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Tennessee GOP Condemns Governor For Not Firing ‘Openly Homosexuals’

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At least nine county chapters of the Tennessee GOP are circulating resolutions condemning Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, a Republican, for various issues, some including not firing an openly-gay staffer and a Muslim lawyer. Demanding the GOP take “appropriate action” against Haslam, the attacks listed among nine resolutions include charges that Haslam “[a]llowed and retained openly homosexuals [sic] to make policy decisions in the Department of Children’s Services,” “hiring people from the Obama administration,” “elevated and/or afford [sic] preferential political status to Sharia adherents in Tennessee,” “a consistent lack of conservative values,” and “[n]on-support/lack of leadership with regards to handgun carry permits holders in last legislative session,” among many others. (Grammatical errors in the resolutions should come as no surprise to anyone.)

Then there’s this:

According to the Tennessean on January 15, 2012, Governor Haslam admitted to retaining 85% of the Democrat Governor Phil Bredesen’s Executive Service Employees.

One of the latest Executive Service Employees has included Samar Ali, an expert in Shariah Compliant Finance which is one of the many ways Islamic terrorism is funded. She is also a one-time Obama appointee and her family has a long history of supporting the Democrat Party.

Politico notes:

The Republicans groups’ anger is directed at the June hire of Samar Ali, a Muslim lawyer, to head the international section of the state’s economic development office. Ali, a former White House fellow, is a Tennessee native and was the first Muslim president of Vanderbilt’s student body. The son of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) recommended Ali for the job. She has worked to help Muslim-owned corporations structure deals to avoid the religion’s ban on interest.

Talking Points Memo adds:

Mallory, the Stewart County chairman, told TPM the core complaint from conservatives involved with the resolutions concerns the appointment process, and the number of state employees and appointees held over from the Bredesen era.

“You have a gay rights organization, and an immigration organization defending a Republican governor. How crazy is that? Maybe not crazy — how unusual is that?” Mallory said. “Personally, I want Gov. Haslam to be successful. And I want Gov. Haslam to fire some liberal Democrats and replace them with conservative Republicans. That’s what I would like to see.”

Mallory said the resolutions had been spurred by conversations between conservatives on Facebook. He also said that the issue was born last year, after “14 to 16 [county] chairs” wrote a letter to Haslam asking, “when are you going to start getting rid of a lot of these liberals and hiring some conservatives?”

“We got no response, not even a ‘we got your letter,’ nothing,” he said. “That kind of set several of us off.”

But when asked about the more explosive complaints included in his group’s recent resolution, Mallory hedged. Asked about Ali, for instance, Mallory said he was more bothered by her ties to the Obama administration than her religion. And pressed about the opposition to gay employees at the Department of Children’s Services, Mallory said he would have to think it over before he could offer a comment.

“I’m going to hold off comment on that one,” he said. “I don’t know how to respond appropriately to that one.”

Kevin Kookogey, chairman of the Williamson County Republicans, was more forthright. (In Kookogey’s view, the counties all agree on the Shariah issue.)

“To date, the Haslam Administration has displayed an unfortunate ignorance to the threat of Shariah,” Kookogey said in an email to TPM. “They seem willing to accept the claims and defense of the Muslim Brotherhood at face value, refusing to even consider that, perhaps, those bent on destroying Western Civilization might just be infiltrating our institutions. … It is not like this has never happened before. The Muslim Brotherhood is following the blueprint of the Communists, who infiltrated the highest levels of government and society in the 1950’s. Shariah, however, is an even greater threat, because it has cloaked itself under the auspices of a religion, thus confusing the uninformed.”

Asked about Ali, Devaney, the state party chair, said the opposition to her appointment was the product of “misinformation,” and he defended her as “the most qualified person” to fill the role she was picked for.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” Devaney said. “What we’re trying to do is educate folks about the specifics. … Samar Ali is a lady who grew up in a small town called Waverly, Tennessee, and was a member of 4-H when she was in high school. We’re not talking about a radical Islamist.”

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog adds:

Tennessee is a national embarrassment.  They’re the new Alabama (not that the old Alabama is any great shakes).  They’re still racist, and now seem more and more liberated to spout other forms of bigotry, including homophobia and religious bigotry against Muslims.

…

These people are freaking nuts.  And they run the Republican party of Tennessee, and are far too influential in the Republican party nationally.

We have some extremely backwards parts of our country, and sadly they’ve taken over one of the two political parties.

Tennessee is home to anti-gay state senator Stacey Campfield, whose homophobic comments about HIV/AIDS and homosexuality once got him kicked out of a local Tennessee restaurant, and whose bill requiring drug testing — presumably, urine tests — for welfare recipients passed the Senate. Tennessee is also home to James Yoakley, a Tennessee yearbook teacher who was transferred to a lower grade school after a half-page interview positively depicting a gay student appeared in the school’s yearbook. Tennessee is also home to thousands of Tennessee children who every year will be forced to take a “maturity test” to enter kindergarten. (Yes, it was signed into law.) Tennessee is also home to Rep. Jeremy Faison, a Tennessee Republican Tea Party lawmaker who blamed poor parenting yet exempted bullying as the cause of gay youth and teen suicides.

Of course, Tennessee is also home to the now infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

A call to the Governor’s office was not immediately returned.

