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Update: Ann Romney Declines To Speak At Anti-Gay Hate Groups Conference

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UPDATE: Despite her name appearing as a speaker on Friday just before 12:15 PM at the Values Voters Summit, as the screenshot above, shows, the Romney campaign now states “”Mrs. Romney is not scheduled to attend VVS this weekend,” and adds, “it has not been on our schedule,” Buzzfeed has reported this evening. Which begs the question, is the Family Research Council adding people to their schedule without confirming them, and if so, are they doing it intentionally to seem like they have the support of people they may not?

Buzzfeed, as we also reported, adds:

As of Tuesday evening, the online schedule for the conference, which is hosted by the Family Research Council (FRC), still had Mrs. Romney attending the Friday morning plenary session, from 8:40 a.m. to noon.

 The remainder of our report, below, is presented as originally published.

* * *

 

Ann Romney is scheduled to speak at the Values Voters Summit this weekend, according to multiple reports. The Values Voters Summit is an annual event hosted by FRC Action — the lobbying wing of the Family Research Council — and sponsored by the Family Research Council and the American Family Association‘s AFA Action, along with the Heritage Foundation, Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, Gary Bauer‘s American Values, and Mat Staver‘s Liberty Council. Both the  Family Research Council and the American Family Association are certified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as anti-gay hate groups.

While conspicuously not on the list of speakers is Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Josh Glasstetter at Right Wing Watch reported this evening that Ann Romney’s name appears on the schedule at both the Values Voters Summit website and the National Journal’s Daybook.

It’s an odd move by the Romney campaign. They’ve previously deployed her to show the softer side of Mitt. Now they’re sending her to stand on stage with a man who paid $83,000 to use David Duke’s mailing list and addressed a white supremacist group while in public office. The same person – Tony Perkins – also praised a law in Uganda to execute gays and warned senators they would have “the blood of innocent soldiers on their hands” if they repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

The Romney campaign must have its reasons, but it sure seems like an odd way to deploy Ann Romney. They already have Paul Ryan scheduled to address the conference. Do they really need two headliners reaching out to the Bachmann-Akin wing of the party? Besides, just last week Ann Romney refused to answer questions about same-sex marriage and contraception, dismissing them as distractions “from what the real voting issue is going to be.”

For weeks, the Values Voter Summit website listed Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as invited speakers. When Ryan was added to the ticket in August, the Family Research Council blasted out an email confirming Ryan’s appearance. No one really expected Mitt Romney to show for the event – too radical, too close to the election. That’s why, when the conference schedule was recently posted, it was a shock to see not only “Romney” on the lineup, but Ann Romney.

Ryan and Ann Romney, if she appears, will be speaking on stage with Perkins in a lineup that includes Kirk Cameron and Michele Bachmann. They’ll be kicking off a conference that features a who’s who of Todd Akin backers (e.g. Mike Huckabee and Rep. Steve King) and anti-Muslim McCarthyites (e.g. Frank Gaffney and Jerry Boykin). And, of course, there will be gay-bashers – featured speakers like Perkins and Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, who recently defended Malawi’s law criminalizing homosexuality. They would push for the same thing here in America if they thought they could pull it off. In fact, FRC’s Peter Sprigg and the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer have already done so.

These aren’t conservative people pushing conservative values and policies – this is the radical right. America, and the Romney campaign in all likelihood, would be better served if Romney and Ryan followed Dolan’s example and skipped the conference. Or they can go cast their lot with the extremists with the national media looking on. We’ll see what their priorities are this Friday morning.

As The New Civil Rights Movement reported earlier today, the Southern Poverty Law Center teamed up with six other human rights organizations, asking Paul Ryan and other politicos to forgo the conference and to “not to lend the prestige of your office to the summit.”

On the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, the letter states, “the Family Research Council (FRC), has consistently spread demonizing lies about the LGBT community, and one of its co-sponsors, the American Family Association (AFA), has linked homosexuality to the Holocaust.”

The letter, sent jointly by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Faithful America, GLAAD, HRC, National Black Justice Coalition, National Council of La Raza, and the People For The American Way Foundation, represents the efforts of a growing trend of like-minded activist organizations working toward common goals.

