Self-professed ‘patriot warrior’ sentenced for role in violent Jan. 6 insurrection
Doug Cunningham – March 21, 2024
Jeffrey Sabol, a Colorado man who helped drag a police officer into the violent pro-Trump Jan.6 insurrection mob, was sentenced Thursday to 63 months in prison for three felonies. Pro-Trump rioters breached the security perimeter at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021 (pictured). File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI
March 21 (UPI) — A Colorado man who helped drag a police officer into the violent pro-Trump mob during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection was sentenced Thursday to 63 months in prison for three felonies.
Jeffrey Sabol, 53, was accused of beating a police officer who was attempting to help injured rioters.
His charges include an attack on a D.C. police officer. He said in an interview with police following his arrest that he had answered a call to battle because he “was a patriot warrior.”
“His actions and the actions of others disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the 2020 presidential election,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.
Sabol, of Kittredge, Colo., also was sentenced to 36 months of supervised release and ordered to pay $32,165.65.
Pro-Trump rioters breach the security perimeter and penetrate the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the Electoral College vote count that would certify President-elect Joe Biden as the winner in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI
The Justice Department, citing court documents and stipulated facts in the case, said Sabol attended the Trump “Stop The Steal” rally before joining the front of a line of rioters confronting police at the Capitol.
“In a coordinated effort, Sabol and another rioter pushed a third rioter — who, himself, was holding a riot shield — from behind, propelling him forward and up a set of steps, so that the rioter with the shield ran into the line of police,” the DOJ said in a statement. “As the officers attempted to repel the rioters pushing against the police line, Sabol kept pushing forward and slammed into a riot shield held by a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer.”
Pro-Trump rioters breach the security perimeter and penetrate the U.S. Capitol to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power as Congress met to certify the Electoral College results in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI
Sabol was in the pro-Trump mob as an MPD officer was pulled into the violent mob, according to the DOJ.
He was convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting, federal robbery, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon and aiding and abetting.
After the attack on the Capitol Sabol deleted texts and other communications from his cell phone. He also booked a flight to Zurich, Switzerland in an attempt to flee the United States.
After he was unable to board the aircraft Sabol rented a car and drove to Westchester, New York, where he was arrested by the FBI Jan. 11, 2021.
He told officers he was wanted by the FBI after “fighting tyranny in the D.C. Capitol.”
He also destroyed his laptop computers in a microwave oven and dropped his cell phone in a body of water.
The DOJ said Sabol came to the Capitol with a helmet, a buck knife, a trauma kit and zip ties.
During the melee Sabol pulled an officer’s baton from his hands as he was supine on the ground with such force that the officer’s torso was lifted from the ground, according to the DOJ.
Sabol is a geophysicist.
The DOJ said Thursday since Jan. 1, 2021 1,358 people have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the Capitol insurrection. More than 486 people have been charged with felonies for assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
Republicans Call for Raising Retirement Age in Clash With Biden
Jack Fitzpatrick – March 20, 2024
(Bloomberg Government) — The largest caucus of House Republicans called for an increase in the Social Security retirement age Wednesday, setting up a clash with President Joe Biden over spending on popular entitlement programs.
The Republican Study Committee, which comprises about 80% of House Republicans, called for the Social Security eligibility age to be tied to life expectancy in its fiscal 2025 budget proposal. It also suggests reducing benefits for top earners who aren’t near retirement, including a phase-out of auxiliary benefits for the highest earners.
The proposal sets the stage for an election-year fight with Biden, who accused Republicans of going after popular entitlement programs during his State of the Union address.
Sign up for What to Know in Washington , a morning newsletter with the most important stories from Congress, the administration, and beyond.
“If anyone here tries to cut Social Security, Medicare, or raise the retirement age, I will stop you,” Biden said in his March 7 address to Congress.
Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the caucus’s chairman, said the president’s opposition to Social Security policy changes would lead to automatic benefit cuts when the program’s trust fund is set for insolvency in 2033. A phased-in retirement age change was a standard feature of past negotiations, he said.
“Anytime there’s been any reforms in history – President Clinton, President Reagan – had a slow migration of age changes for people that are 18, 19 years old,” Hern told reporters Wednesday.
