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Cruz: I Had No Idea The ‘Kill The Gays’ Pastor Who Hosted A Conference I Spoke At Was So Anti-Gay

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CNN On-Air Told Cruz of Pastor’s Anti-Gay Hate Speech in Interview Before Conference

Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has built his political career by positioning himself as one of the most anti-gay Republicans in the 21st Century, but now he seems to be trying to appear supportive of LGBT civil rights. He’s even trying to claim he was wholly unaware of the violent and vicious platform of the organizer of a “religious freedom” conference at which he spoke last year.

Kevin Swanson has been dubbed the “Kill the Gays” pastor because of his positions on homosexuality. Right Wing Watch has repeatedly documented Swanson’s attacks on the LGBT community, calling him “a far-right pastor and host of the ‘Generations Radio’ program, on which he has frequently claimed that the government should put gay people to death, warned that the Girl Scouts and the movie “Frozen” turn girls into lesbians and blamed natural disasters on gay people and women who wear pants.”

Cruz spoke at Pastor Swanson’s Freedom 2015 National Religious Liberties Conference last year, but before doing so sat down with CNN’s Jake Tapper, who point-blank told him Swanson has called for gay people to be put to death. Cruz, after being told what Swanson has said, responded by saying he doesn’t know what Swanson has said.

Right Wing Watch, today reporting on Cruz’s attempt “to rewrite history,” notes that before the conference they “publicized Swanson’s history — including his discussions of the death penalty for gay people.”

Cruz remained steadfast, attended the conference, shared the stage with Swanson, sat down and did a one-on-one interview, even joked about fantasy football with the “Kill the Gays” pastor.

Sen. Cruz, it should be noted, is no saint when it comes to the civil rights of LGBT people, including accusing them of waging “jihad” on Christians.

Asked Monday on a radio talk show about speaking at a conference organized by a religious zealot who has called for gay people to be put to death, here’s how Cruz responded, according to Right Wing Watch (audio below).

“He was an individual I didn’t know, I’d never met him,” Cruz told the hosts of the “John and Ken Show.” 

“I went to a conference on religious liberty because it is an issue I care very much about. After the conference, his comments were drawn to my attention and I denounced them at the time, I think they’re wrong, I totally disagree with them. I didn’t know this fellow and when I saw what he said, I came out publicly and said I disagree with what he’s saying.”

Note that Cruz says “after the conference” he learned about Swanson’s anti-gay comments, wholly ignoring the fairly extensive media attention his scheduled appearance garnered before the conference, and wholly ignoring the fact that he sat down with CNN’s Jake Tapper who very clearly painted a picture of Kevin Swanson for Cruz.

“We need to be bringing people together and we need to be standing up for the rights of every American, that’s what I’ve done in the Senate and that’s what I’ll do as president.” 

Senator Cruz might want to check the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell, because it clearly states that same-sex couples have a legal right to marriage. Actually, he has. He called it “fundamentally illegitimate.” Is he now saying he has been standing up for that right and will stand up for that right as president?

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

 

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Trump ‘Let Americans Die’ By Secretly Handing COVID Testing Machines to Putin: US Senator

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October 9, 2024

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A leading Democratic U.S. Senator is calling Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s alleged handing over of COVID testing machines to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the height of the pandemic, “damning” and “disqualifying.”

“So, news just broke that Donald Trump, when he was president, at the beginning of the pandemic—when we didn’t have enough supplies to keep people alive here in the United States—sent critical in-demand testing equipment to Vladimir Putin,” explained U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). “Donald Trump chose to keep Vladimir Putin alive and let Americans die.”

“That revelation alone should disqualify Donald Trump from being President of the United States,” said Sen. Murphy, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Donald Trump helped Putin and hurt us at a moment where we didn’t have enough testing equipment to go around in this country, at a moment where our lack of testing equipment was resulting in Americans unnecessarily dying and even worse, he hid the fact that he gave Putin the testing equipment from the American public,” Murphy added.

READ MORE: Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

Senator Murphy was responding to news this week from Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, “War,” that reveals Trump handed the vital testing machines—not boxed tests but “point-of-care” fast-testing devices, to Putin, an alleged war criminal who is conducting an illegal war in Ukraine.

“Donald Trump should not be President of the United States,” Sen. Murphy continued. “Nobody should be president of the United states who puts the health of a brutal dictator, an enemy of the United States, ahead of the health and well being of Americans, not during the pandemic, not ever.”

The Kremlin confirmed Trump gave Putin the testing machines, Politico reported, adding that “Woodward writes in his book that when Trump was still president in 2020, he ‘secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use’ during a time period when Covid tests were scarce.”

