimed that the French president wanted a European army to defend the continent “against the U.S.” was completely false.

The French embassy also noted that it took part in the Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday — an event that Trump also skipped.

 

White House hit with staff upheavals – again

November 13, 2018

by Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Another round of upheaval engulfed President Donald Trump’s White House on Tuesday, with the future of several senior aides in doubt just a week after U.S. congressional elections.Three Trump cabinet members – Chief of Staff John Kelly, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke – could soon be gone, said sources familiar with internal discussions in the Republican administration.

Turnover among White House personnel paused during the run-up to last week’s elections after senior Republicans asked Trump to refrain from firing staff, hoping to minimize perceptions of disorder.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced out by Trump last week just hours after the results came in from the Nov. 6 elections, which handed majority control of the House of Representatives to Democrats.

Trump’s first 22 months in office have seen frequent shakeups. A study this year by the Brookings Institution, a think tank, found Trump’s White House has had the highest turnover of senior-level staff of the past five presidents.

In an unusual move, sources said, Trump was also ready to dismiss Mira Ricardel, deputy national security advisor, at the request of his wife, Melania Trump, after a clash between the two over the first lady’s recent trip to Africa.

Melania Trump’s office acknowledged the acrimony.

Trump was expected to remove Nielsen, a source close to the White House said. Nielsen took the job after Trump made Kelly his chief of staff. But now the president is considering getting rid of both them, the source said.

Zinke has been under investigation for several ethics controversies including travel and a business deal in his home state of Montana, casting doubt on how long he would remain at the helm of the agency.

A final decision on his future could be postponed beyond this week. He is scheduled to travel to California on Wednesday and Thursday to visit communities hit by deadly wildfires, the Interior Department said on Tuesday.

Trump last week said Zinke was doing an “excellent job” but left open the possibility of replacing him. “We’re looking at that, and I do want to study whatever is being said,” Trump told reporters last week.

Adding to the sense of upheaval at the White House, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was planning to file more indictments in his 18-month investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, sources said.

Reporting by Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball; Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Cynthia Osterman

 

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

November 14, 2018

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas  in 1993  when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.

 

Conversation No. 66

Date: Wednesday, February 12, 1997

Commenced:  11:15 AM CST

Concluded:  11:45 AM CST

 

RTC: That has to be you, Gregory. Such timing. Corson was speaking with me a few minutes ago about you. Are your ears still ringing?

GD: No.

RTC: Ah, you are so popular. Bill was warning me that we had both best cut you loose because the wrath of God might descend. Bill has a paper asshole.

GD: Who is it this time? The Pope?

RTC: No, the Kimmel people. He regularly turns his Justice people loose on both of us. I think they need a new record. The current one gets stuck. Is it true you killed Abraham Lincoln, Gregory? I mean it’s pretty well set that you are the illegitimate son of Adolf Hitler, or is it Josef Stalin? I can’t seem to remember, it’s all so mixed up. Anyway, you are pure evil and have to be kept away from. And do let’s keep the Pope out of this. I had enough trouble with that one.

GD: Which Pope?

RTC: John Paul I. We also went after John Paul II but that one didn’t work, and we didn’t want to try it again.

GD: Why, in God’s name, did you want to kill the Pope? And out of curiosity, how did you pull it off?

RFC: The first one was going to put a terrible crimp in our drug business out of Italy and we tried to do the second one to blame the Russians. It was a sort of a game with us. Always try to do a bad bit and make it look like the Russians did it.

GD: The drug business? What did the Pope have to do with drugs?

RTC: He didn’t. It was the bank there that did. He had nothing to do with it but it was the Vatican bank.

GD: The Vatican bank was involved with drugs?

RTC: No, we used it to launder money. Who, I ask you, who would ever question the Vatican bank? It was the Mafia who had the inside bank contacts and, believe me, there was a lot of money moving around. Let’s see, the Pope was elected in, I think, August of ’79. He replaced Montini. Former Vatican Secretary of State….he was Paul VI. Anyway, we had a fine working arrangement with the Italian Mafia about the movement of money as I said.

GD: I met Montini once, I think in ’51.

RTC: The new one had been in Venice….Luciani….

GD: There was another one from Venice….

RTC: I know but not the same one. That was back in the ‘60s. But the new Pope posed quite a problem. He had been told that there were certain irregularities in the IOR…that’s the Vatican bank. And the new Pope was inclined to be honest and was demanding a full review of the books and so on. If this had happened, a good deal would have been uncovered, so the Pope had to go. It was that simple, Gregory. Politics had nothing to do with it, nothing at all.

GD: Couldn’t someone have cooked the books? Was murder necessary?