Former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee this year, has offered an inconsistent position on entitlements. He said in a March 11 CNBC interview that “there’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” He then told Breitbart he “will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare.”
The caucus’s budget proposal is more aggressive than the recent proposal by House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who advanced a budget resolution earlier this month that called for a bipartisan commission to negotiate Social Security and Medicare solvency but didn’t make specific policy recommendations. The Republican Study Committee, meanwhile, called for policy changes that would reduce spending on Social Security by $1.5 trillion and Medicare by $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
Republicans have said their proposals aren’t truly cuts and wouldn’t affect those at or near retirement. But Biden and congressional Democrats such as Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the Budget Committee, have said they won’t support an increase in the age of eligibility.
The caucus’s proposal leaves some details out. It calls “modest changes to the primary insurance amount” for those who aren’t near retirement and “earn more than the wealthiest” benefit level. It also proposes “modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy.” And it would “limit and phase out auxiliary benefits for high income earners.”
The proposal projects to balance the federal budget by 2031, outlining $16.6 trillion in spending cuts over a decade.
The proposal calls for Medicare spending reductions by implementing a “premium support model” in which private Medicare Advantage plans would compete with the federal Medicare plan. It proposes moving graduate medical education payments, which go to teaching hospitals for their residency programs, into a trust fund separate from Medicare.
Biden’s fiscal 2025 budget proposal, released March 11, called for an increase in the tax rate to support Medicare on those earning more than $400,000 a year, from 3.8% to 5%. It also broadly called for top earners to pay more to support Social Security, but didn’t make specific proposals. White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young told reporters the Biden administration doesn’t like the current structure of the payroll tax — which only applies to the first $168,600 of an individual’s income.
The document notes that Biden previously supported increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67 after bipartisan negotiations in 1983.
One of the trust funds that supports Social Security is projected for insolvency in 2033, the program’s board of trustees said their most recent estimate in March 2023.
House’s largest conservative caucus calls for increase in retirement age
Sarah Fortinsky – March 20, 2024
The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which comprises nearly 80 percent of all House Republicans, called for an increase in the retirement age in its budget proposal released Wednesday.
The RSC budget proposes raising that age for those who are not near retirement “to account for increases in life expectancy.” The budget did not provide specifics.
The budget also proposes limiting and phasing out auxiliary benefits for “high income earners.”
Without offering details, the RSC proposes “modest changes” to the primary insurance amount (PIA) benefit formula, which also would not apply to seniors near retirement, nor would it apply to the wealthiest earners.
The RSC repeatedly sounded the alarm in the budget proposal about the prospect of the Social Security fund becoming insolvent and called for a bipartisan approach to solving the issue.
“With insolvency approaching in the 10-year budget window, Congress has a moral and practical obligation to address the problems with Social Security,” the RSC proposal read. “These common-sense, incremental reforms will simply buy Congress time to come together and negotiate policies that can secure Social Security solvency for decades to come.”
The budget proposal, however, devotes significant space to railing against President Biden and his proposed tax policies, including rate hikes for the wealthiest Americans.
In releasing the budget report, the RSC sets up a potential clash with the White House, as President Biden has repeatedly tried to claim Republicans want to slash Social Security benefits.
At his State of the Union address on March 7, Biden said, “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop them.”
“I will protect and strengthen Social Security and make the wealthy pay their fair share,” he said.
The issue has become a sticking point ahead of the 2024 presidential election. The Biden campaign seized on a recent interview on CNBC with former President Trump, where he floated possible cuts.
“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements,” Trump said in the interview. “There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement.”
Biden responded on social media, writing, “Not on my watch.”
Trump soon walked back his remarks, saying in a subsequent interview with Breitbart, “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare … We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
“There’s so many things we can do,” Trump said on Breitbart. “There’s so much cutting and so much waste in so many other areas, but I’ll never do anything to hurt Social Security.”
Susan Rice Sounds The Alarm On How Donald Trump’s Debts Could Risk U.S. Security
Lee Moran – March 21, 2024
Former U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Wednesday talked about the threat that could be posed to America’s security over the hundreds of millions of dollars that presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump owes in civil trials damages.
Trump owes “some $500 million or more,” is struggling to meet the bond in his $464 million fraud ruling and so “you have to wonder where he’s going to get that money from,” the Obama White House official told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.
