Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Furious Trump demanded leaker who revealed he fled to his bunker during protests be executed: report

AlterNet Logo

According to Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender’s bombshell book, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, a furious Donald Trump demanded that officials in his government find out who leaked the story that he fled to his bunker during the George Floyd protests in D.C. and wanted them tried for treason and then executed.

As the report notes, Trump, his wife Melania and son Barron were escorted to the bunker — news of which quickly made it to the press, which caused the president to blow up.

Bender reports the former president, “held a tense meeting with top military, law enforcement and West Wing advisers, in which he aired grievances over the leak.” Continue reading.

Trump ripped William Barr as a ‘phony’ who would have ‘licked the floor’ if he’d won: new book

Raw Story Logo

Donald Trump ripped into Attorney General Bill Barr as a “phony” who “would have licked the floor if I won,” after the former president unsuccessfully tried to get U.S. attorneys in swing states to open investigations into his false claims of election fraud, according to Landslide, a new book from journalist Michael Wolff.

The Daily Beast reports that it obtained a copy of Landslide in advance of its publication next week. 

“‘Trump had been personally calling around to various U.S. attorneys in swing state districts, among them his appointee William McSwain in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,’ to try and convince them to open their own probes,” the Daily Beast reports. “When they did not, Trump blamed his A.G., saying that ‘if I had won, Barr would have licked the floor if I asked him to. What a phony!'” Continue reading.

Virginia ‘Bible study’ group was cover for violent militia plans, prosecutors say

Washington Post logo

After storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, a Northern Virginia man began forming his own militia-like group in the D.C. suburbs and building up a supply of explosives under the guise of a Bible study group, according to federal prosecutors.

Fi Duong, 27, appeared in court Friday and was released to home confinement pending trial, over the objections of prosecutors who sought stricter terms. According to the court record, at the time of his arrest he had several guns, including an AK-47, and the material to make 50 molotov cocktails. Details of the case — one of the first if not the first in which the government publicly disclosed it had someone undercover to continue monitoring a Jan. 6 defendant — were made public Tuesday.

An attorney for Duong declined to comment. Continue reading.

Trump has cut off Rudy Giuliani, and is annoyed that he asked to be paid for his work on challenging the election, book says

Donald Trump’s family has cut off Rudy Giuliani, and the former president has been irked that the lawyer asked to be paid for his work challenging Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, a new book says.

On Sunday, The Times of London published an excerpt from “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” the coming book on the Trump presidency from the author Michael Wolff.

In the extract, Wolff delves into Trump’s postpresidential life at his Mar-a-Lago resort and describes Trump as frustrated by the lack of progress in his quest to overturn the 2020 election result. Continue reading.

Fox News cuts off Trump after he derails ‘border’ press conference with election rant

AlterNet Logo

Fox News on Wednesday cut off a broadcast of former President Donald Trump’s visit to the border after he began ranting about the 2020 presidential election.

Although Fox News had heavily promoted the former president’s trip to Texas throughout the day, the network decided to cancel the president’s press conference about a minute after he claimed the voting system in America is a “disaster.”

“We had an election where we did much better than we did the first time and amazingly we lost,” Trump complained while sitting next to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). “I just want to thank the people of Texas because we won in a landslide. It wasn’t even close.” Continue reading.

Trump got rejected by Parler after he demanded a ban of his critics: report

Raw Story Logo

In yet another excerpt from Michael Wolff’s third book on Donald Trump’s administration, Business Insider is reporting that the former president’s negotiations to become a contributor to the Parler social media platform broke down over censorship.

Specifically, a demand that Trump’s critics be banned.

According to Wolff, representatives for the former president — who has been banned from Twitter and Facebook — made a pitch for him to join Parler in return for a significant portion of the site’s revenue. However, the insistence that critics of Trump be banned led to the deal falling apart. Continue reading.

Trump’s big lie about 2020 results suffers legal and political blows in key swing states

CNN Logo

It was a bad week for the Big Lie — former President Donald Trump and his allies’ false claims that widespread fraud is to blame for his 2020 election loss.

In one battleground state, Republican senators issued a report that eviscerated Trump’s lies about voter fraud. In another, a judge undercut Trump’s supporters’ hopes to examine nearly 150,000 mail-in ballots. And one of Trump’s closest allies, Rudy Giuliani, was suspended from practicing law in New York. 

Trump and his conspiracy-minded supporters have eagerly been anticipating the conclusion of the problem-plagued audit of Maricopa County’s results in Arizona, but regardless of its final report, it will have no impact on the 2020 election results, as the election was already certified. Trump repeated his election lies at a rally in Ohio Saturday night, but last week’s blows underscored the reality that their options to continue contesting the 2020 election are narrowing. Continue reading.

Terrorism expert: Trump remains a major ‘national security’ threat to the United States

AlterNet Logo

Some Republicans recently accused New York Times reporter Maggie Gallagher of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” when she reported that according to her sources, former President Donald Trump believes he will be “reinstated” as president by August. But in fact, Gallagher’s reporting was accurate, and John Cohen— the top counterterrorism official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — believes that Trump’s delusion could lead to more political violence in the United States. On June 25, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace discussed Cohen’s warning with MSNBC contributor and former FBI counterterrorism expert Clint Watts, who commented on how much of a national security threat Trump continues to be.

Wallace, a Never Trump conservative who served in the George W. Bush Administration, told Watts, “It’s just jaw-dropping that the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president’s utterances are now a national security threat on an hourly, daily basis — to which Watts responded, “It is remarkable that it continues on.”

Watts told Wallace, “It’s also remarkable because there is still significant online discussion of this, which means —think if you’re a believer in this conspiracy, and you’ve seen everything from QAnon to January 6, the inauguration occurring, ballot recounts failing — and you still are pursuing this fantasy. How would it not lead to violence over time?” Continue reading.

Opinion: The Real Fraud: Republicans’ Voter-Fraud Scare

Common Dreams logo

Setting the record straight is our duty to democracy itself.

This week, Senate Republicans in lockstep blocked key reforms of the For the People Actthat would address gerrymandering and big money in politics, plus enhance ethics for federal office holders. The Act would also strengthen voting rights—on which a big battle is now underway across the country.  

While Democrats in more than half the states have lowered barriers to voting, Republicans are pushing them higher, with campaigns for at least 389  restrictive voter laws in 48 states. Already, 17 states have enacted 28 such bills. But now, the Justice Department is suing Georgia over its new voting restrictions.

Republicans often justify their opposition to lowering voting barriers with the argument that it encourages voter fraud. Arizona’s Republican Representative John Kavanagh told CNN earlier this year that Democrats are “willing to risk fraud” because they “value as many people as possible voting.” Republicans, he underscored, “are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote—but everybody shouldn’t be voting.” Continue reading.

Trump warned Wisconsin GOP legislative leaders to support 2020 election audit or be ‘quickly run out of office’

Former President Donald Trump on Friday put Wisconsin GOP legislative leaders on notice, saying that they would be “primaried” if they don’t back an audit of the 2020 presidential election in the critical swing state.

Last November, President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by roughly 20,000 votes out of nearly 3.3 million ballots cast. The results were certified with no verifiable evidence of voter fraud.

However, with Trump continuing to spread debunked claims of malfeasance months after his electoral loss to Biden, Republican leaders are feeling the heat from the former president’s loyalists, many of whom back partisan audits similar to what is occurring in Arizona, another swing state that Trump lost to Biden. Continue reading.