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Breaking: GOP Senator Forces First Openly Gay Army Secretary Nominee To Temporarily Step Aside

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Republican U.S. Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas has placed a hold on the nomination of Eric Fanning.

Eric Fanning made national headlines last September when Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee fibbed about his qualifications to become the next Secretary of the Army. Fanning, who is gay, is immensely qualified and was nominated because of his qualifications to serve as the next head of the Army.

At the time, Huckabee waged a small war against Fanning.

RELATED: Mike Huckabee’s Supporters Want Obama ‘Tried For Treason’ For Nominating Gay Man To Lead US Army

“It’s clear President Obama is more interested in appeasing America’s homosexuals than honoring America’s heroes,” Huckabee, said in a statement last fall, ignoring the fact that countless LGBT service members at every level are also America’s heroes. 

“Veterans suicide is out-of-control and military readiness is dangerously low, yet Obama is so obsessed with pandering to liberal interest groups he’s nominated an openly gay civilian to run the Army. Homosexuality is not a job qualification,” said Huckabee, who last year also had said he would have said he was transgender in high school if it meant he could have showered in the girls’ locker room.

“The U.S. military is designed to keep Americans safe and complete combat missions, not conduct social experiments,” the ordained Southern Baptist minister accused.

Now, it looks like Huckabee may get his wish.

RELATED: ‘Homosexuals’ Over ‘Heroes’: Huckabee Takes Aim At Obama’s Gay Nominee To Head US Army

Acting Army Secretary Eric Fanning is stepping down, temporarily for now, because the Senate has yet to vote on his nomination, which they have had for well over three months.

“Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., placed a hold on Fanning’s nomination in protest over Obama’s campaign to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility and transfer detainees to the United States,” the AP reports, adding that since Army Undersecretary, Patrick Murphy was confirmed last week, there’s now someone else to take charge.

Roberts (photo, top left,) was endorsed by a cavalcade of anti-gay Republicans of note for his 2014 re-election campaign, including Huckabee, Tim Huelskamp, and Rick Santorum. That’s Ted Cruz in the photo above, campaigning for Roberts.

Posted by Pat Roberts on Friday, July 25, 2014

Roberts, a “Hard-Core Conservative,” has a 0% rating from the Human Rights Campaign. He has voted for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as well as other obstacles to marriage for same-sex couples, voted against adding sexual orientation to the hate crimes law, voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. 

Back in November, Sen. Roberts placed the hold on Fanning’s nomination.

UPDATE: First Openly Gay Nominee For Army Secretary Steps Down As Acting Secretary After John McCain Tantrum

But in October Roberts aired a campaign video which The New York Times called, “Campaign Tactic: Guantánamo Fear-Mongering.”

No detainees from Guantánamo are headed for the prisons of Leavenworth, Kan., anytime soon, if ever. But you wouldn’t know that from the campaign of Senator Pat Roberts, a Republican in a very tight race, who has made a terrorist-free state one of his most fervent campaign promises.

“Pat Roberts promises to keep terrorists out of Kansas,” says a newscaster in a clip included in one of his recent television ads. “Senator Roberts issuing a very blunt threat to the White House about inmates at Guantánamo Bay,” says another journalist. And finally the ad turns to Mr. Roberts himself, declaiming, in a voice loud enough to echo across the plains, “Not. On. My. Watch!”

Here’s his ad:

Roberts may not have placed a hold on Fanning’s nomination because he’s gay – or maybe he did – but regardless, no doubt, given his record, that was at least an added bonus.

As for Fanning, given the current state of affairs in the GOP, don’t expect Roberts to withdraw his hold on the nomination any time soon. Fanning, in fact, may never become Secretary of the Army, which would be a loss for many reasons, but especially for the U.S. Army.

 

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

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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 2022 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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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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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.

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

“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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