“In the event that [Trump] has to take that money from an individual or an entity, whether domestic or international, that individual or entity will potentially have real influence over him and so that is of concern” if he returns to the White House, said Rice.
Rice noted Trump’s “long history of foreign financial entanglements” and warned, “There’s just so many ways the stench of money from dubious places infuses his business enterprise and so this would add more questions should that be the case going forward.”
But “the big picture is even beyond the foreign financial entanglements,” added Rice, recalling Trump’s frequent siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his praise of dictators and his threat to abandon America’s allies in the NATO military alliance.
Leonard Leo, Koch networks pour millions into prep for potential second Trump administration
Katherine Doyle – March 21, 2024
WASHINGTON — Huge funding from influential conservative donor networks is flowing into a conservative venture aimed at creating a Republican “government-in-waiting,” including over $55 million from groups linked to conservative activist Leonard Leo and the Koch network, according to an Accountable.US review shared exclusively with NBC News.
Launched by the Heritage Foundation in April 2022, Project 2025 is a two-pronged initiative to develop staunch conservative policy recommendations and grow a roster of thousands of right-wing personnel ready to fill the next Republican administration. With former President Donald Trump now the GOP’s presumptive 2024 nominee, the effort is essentially laying the groundwork for a potential Trump transition if he wins the election in November.
With contributions from former high-level Trump administration appointees and an advisory board that has grown to over 100 conservative organizations, proponents describe Project 2025 as the most sophisticated transition effort that has existed for conservatives. The initiative includes a manifesto devising a policy agenda for every department, numerous agencies and scores of offices throughout the federal government.
In this Nov. 16, 2016 file photo, Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower in New York. Leo is advising President Donald Trump on his Supreme Court nominee. (Carolyn Kaster / AP file)
Since 2021, Leo’s network has funneled over $50.7 million to the groups advising the 2025 Presidential Transition Project as part of its “Project 2025 advisory board,” according to tax documents reviewed as part of the analysis by Accountable.US, a progressive advocacy group. That sum includes donationsfrom The 85 Fund, a donor-advised nonprofit group that funnels money from wealthy financiers to other groups, and the Concord Fund, a public-facing organization.
In 2022, the donor-advised fund DonorsTrust, which received more than $181 million from Leo-backed groups from 2019 to 2022, contributed over $21.1 million to 40 organizations advising Project 2025. It contributed nearly $20 million to 36 nonprofit organizations advising Project 2025 in 2021.
Leo, a top conservative megadonor, has worked to shift the American judiciary further to the right, having previously advised Trump on judicial picks while he was in office and helping to build the current conservative Supreme Court majority.
In addition to Leo’s funding to organizations advising Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s own donations surged in 2022. It contributed $1,025,000 to nine of the advisory groups, up from a total of $174,000 in grants to other nonprofit groups a year earlier.
The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The review by Accountable.US also found that oil billionaire Charles Koch’s network directed over $4.4 million in 2022 to organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board via its donor conduit, Stand Together Trust.
Project 2025’s vision for the next conservative administration’s energy agenda would rapidly increase oil and gas leases and production through the Interior Department to focus on energy security, and proposals include reforming offices of the Energy Department to end focus on climate change and green subsidies.
The Environmental Protection Agency would cut its environmental justice and public engagement functions, “eliminating the stand-alone Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights,” according to a proposal drafted by Mandy Gunasekara, a former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump.
The advisory board for Project 2025 includes representatives from conservative groups led by veterans of the Trump administration, such as America First Legal, the Center for Renewing America and the Conservative Partnership Institute, as well as conservative mainstays like the Claremont Institute, the Family Research Council and the Independent Women’s Forum.
Accountable. US executive director Tony Carrk warned that Project 2025’s stark conservative program and its advisory groups are made possible by funding from right-wing donors’ funneling tens of millions of dollars to the effort.
“The ‘MAGA blueprint’ isn’t a one-off project — it’s backed by the same far-right figures who have long dictated the conservative agenda,” Carrk said. “Leo, Koch and others should be held to account for propping up a policy platform that puts special interests over everyday Americans and poses an existential threat to our democracy.”