The Values Voters Summit attendees and speakers list has been a moving target. Here’s a screenshot from a Google cache from just one week ago, showing Mitt Romney as a speaker. His name has since disappeared.

 

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‘Poof’: White House Mocks Stunned Fox News Host as GOP’s Impeachment Case Evaporates on Live Air

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The White House is mocking a Fox News host who appeared stunned as the former President of Ukraine destroyed House Republicans’ impeachment case against President Joe Biden on live-air in real time.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, a supporter of Donald Trump, on Monday interviewed former President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, who served from 2014-2019. Kilmeade previously had interviewed Viktor Shokin, the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine, who was fired in 2016 for not prosecuting corruption cases.

“I had a chance to talk to Viktor Shokin, a man who says he was friends of yours, who you asked to come back and help out during the transition after the previous regime,” Kilmeade told Poroshenko. “Here’s what he said on why he was fired by you. Listen.”

On previously recorded video, Shokin says: “Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then Vice President Biden, because I was investigating Burisma… There were no complaints whatsoever, no problems with how I was performing at my job, but because pressure was repeatedly put on President Poroshenko that is, what ended up in him firing me.”

READ MORE: ‘Height of Irresponsibility’: Top LGBTQ Civil Rights Group Slams House Republicans Over Shutdown and ‘Politics of Hate’

Kilmeade then asks the former Ukrainian President, “Is that why he got fired, because of the billion dollars and the former vice president now President?”

“First of all, this is the completely crazy person,” Poroshenko says of Shokin, as Kilmeade grows increasingly stunned. “This is something wrong with him. Second, there is no one single word of truth. And third, I hate the idea to come to make any commands and to make any intervention in an American election. We have very much enjoyed the bipartisan support. And please do not use the such person like Shokin to undermine the trust between bipartisan support in Ukraine.”

Surprised, Kilmeade asks, “What do you mean, he’s not your friend?”

“I don’t see him maybe for years or something, at all,” Poroshenko tells Kilmeade, before getting a bit heated. “And I hate to have him, because [he] keep playing very dirty game, unfortunately.”

“Okay,” the surprised Fox News host says, before asking again. “So that is not true. You didn’t, you didn’t, he didn’t get fired because of Joe Biden?”

READ MORE: ‘Careening’ Toward ‘Risk of Political Violence’: Experts Sound Alarm After Trump Floats Executing His Former General

“He was fired,” Poroshenko replied. “But because of his own statement, and if you do not do that next day, Ukrainian parliament will fire him.”

HuffPost’s political reporter Arthur Delaney, responding to the video, writes: “This is the centerpiece of the Republicans’ corruption allegation against Joe Biden.”

While debunked numerous times during Trump’s presidency, Republicans have resurfaced the false claim that then-Vice President Biden forced then-president Poroshenko to fire Shokin in an effort to protect Burisma. Shokin was not investigating Burisma, according to a CNN fact check.

“Poroshenko is absolutely right here and good for him for stating clearly how dangerous it is that his false story is being used to play political games with n the US. Shokin’s claims have no basis in reality. He was fired for incompetence and failing to crack down on corruption,” writes the Financial Times’ Ukraine correspondent Christopher Miller.

U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) mocked Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer, writing on social media, “Ummm @RepJamesComer call your office.”

White House spokesperson Ian Sams went further, while pointing out the allegation just evaporated.

READ MORE: Gaetz Praises GOP Congressman Who Echoes His Call for Change ‘Through Force’

“Not only does he play a leading role in the conspiracy theories promoted by Fox News personalities – he is central to the conspiracy theories animating extreme House Republicans’ baseless, fact-free impeachment stunt against President Biden,” Sams wrote. “Yet another allegation goes *poof*”

Watch the video below or at this link.

 

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‘Height of Irresponsibility’: Top LGBTQ Civil Rights Group Slams House Republicans Over Shutdown and ‘Politics of Hate’

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The nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization on Monday released a 30-second TV ad attacking House Republicans for their “politics of hate” and for bring the federal government to the edge of a shutdown. The government will shut down unless the House can pass legislation to keep it open, legislation the Senate would have to vote on and pass, and President Joe Biden would have to sign, all before midnight on September 30.