RTC: You don’t understand the whole picture, Gregory. The Mafia was involved in this up to their eyebrows and if any of it had come out, someone would have talked and pointed to us. We couldn’t have that. We had to get rid of Dag Hammarskjold because he was interfering with the uranium people in the Congo. It was nothing personal at all.

GD: How did you do it?

RTC: Our Station Chief in Rome ran the show. Contacts in the Vatican and especially with Buzonetti, the Pope’s doctor. My God, old Renata cost us plenty. On our payroll since God knows when. And our Political Psychological Division worked on this to put the blame on the KGB. And the P-2 Lodge was also involved and they were ours.

GD: The what?

RTC: The P-2 Lodge was an Italian Masonic group and early in 1970, we got our hands on it. It was designed to attract right wing Italian bankers and businessmen to combat the very active Italian Communist party.  No, if the Pope had started something, it would have wrecked years of hard work on our part and ruined some of our more important assets. In the end, it was money, not Renaissance-style politics, that did Luciani in.

GD: Does the Vatican know now?

RTC: Suspects, but would rather not know anything. After the Pope assumed room temperature, we consolidated and revamped the system. There was quite a bit of mopping-up to do. We had to kill off a number of Italian players who had been pushed out of the picture and were longing to get back into the money. One hanged himself from a bridge in England. Obviously killed himself out of remorse.

GD: Stalin said once that it was not difficult to execute a murder, but much more difficult to arrange a suicide.

RTC: Josef was a clever man.

GD: And, he said, “No man, no problem.”

RTC: That one I know. A friend and co-worker had that up over his desk. I am not joking.

GD: Oh, I believe it, Robert. It is lawful to be taught by your enemies.

RTC: I detect a critical attitude here, Gregory. You have to realize that the amount of money we were, and are, making from our drug partnerships is nothing to walk away from. Vast sums of money, Gregory, and enormous political power therefrom.

GD: I can see that, but one day they will go too far.

RTC: The Kennedy business is a classic example why nothing will ever come of this sort of thing. If you publish the ZIPPER material you already have and what I am going to give you, you will only excite the conspiracy buffs, all of whom will gather together and hiss at you and heap coals of fire on your head. Let us say that you write a newspaper article on what I just told you. It would never get published and within minutes of your submitting it to an editor, we would be notified.

GD: And then you’d shoot me?

RTC: No, trash you. Laugh at you. Get our little broken down academics to piss on you. The press would ignore you completely and eventually, you would find something else to do. Now, on the other hand, if you had been one of us and had inside knowledge and worse, proof, you would perish very quickly. The faulty brakes while driving on dangerous mountain roads, an overdose of some kind of popular drug and dead in an overheated apartment. Things like that. But as an outsider, just laughter and silence. Of course, there are those who would believe you and if you wrote about this business with the Pope and mentioned some Italian names, you might get different treatment. The bomb under the front seat of your car or something crude like that. But we wouldn’t have done it and I would recommend against stirring those people up. We would look into your tax records and turn the IRS loose on you or let your wife know you were boffing a nice waitress at a cheap local motel. Or one of your nice children would be introduced to dangerous drugs. That’s more effective than a bomb in the car or someone shooting you dead in a parking garage. The Italians tend to be very emotional, and we do not.

GD: The Italians once said that he who went softly went safely and he who went safely went far.

RTC: It would be less messy if they actually practiced that sentiment.

GD: By the way, Robert, why did you go after the other Pope? I assume that’s the one that got shot by the Arab in front of the Vatican.

RTC: Yes, but not an Arab, a Turk. They do not like to be equated with Arabs. That one? Actually, we thought that if we had him done in right in front of everybody, it would draw a lot of attention and we could really blame it on the KGB. It was a perfect set up. He was a Polack who was agitating the Solidarity people against Russia, so who would be the most logical suspect? And we had been financing the Turkish Grey Wolves for some time. They got the hit man for us. Of course, he didn’t know anything so no one shot him in the courtroom.

GD: Que bono! But for no other reason?

RTC: Isn’t that enough? Turn all the world’s Catholics against the Russians in a hurry.

GD: Let’s see here. One Pope for sure, another shot at, a dead UN chief, a dead American president, assorted deceased South American leaders, a Pakistani or two, at least one high level Indian, and so on. I would hope not all for such trivial motives.

RTC: Turning huge number of people against Russia is not a trivial motive at all.

GD: The wheel does turn, Robert, it does. And what is now at the bottom comes to the top. Out of curiosity, have you killed any Israelis?

RTC: No, they know just how far to go, and we work very closely with them. They do a lot of our dirty work for us. They blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon and, of course, we blamed it on the Arabs. It goes on, Gregory, and if you had sat in my chair and walked in my shoes, you would be a bit more understanding.

GD: This is not aimed at you, of course.