While the groups advising Project 2025 haven’t been supporting a candidate outright, many of the people leading them or with longtime affiliations have close ties to Trump after having served in his administration. NBC News projects that Trump has now clinched the delegate majority for the Republican nomination, setting up a rematch with President Joe Biden in November.
Conservative House Republicans unveil plan to attack Biden admin policies. Here’s what they would target
Ken Tran, USA TODAY – March 20, 2024
WASHINGTON – The Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus made up of House Republicans, unveiled a course on Wednesday for dismantling many of President Joe Biden’s signature policies – though the proposal’s chances are slim for now.
As part of the RSC’s annual budget, first shared with USA TODAY, the group is pushing to roll back or loosen many of the Biden administration’s major federal rules and regulations.
Republicans in the group are taking aim at a wide range of policies, including initiates to combat climate change, a Defense Department policy reimbursing travel for service members who must cross state lines to receive abortions and Justice Department gun control regulations. In the budget, Republicans call for a return to former President Donald Trump’s approach during his term in office.
Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., speaks to reporters after dropping out of the race for Speaker of the House, and endorsed Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., as House lawmakers seek to elect a new speaker in Washington.
“The RSC Budget would take bold and necessary action to rein in the Biden Administration’s dangerous regulatory regime, returning to the example set by former President Donald Trump,” the proposal reads, accusing Biden of implementing “a radical” agenda.
The conservative group, led by Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., released their plan after Biden announced a federal budget earlier this month with an eye toward new social programs for housing, health care and child care.
But the budget framework from the GOP group, which comprises almost 80% of the House Republican conference, offers a preview into what policy priorities Republicans are itching to advance should they reclaim the White House, the Senate and hold on to the House.
The budget doesn’t just endorse a slate of GOP-led legislation. It also includes pushes meant to curtail the Biden White House’s executive authority “to restore the appropriate balance of power” between Congress and the presidency.
Included is Rep. Kat Cammack’s Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, or REINS ACT, that would require Congress to sign off on any rule from a presidential administration that has an economic impact of $100 million or more. The bill passed the House last year on a party-line vote, though it has little chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The funds are typically centered around “socially responsible companies” that focus on addressing environmental and social problems. Republicans have derided the rule as too “woke,” but the rule does not require investment into ESG funds.
Today, the RSC’s proposal is simply a conservative wish list, actions that have little chance of becoming law while Democrats control the Senate and Biden remains in the White House.
But as the presidential election and congressional races across the country pick up steam, the plan could reflect how Republicans are seeking to rally voters in the fall.
“It’s on us to reign in the executive branch and rescind their authority to make decisions that belong to the legislature,” Hern said in a statement to USA TODAY. “Our constituents sent us here to provide a check on the White House. We can’t be passive about it, it’s time for results.”
Bolton says Trump wants to be treated like North Korean leader: ‘Get ready’
Lauren Irwin – March 20, 2024
Former national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday that former President Trump wants to be treated like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and people should “get ready.”
“Donald Trump wants Americans to treat him like North Koreans treat Kim Jung Un. Get ready…..” Bolton posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Bolton, who served as the national security adviser under the Trump administration, posted a viral clip of Trump speaking with Fox News’s Steve Doocy in 2018, where the former president offered praise for the North Korean leader.
“He’s the head of a country, and I mean he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention,” Trump said in the clip. “I want my people to do the same.”
Bolton joins a list of former Trump officials who are warning of his return to power, just after he clinched the Republican nomination for president and will face off against President Biden in the polls this fall.
The clip of Trump speaking highly of Kim follows a meeting between the former president and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump received sharp criticism for meeting with the Hungarian leader, who said he hopes to see Trump return to the White House.
After the meeting, Trump said Orbán is a “Great Leader” who is “respected all over the World.” The former president has also favorably commented about Adolf Hitler on multiple occasions.
In the past, Trump has said that he would not be a dictator if he were reelected, “Except for day one.”
Supreme Court Puppetmaster Explains How Billionaires Can Push America Right
Andrew Perez – March 18, 2024
Conservative activist and Supreme Court puppetmaster Leonard Leo recently outlined his pitch for billionaires on how they can help move the United States government and society to the right.