“You sent your representative to Washington to work on behalf of everyday Americans, like you. But House Republicans spent the summer trying to divide us and failing to pass essential spending bills,” says the voiceover on the Human Rights Campaign‘s ad, expected to air nationwide according to The Hill.

“Instead, they’re trying to limit the health care you and your family can access, ban books and flags and block enforcement of civil rights laws, all while risking the government grinding to a halt.”

“Tell Congress to reject the politics of hate and get back to work,” the video adds.

READ MORE: ‘Careening’ Toward ‘Risk of Political Violence’: Experts Sound Alarm After Trump Floats Executing His Former General

“In addition to attaching numerous anti-LGBTQ+ provisions to their draft spending bills,” HRC adds in a press release, “the legislative attacks from Republicans in the House of Representatives also include stand-alone bills such as H.R. 734 — a nationwide ban on transgender students playing sports — as well as larger legislative packages like H.R. 5, which included book bans and provisions stigmatizing transgender students. The new ad from HRC, which will air nationwide, calls on voters to contact members and tell them to stand with the American people, reject the extremism of those like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, and take action to prevent a shutdown.”

“A shutdown is the height of irresponsibility and would interrupt critical government services, hurt working families, and endanger our national security,” said Kelley Robinson, President of the Human Rights Campaign. “This outcome was entirely avoidable, but House Republicans have instead hijacked the appropriations process to attack LGBTQ+ communities rather than doing their jobs. It’s past time for them to stop pushing an extremist agenda that’s a danger to us all.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

 

 

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‘Careening’ Toward ‘Risk of Political Violence’: Experts Sound Alarm After Trump Floats Executing His Former General

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Political experts are sounding alarms after Donald Trump‘s weekend of attacks on the military and the media, with some cautioning America is “not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.”

Friday evening the ex-president said General Mark Milley, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom he appointed to that role, “in times gone by” would have been executed for treason.

Trump wrote, “if the Fake News reporting is correct,” General Milley “was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”

READ MORE: Gaetz Praises GOP Congressman Who Echoes His Call for Change ‘Through Force’

Foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst David Rothkopf Sunday night warned, “Trump this weekend indicated military leaders who opposed his policies should be put to death and media that presented views he did not like are traitors and will be prosecuted. He is a monster, an aspiring dictator, the greatest threat America faces.”

Sunday evening Trump had also attacked NBC News and MSNBC, along with their parent company, Comcast, all by name. He wrote in part: “I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”

“Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!” Trump said on his social media platform.

Professor of global politics and political scientist Brian Klass at The Atlantic wrote on Monday that General Milley’s phone call to China “was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.”

READ MORE: ‘Corruption of the Highest Order’: Experts ‘Sickened’ at ‘Definitely Bought’ Clarence Thomas and His ‘Pay to Play’ Lifestyle

“And yet,” Klass noted, “none of the nation’s front pages blared ‘Trump Suggests That Top General Deserves Execution’ or ‘Former President Accuses General of Treason.’ Instead, the post barely made the news. Most Americans who don’t follow Trump on social media probably don’t even know it happened.”

Klass is also warning that America has become “numb” to these attacks.

“Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous, not just because it is the exact sort that incites violence against public officials but also because it shows just how numb the country has grown toward threats more typical of broken, authoritarian regimes. The United States is not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.”

Juliette Kayyem, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a CNN national security analyst Monday morning observed: “To view each of Trump’s calls to violence in isolation — ‘he attacked Milley,’ or ‘he attacked NBC,’ or ‘he attacked the jury, the prosecutor, the judge ‘ — is to miss his overall plan to ‘introduce() violence as a natural extension of our democratic disagreement.'”

Kayyem, a former Asst. Secretary at the Dept. of Homeland Security and a terrorism expert, pointed to her own piece at The Atlantic from July.

“The language” Trump and his allies “are using is filled with words of war, elevating concerns among terrorism experts and security planners that Trump’s supporters pose the same threat of violence that they did before the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol,” Kayyem wrote.

READ MORE: ‘Vulgar and Lewd’: Trump Judge Cites Extremist Group to Allow Drag Show Ban

Klass again sounded the alarm on complacency:

“Bombarded by a constant stream of deranged authoritarian extremism from a man who might soon return to the presidency, we’ve lost all sense of scale and perspective. But neither the American press nor the public can afford to be lulled. The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.”

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