 

Image: Gov. Haslam by Brian Stansberry

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‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory

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April 22, 2024

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is promoting a conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary Clinton wants to assassinate her. Her remarks came just one day before she lost her attempt to have the Supreme Court review what some have called her conspiracy-theory fueled lawsuit about electronic voting machines.

“Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured ‘a fair and accurate vote.’ Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue,” CNN reported Monday.

Also on Monday Law&Crime reported that when she filed her lawsuit, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson “rejected Lake’s cybersecurity claim, telling Law&Crime it was ‘implausible and conspiratorial.'”

Democracy Docket, founded by top Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, called it “the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit,” and Lake and Fincham, “election deniers.”

READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

Lake, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has yet to concede the 2020 election, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has a history of pushing exaggerated and baseless claims.

On Sunday, as MeidasTouch Network reported, Lake promoted an old, anti-Clinton conspiracy theory but twisted it to try to make it appear she was in danger from former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Lake on Newsmax listened to a clip of Secretary Clinton calling Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bromance,” and saying the ex-president is “just gaga over Putin, because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”

Then Lake promoted a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory by responding, “Oh, boy. Oh, that’s really rich coming from a woman like Hillary Clinton, who’s, how many of her friends have just like, mysteriously died or committed suicide?”

“I mean, honestly, that’s rich of her. What President Trump wants is to root out the corruption and deliver our government back to We The People and she looks very nervous. She talked about her friend Mark Elias, Mark Elias has meddled in in his and his cohorts have meddled in the elections.”

She called Democratic policies, “destructive, deadly and frankly, in some ways, diabolical,”and added, “it’s almost comical that Hillary Clinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.”

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

“I just want to say as I’m as I’m speaking about this topic, I want everyone out there to know that my brakes on my car have recently been checked and they work. I’m not suicidal. And Hillary, I don’t mean any harm to you. Please don’t send your henchmen out to me. We understand what you’re about. ”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

 

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‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

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April 22, 2024

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MSNBC top host Rachel Maddow, inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courthouse on Monday declared Donald Trump appeared “old and tired and mad,” as she delivered observations about the ex-president on trial for 34 counts of falsification of business records alleged in the alleged pursuit of election interference to protect his 2016 presidential run.

Trump “seems considerably older, and he seems annoyed. Resigned, maybe, angry. he seems like a man who’s miserable to be here,” the award-winning journalist told MSNBC viewers Monday afternoon.

“I’m no body language expert,” she conceded, “and this is just my observation. He seemed old and tired and mad.”

The New York Times’ Susanne Craig, from inside the courthouse Monday morning reported: “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him.”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to pick up and report Craig’s observation, adding “feeble.”

Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, pointing to his piece at The Atlantic, wrote of Trump: “He has charmed & conned, schemed & marauded his way through life. He was bred that way. But the weariness & vulnerability captured in courtroom images betray a growing sense in Trump that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled:
A loser.”

Watch Maddow’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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14 hours ago

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April 22, 2024

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Prosecutors for the State of New York in their opening statement drew a direct line between the October 2016  “Access Hollywood” leaked audio and Donald Trump’s alleged “hush money” payoff to two women, including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, telling the jury it was “election fraud, pure and simple.”

Legal experts are dissecting the prosecution’s opening argument. Professor of law, MSNBC contributor and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann summed it up, saying New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg “squarely places the NY criminal trial in the election interference/corruption bucket– exactly what the DC and GA indictments allege, just 4 years later.”

“And the NY alleged ‘cover up’ is reminiscent of the two MAL [Mar-a-Lago] alleged obstruction schemes post-presidency, to keep prosecutors from uncovering evidence of that scheme,” Weissmann added.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo late Monday morning in his 45-minute opening argument told jurors, “This case is about criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” according to MSNBC’s Joyce Vance.

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“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Colangelo told jurors, CNN reports. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

“This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures,” Colangelo, a former U.S. Department of Justice Acting Associate Attorney General, told jurors.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo added. “’So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story,’ and prevent it from becoming public before the election.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Vance, an MSNBC legal analyst, professor of law and former U.S. Attorney, explains: “The scheme the prosecution is outlining is catch & kill to elect Trump-awful but lawful. Trump crossed the line into illegality when he created false business records to conceal his payments to Cohen to cover up the payments to Stormy Daniels.”

READ MORE: Fox News Host Suggests Trump ‘Force’ Court to Throw Him in Jail – by Quoting Him

“It’s always the cover up,” she adds.

Professor of law and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman adds, the prosecution told jurors “a straight election-interference story.”

Colangelo, Litman says, told jurors that Trump’s then personal attorney Micheal Cohen “then discussed the [Stormy] situation with Trump who was adamant he did not want the story to come out. Another story…on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign.”

MSNBC legal contributor Katie Phang describes Colangelo’s opening argument, saying he is “working methodically and chronologically through the conspiracy, identifying the main characters and their involvement. He speaks clearly and succintly [sic].”

Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in his New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of hush money to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which could be deemed election interference.

Watch an MSNBC clip below or at this link.

 

READ MORE: Gaetz: ‘Corrupt’ Republicans Could ‘Take a Bribe’ and Throw House to Dems, Blocking Trump Run

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