“It’s really important that we flood the zone with cases that challenge misuse of the Constitution by the administrative state and by Congress,” Leo said in a new podcast interview, calling on the ultra-wealthy to support these litigation efforts.
“We have a great Overton window in the next couple of decades to really try to create a free society,” Leo said of the Supreme Court. “And I think we should take full advantage of it.”
The co-chair of the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers network, Leo is best known as the man who helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative 6-3 supermajority, in his role as President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser. Leo’s dark money network, which received a historic $1.6 billion infusion in 2021, additionally helps bring cases before the high court, influence which cases the justices consider, and shape the court’s decisions. As Rolling Stone reported last month, Leo has been working to expand his network in recent months.
Leo has been at the center of the ethics questions swirling around the Supreme Court in the past year. ProPublica reported that Leo arranged Justice Samuel Alito’s seat on a private jet — paid for by a billionaire hedge-fund chief — as part of an undisclosed luxury fishing trip in Alaska in 2008. He also reportedly steered secret consulting payments to Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife.
Long averse to media attention, Leo recently taped a podcast interview with Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of surveillance company Palantir and the University of Austin, a conservative alternative college he started with journalist Bari Weiss. The discussion was first highlighted by the watchdog group Accountable.US.
In the interview, Leo spoke about his $1.6 billion dark money fund, called the Marble Freedom Trust, explaining: “We’re trying to really institute a lot of legal and social change through philanthropy.” He also offered his thoughts on how billionaires can help conservatives limit regulations, take over corporate C-suites, reshape America’s education system, and influence our culture. Leo, a devout Catholic, additionally discussed his interest in reforming religious institutions.
Leo outlined how conservatives can chip away at the administrative state by flooding the courts with legal challenges. Touting a Supreme Court ruling that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate some carbon emissions, he said that “there needs to be constraints on agencies’ interpretations of their own power,” and that “courts have a role to play in interpreting agency power and constraining them when necessary.” He added, “There are many more of those cases that are going to be brought over the next three to five years.”
In the business realm, he argued, “We need to be building pipelines of talent — pipelines of people who understand that the Constitution matters, and that the private sector and civil society matter. And that means building talent pipelines of people who can be in the C-suite and in boardrooms, because corporate America plays an enormously important role in potentially constraining government.”
He continued: “Corporate America, [the] finance world, banks — they have an enormous amount of influence over our culture and our social life. And we need to be finding ways of getting folks in the C-suites and in the boardrooms who are just tired of our woke culture.”
Leo has financed the right-wing campaign against so-called “woke capitalism,” targeting the use of ESG — environmental, social, and governance — criteria in investment decisions.
Twice in the interview, Leo talked about the need for conservatives to “build talent pipelines in the media and entertainment industry,” adding: “There are a lot of people in the entertainment world who really understand limited government and free society. And they’re not happy with the entertainment world, and they’re looking for opportunities to band together, and to be a part of new enterprises.”
Leo’s network has funded the conservative National Review Institute as well as the RealClearFoundation, a nonprofit affiliated with the political news aggregator RealClearPolitics.
Another key element in Leo’s pitch to prospective donors centered around education — both K-12 and higher education. “We need to create talent pipelines for K-12 education and for higher ed, something like you’re doing with the University of Austin,” he told Lonsdale, “so that we remind people that the purpose of higher ed, for example, is to basically build a citizenry that’s committed to the Constitution as it was originally written.”
Leo explained this means recruiting teachers and working to influence education board races, “so that we can begin to have some sanity and local education.”
He added, “The idea behind education, as [Thomas] Jefferson put it, was to create good engaged citizens. So if we teach them civics, in a way that’s understandable, and comprehensible, and appealing, the idea that limited government advances human dignity, and I really believe that, if we can, if we can have educational institutions that instill that, we’ll create a better electorate. And if we create a better electorate, I think ultimately, we’ll have a government, including an administrative state, that’s much more reflective of a free and just society.”
One group in Leo’s network, Free to Learn, has been involved in local school board elections. His network recently created a new group called the American Parents Coalition.
Lastly, Leo talked about the need to reform the clergy. “This is one that I just started thinking about, there’s the whole issue of clergy, and this is a tough one to crack,” he said, adding: “This may not be for everybody, but my own perspective is: God made us to know him, to love him, and to serve him. And I think our religious leaders need to center more on that, and less on knowing, loving, and serving ourselves, and whatever personal desires or affections we may have.”
