The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
Friday, June 21, 2024
Cheapfakes get an indefensible boost from powerful GOP partisans
It was ugly, but it wasn’t unusual. The right creates low-cost “cheapfakes“ like these all the time. Indeed, within days of the deceitful video out of Italy, a similar video made the rounds among conservatives showing Biden purportedly freezing onstage at a fundraiser. In the full context, it was clear the president simply paused to take in some applause. In another recent instance, a similarly deceptive clip circulated that seemed to show the president reaching for a non-existent chair, though in reality, there was a chair.
‘Cheapfake’ Biden videos enrapture right-wing media, but deeply mislead
The use of these clips is an especially pernicious couple of examples of manipulated video — what we label “isolation” under our guide to manipulated video — because it’s intended to create a false narrative that doesn’t reflect the event as it occurred. The RNC and its avid followers in the conservative media earn Four Pinocchios.
Video edited to make it appear Biden tried to sit down when there wasn’t a chair
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-biden-invisible-chair-normandy-634944982428#
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video, in which Biden’s chair is for the most part clearly visible, is cut before the president sits down. Full footage of the ceremony shows the president looking over his shoulder for his chair and pausing before taking a seat.
THE TRUMP VERDICT: What If President Trump Had Been Adjudicated By A Bais Din? - Purim Torah
https://yated.com/the-trump-verdict-what-if-president-trump-had-been-adjudicated-by-a-bais-din/
We have thus arrived at the lehavdil bein Yisroel l’amim. Yes, it is true that Alvin Bragg, Juan Merchan and Michael Cohen hate Donald Trump and should not have any hand in his verdict. But if true tzaddikim are acting as judges or witnesses and have only a righteous enmity toward someone because he has transgressed one of Hashem’s laws, they may testify and make decisions because their intentions are pure and no personal enmity will enter into their deliberations.
Trump lashes out at Fox News over latest poll: ‘TRASH!’
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4731614-trump-lashes-out-fox-news-poll/
Former President Trump blasted Fox News on Thursday after the network published a poll showing him trailing President Biden nationally for the first time this year.
Hebrew Union College to admit and ordain rabbinical students in interfaith relationships
Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s rabbinical seminary, will begin admitting and ordaining students who are in relationships with non-Jews, following a decision by its board to drop a longstanding ban on interfaith relationships for rabbinical students.
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Trump’s Final Foreign-Policy Report Card
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/05/trumps-final-foreign-policy-report-card/
It’s worth recalling what he promised to do. Like most of his political platform, Trump’s foreign policy sprang from a sense of grievance. He thought the rest of the world was taking advantage of the United States; he was going to put “America first” instead. Allies would pay full price for U.S. protection, adversaries would be confronted and vanquished, and the United States would pursue its own self-interest with scant regard for diplomatic niceties. He’d stop China from “stealing” American jobs and take the United States out of “bad deals” like the Paris climate accord and the nuclear agreement with Iran. Portraying himself as a master negotiator, he promised to reach “beautiful” new trade deals that would restore U.S. manufacturing and usher in a new era of prosperity. The United States would play the sucker no longer: It would get “out of the nation-building business,” crack down on immigration, rebuild a supposedly weak defense establishment, and get Mexico to pay for a wall on the southern border.
But it was more than a missed opportunity, because Trump’s blunders have left the United States in much worse shape than when he took office. For President-elect Joe Biden and his team, the bad news is that they have an enormous amount of repair work to do. The good news, such as it is, is that it won’t be hard to do better than the people they are succeeding
Trump’s better deal with Iran looks a lot like Obama’s
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/17/trump-iran-deal-obama-1417801
“Trump got rid of the Iran nuclear deal because it was Barack Obama’s agreement,” said Jarrett Blanc, a former State Department official who helped oversee the 2015 deal’s implementation. “If you were to present to Trump the same deal and call it Trump’s deal, he’d be thrilled.”
Killing the Iran nuclear deal was one of Trump's biggest failures
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-nuclear-deal/
Six years after former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the disastrous consequences of this decision are still adding up.
In addition to Iran being closer than ever to a nuclear weapons capability, now we must consider how the declining security situation in the Middle East has raised the stakes significantly. Trump promised a “better deal” but instead we got an increasingly costly blunder that may be impossible to fix
President Trump's Policy Towards Iran Was A Disaster
Murphy laid out the failures of the Trump administration’s Iran policy: “Here's the facts. When Donald Trump came into office, Iran was over a year from being able to achieve a nuclear weapon. By the time President Trump left office, that breakout time had dropped to months. When President Trump came to office, proxies of Iran were strong. When he left office, they were just as strong, if not stronger. This idea that Iran stopped sending money to Hezbollah during Trump's presidency is just wrong. $700 million was the annual amount of support delivered from Iran in the middle of Trump's presidency; [and] that's what was being delivered at the end of his presidency. There were no attacks on US forces in Iraq when Donald Trump became president. From 2019 to 2020, attacks on US forces in Iraq increased by 400%. It got so bad that Secretary Pompeo started to close down the embassy in Baghdad because it had become so dangerous. Attacks on US forces raised to epidemic levels from the beginning of Trump's presidency to the end. The anti-Iran coalition wasn't strengthened, it was shattered. We had Russia and China on board with the JCPOA. By the end of the Trump presidency, Europe wasn't supporting our Trump politics, our Iran policy, they were undermining it.”
As few as 50 hostages may still be alive
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/391824
Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, mediators in the talks and a US official familiar with the latest US intelligence have placed the number of hostages still alive as potentially just 50.
Trump's War on the Truth Has Officially Gone Full Orwell
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22547037/donald-trump-orwellian-truth-reality-eyes-ears/
It has long been clear that the president is attempting to build a genuine authoritarian movement over which only his word has any power, and which he can use to ride roughshod over the institutions of democracy. So far, this attempt has been an unmitigated success, as his supporters inhabit the same infotainment vortex he does and other members of the Republican Party—which controls both Houses of Congress and has a constitutional duty to provide a check on the Executive Branch—bow to him out of craven fealty.
Radical skepticism Permission to believe only what you want to believe
Radical skeptics hold that doubt exists as to the veracity of every belief and that certainty is therefore never justified.
Or to quote Trump - Don't believe your lying eyes or fake news only believe me.
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