RTC: If it were, I wouldn’t be defending you to the monkeys when they jabber about you. They aren’t worth much. I think your problem is that you never were in a position of command and at a high level. If you had been, you would be less judgmental.

GD: I am just an amateur, Robert, just a dilettante. Thank God.

(Concluded at 11:45 CST)

 

UFOs spotted by pilots off Ireland coast

Irish Aviation Authority says it is investigating strange phenomenon – confidentially

November 13, 2018

by Andrew Griffin

The Independent/UK

UFOs have been spotted over the coast of Ireland.

Two pilots separately spotted bizarre and unexplained flashing lights travelling unnaturally quickly near Shannon airport, they told local air traffic control. But authorities had no explanation for the strange phenomenon, making clear there were no military tests or other expected flights that would explain the behaviour.

On one morning last week, a British Airways pilot spotted bright lights moving past her plane as it flew over the west coast.

“It was moving so fast,” she said, according to recordings of the conversation. “It came up on our left-hand side and then rapidly veered to the north. It was a very bright light that disappeared at very high speed.”

Then, shortly after, the pilot of a Virgin plane flying from the US to the UK saw something similarly mysterious as it flew over the same area. The pilot described a similar sight, saying that it looked like a meteor – but was made up of multiple flashes and were incredibly bright.

The lights were flying at “astronomical” speed, said one of the pilots, who said it appeared to be flying at around twice the speed of sound.

The Irish Aviation Authority said that it was investigating the strange phenomenon, but that it was doing so confidentially.

Following reports from a small number of aircraft on Friday 9 November of unusual air activity the IAA has filed a report,” the IAA said in a statement.

“This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrence investigation process.”

A spokesperson did suggest to the Irish Times that the lights were unlikely to be from alien beings.

Shannon Airport said it would not comment on the phenomenon while the investigation was ongoing.

The sightings come as experts around the world, who have held some of the highest offices of state, suggest that governments need to do more to track down explanations for UFO sightings.

Earlier this year, for instance, a former Pentagon insider who served as deputy assistant secretary of defence for intelligence in the Bill Clinton and George W Bush administrations said that the US government was choosing ignore UFO sightings. Prior to that, the head of a secretive US government programme said that the existence of advanced UFOs was “beyond reasonable doubt” and that countries needed to be more conscious of the potential threat.

 

 

FBI: Reported hate crimes surged by 17 percent in US last year

The surge in hate crimes marks the largest increase in more than a decade, with a sharp spike in anti-Semitic incidents

November 13, 2018

Al Jazeera News

Swelling by 17 percent last year, hate crimes in the United States marked the largest increase in more than a decade, according to a new report by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).Released on Tuesday, the FBI report documented 7,175 hate crimes – at least 15 resulting in murders – across the country in 2017, although the number is likely higher because many agencies do not report such incidents.

Of that total, nearly 60 percent of the incidents saw perpetrators target victims based on their race, ethnicity or ancestry, while one-fifth included individuals targeted owing to anti-religious bias.

Another 15.8 percent were targeted over their sexual orientation.

The total tally included a doubling of anti-Arab hate crimes and a large swell of anti-Semitic incidents.

More than 4,000 hate crimes were against people, while upwards of 3,000 were against property, including vandalism, arson and robbery, according to the FBI report.

Acting attorney general Matthew G Whitaker, who was recently appointed by President Donald Trump, described the new statistics as a “call to action”.

“The Department of Justice’s top priority is to reduce violent crime in America, and hate crimes are violent crimes,” Whitaker said.

“They are also despicable violations of our core values as Americans.”

Whitaker said he was “particularly troubled” by the increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes, which grew by 37 percent last year and made up the majority of crimes religious-motivated crimes.

Africans Americans made up nearly half of all hate crimes victims last year, according to the FBI.

‘Shocking’

On Twitter, the NAACP civil rights group described the report’s findings as “shocking”, saying that it “requires Congress’s full attention”.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based hate monitor, documented a sharp rise in hate incidents following Trump’s election in November 2016, with nearly 900 incidents in the 10 days following his victory.

Last month, the Trump administration reportedly moved to discontinue funding for a programme that combats domestic “terrorism”, including allocating funds to groups that work to prevent and track right-wing violence.

Throughout 2018, a spate of apparent hate crimes has gripped the country, among them the deadly assault on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, last month.

During that attack, a gunman stormed the synagogue and shot dead 11 worshipers. Police arrested Robert Bowers, who had posted a string of anti-Semitic and racist comments on the social media outlet Gab before allegedly carrying out the massacre.

Days before that attack, a gunman in Louisville, Kentucky killed two elderly African Americans at a grocery store in what officials are investigating as a hate crime.

 

 

 

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