Leo leads a separate nonprofit entity, called the Sacred Spaces Foundation, which he used to purchase a Catholic church near his summer home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, last year.
Trump’s ‘blood bath’ threat wasn’t even the most dangerous thing he said all weekend
Rex Huppke, USA TODAY – March 18, 2024
You might have heard some controversy over former President Donald Trump’s use of “blood bath” this weekend.
Here’s a quick summary: At an Ohio rally on Saturday, Trump was talking about the auto industry and said if he doesn’t get elected in November “it’s going to be a blood bath for the country,” prompting a number of news outlets to report things along the lines of “Trump predicts ‘blood bath’ if not elected,” which seemed pretty on point, but then a bunch of MAGA types got bent out of shape and said, “No, he was talking about it being a blood bath for the auto industry,” which still seems kind of bad and unnecessarily apocalyptic but … you know … whatever, and so a bunch of news outlets started writing about the possibility that the “blood bath” comment was taken out of context and all sorts of hand-wringing ensued and it was, to borrow a phrase, a bit of a blood bath.
Here’s the full quote, which came on the heels of his comments about the auto industry: “Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole – that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”
Here’s what matters: A number of media outlets and President Joe Biden’s campaign pounced on one unhinged Trump comment that had questionable context when there were SO MANY OTHER absolutely despicable comments to choose from.
Trump’s ‘blood bath’ line overshadowed more dangerous comments
If the media erred, it was in focusing on the “blood bath” comment rather than – (please imagine me waving my hands in all directions) – everything else.
Of greater importance, I’d argue, was the fact that Trump’s Saturday rally in Dayton began with an announcer saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated Jan. 6 hostages.”
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee has taken to calling the charged, tried, convicted and imprisoned insurrectionist-lunkheads who attacked the U.S. Capitol in 2021 “hostages.” He referred to them as “unbelievable patriots.”
The fact that a former president of the United States is treating domestic terrorists as heroes – they are so horribly and unfairly treated! – is certainly as newsworthy as any “blood bath” comment.
Trump calling migrants ‘animals’ should alarm everyone
Trump also continued his dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric, painting a wildly inaccurate picture of “hardened criminals” by the “hundred of thousands” crossing the border and “destroying our country.”
“I don’t know if you call them people, in some cases they’re not people, in my opinion,” Trump said. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left say it’s a terrible thing to say.”
Former President Donald Trump campaigns at the Dayton International Airport on March 16, 2024, in Ohio. The state holds its Republican Senate primary on the following Tuesday.
On Saturday, Trump called them “animals.” That is vile rhetoric, though not at all surprising since he has previously echoed Adolf Hitler’s language by claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
When you sound like Hitler, that’s a very bad thing
Asked about similarities between his words and Hitler’s on Fox News on Sunday, Trump said: “That’s what they say; I didn’t know that.”
Sure, buddy. He apparently missed the classes on World War II in high school history. And it seems worth noting that even “accidentally” saying something that sounds like Hitler is neither good nor normal.
Unfazed by his Fox News interviewer, Trump continued to repeat the same horrendous crap: “Our country is being poisoned.”
He mocked Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker: “You have this guy Pritzker … he’s too busy eating. He wants to eat all the time. Would you like a hamburger? How many do you want? Five. … Who the hell orders five burgers?”
Of Georgia district attorney Fani Willis, who’s prosecuting one of the many criminal cases against the former president, Trump said of her name: “It’s spelled ‘fanny,’ like your a–.”
Speaking of his former competitors in the GOP primary, Trump said advisers told him to to go easy on them: “They said, ‘Sir, please don’t talk about these people that way, they’re Republicans.’ … I don’t give a sh–, they’re terrible.”
To sum things up, the “blood bath” comment, whatever the context, was bad.
But beyond that, the man a majority of Republicans believe should be the next president spent the weekend: calling the sitting president a “numbskull”; calling former Republican primary candidates “terrible”; continuing to deny the results of a free-and-fair election; calling immigrants “animals” while continuing to embrace Hitlerian rhetoric, even after being reminded it’s Hitlerian rhetoric; swearing; crudely making fun of someone’s weight and another person’s name; and calling the people who quite literally attacked the U.S. Capitol and assaulted more than 100 police officers “unbelievable patriots.”
I’d say the real controversy is the media failed to point out that Trump’s “blood bath” comment, disturbing as it is, might have been the least-bad thing he said all weekend.
With the election behind him, Putin says Russia aims to set up a buffer zone inside Ukraine
The Associated Press – March 18, 2024
Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are depicted in a tug-of-war game on a memorial in Izium, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Sunday, March 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)Family members of Vitaliy Alimov, his mother Maria and his wife Natalia, mourn over his body before his funeral in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, Ukraine, Monday March 18, 2024. Alimov, a firefighter, was killed in the Russian attack on Odesa on Friday March 15. (AP Photo/Victor Sajenko)Men in unmarked uniforms stand guard during the seizure of the Ukrainian corvette Khmelnitsky in Sevastopol, Crimea, Thursday, March 20, 2014. When Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly president was ousted in 2014 by mass protests that Moscow called a U.S.-instigated coup, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded by sending troops to overrun Crimea and staging a plebiscite on joining Russia, which the West dismissed as illegal. (AP Photo, File)Emergency services workers look on as Military chaplain Archpriest Ioann shovels earth into the grave of Vitaliy Alimov during his funeral in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, Ukraine, Monday March 18, 2024. Alimov, a firefighter, was killed in the Russian attack on Odesa on Friday March 15. (AP Photo/Victor Sajenko)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said after extending his rule in an election that stifled opposition that Moscow will not relent in its invasion of Ukraine and plans to create a buffer zone to help protect against long-range Ukrainian strikes and cross-border raids.
The Kremlin’s forces have made battlefield progress as Kyiv’s troops struggle with a severe shortage of artillery shells and exhausted front-line units after more than two years of war. The front line stretches over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) across eastern and southern Ukraine.
Advances have been slow and costly, and Ukraine has increasingly used its long-range firepower to hit oil refineries and depots deep inside Russia. Also, groups claiming to be Ukraine-based Russian opponents of the Kremlin have launched cross-border incursions.
“We will be forced at some point, when we consider it necessary, to create a certain ‘sanitary zone’ on the territories controlled by the (Ukrainian government),” Putin said late Sunday.
This “security zone,” Putin said, “would be quite difficult to penetrate using the foreign-made strike assets at the enemy’s disposal.”
He spoke after the release of election returns that showed him securing a fifth six-year term in a landslide in an election devoid of any real opposition following his relentless crackdown on dissent.
Monday marks the 10th anniversary of Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula, which set the stage for Russia to invade its neighbor in February 2022. However, Putin has been vague about his goals in Ukraine since that full-scale invasion floundered.
Putin again warned the West against deploying troops to Ukraine. A possible conflict between Russia and NATO would put the world “a step away” from World War III, he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron recently said that sending Western troops into Ukraine should not be ruled out, though he said the current situation does not require it.
Commenting on the prospects for peace talks with Kyiv, Putin reaffirmed that Russia remains open to negotiations but won’t be lured into a truce that will allow Ukraine to rearm.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has apparently shut the door on such talks, saying Putin should be brought to trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which last year issued an arrest warrant for Putin on war crime charges.
With crucial U.S. aid being held up in Washington, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham arrived in Kyiv on Monday, the U.S. Embassy said. Ukraine desperately needs the around $48 billion that the package of support would provide, especially artillery shells and air defense systems.
Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted 17 out of 22 Shahed drones launched by Russia over various regions of the country overnight. Russia also fired five S-300/S-400 missiles at the Kharkiv region and two Kh-59 at the Sumy region, both in northeastern Ukraine, it said.
Authorities say the intensity of ground attacks and airstrikes has increased recently in the Sumy region, prompting the evacuation of 56 people, including 26 children, from one border village over the past week.
In the past two and a half months the region has been struck more than 3,000 times, after some 8,000 strikes over all of last year, the Ukrainian regional government says. The number of aerial bomb attacks has tripled, and Russian saboteurs are highly active, according to officials.
This story corrects the name of the court to the International Criminal Court.