“This is a moment when COVID is running wild, not just in the United States, in the world,” Woodward told “CBS Sunday Morning” in an interview, the news network reported Wednesday. “He gives Abbott [the manufacturer] point-of-care testing kits to Putin. I mean, these are precious assets to anyone in the world, in the country, and he gives it to him for his personal use.”

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, 1.2 million Americans have died from the disease.

In February of 2021, still the height of the pandemic, The Guardian reported the U.S. “could have averted 40% of Covid deaths, says panel examining Trump’s policies.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

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Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

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18 hours ago

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October 9, 2024

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Twenty years ago, Republicans gathered at midtown Manhattan’s iconic Madison Square Garden for their national convention. But in 1939, the precursor to the renowned New York City venue hosted a different, and infamous event. With a name similar to Donald Trump’s “America First” MAGA rallies, it was called the “Pro-American Rally”—yet the party behind it was anything but.

The German American Federation, or German American Bund, was essentially the American Nazi Party. Its leader, Fritz Julius Kuhn, reportedly “was to become seen simply as an incompetent swindler and liar who spoke poor English.” He would later be exposed as a foreign agent, and, according to the FBI, “denaturalized in 1943 due to his pro-Nazi allegiances and deported to Germany in 1945.”

Slated for October 27, just nine days before Election Day, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rally at Madison Square Garden “will kickoff an ‘arena tour’ for the former president who plans to visit battleground states in the final push before the Nov. 5 election,” NBC News reports.

Back in April, Trump “teased” out the event.

READ MORE: Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

“We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” the ex-president said. “We think we’re signing Madison Square Garden to do. We’re going to have a big rally honoring the police, and honoring the firemen, and everybody. Honoring a lot of people, including teachers by the way.”

In 2019, NPR reported on the February 20, 1939 Nazi rally.

“The organizers had chosen the date in celebration of George Washington’s birthday and had procured a 30-foot-tall banner of America’s first president for the stage. More than 20,000 men and women streamed inside and took their seats. The view they had was stunning: Washington was hung between American flags — and swastikas.”

” In the 1930s, the Bund was one of several organizations in the United States that were openly supportive of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Europe. They had parades, bookstores and summer camps for youth. Their vision for America was a cocktail of white supremacy, fascist ideology and American patriotism.”

“Attendees wore Nazi armbands, waved American flags and held aloft posters with slogans like “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America,'” NPR reported, describing the mood inside the rally as “jubilant.”

“The speeches were explicitly anti-Semitic, and tirades against ‘job-taking Jewish refugees’ were met with thunderous applause.”

Award-winning journalist and co-founder of Spy magazine, Kurt Andersen, noted: “History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.” Award-winning historian Michael Beschloss posted a photo from that 1939 rally.

“Historian here,” remarked Professor Manisha Sinha, President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, “not the first time that Madison Square Garden has hosted a Nazi rally. Businessmen trying to overthrow a democratically elected government? History doesn’t repeat but it sure rhymes!” she also said.

READ MORE: What We Know About FBI’s ‘Sham’ Kavanaugh Investigation and How Trump WH Blocked the Probe

“Let’s be clear,” warns Democratic New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes Madison Square Garden. “Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939.”

He’s calling on the owners of The Garden to cancel the event.

“This is a disastrous decision by Madison Square Garden that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence. For the good of NYC and its residents, I demand @TheGarden keep our city safe by cancelling the Trump rally.”

The company that owns Madison Square Garden is owned by billionaire Trump donor Charles Dolan, who founded HBO.

Outrage online in response to the news of Trump’s planned Madison Square Garden rally has been palpable.

 

In 2020, PBS aired,” A Night at the Garden,” about the 1939 American Nazi rally.

Watch the video and see the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity

 

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Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

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21 hours ago

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October 9, 2024

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Mike Madrid, a top Latino GOP strategist, says there are three key issues the Harris-Walz campaign must focus on to win over Republicans, these “three messages are far more important than the messengers,” and if they do so they will “win the race.”

Madrid, a Lincoln Project co-founder, is a veteran political consultant and one of the country’s authoritative experts on Latino voters. He is also the author of, “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy.”

In an interview with The Independent, Madrid warned, “the Latino vote looks like it’s going to keep getting stronger” for Trump.

“Madrid,” The Independent reports, “attributed the growing strength for Trump among Latinos to years of inept Democratic messaging that assumed immigration — ensuring a compassionate attitude towards migrants from South and Central America — was a priority for voters who had roots in that part of the world.”

READ MORE: What We Know About FBI’s ‘Sham’ Kavanaugh Investigation and How Trump WH Blocked the Probe

“We’ve never been interested in immigration. It’s just this political and media narrative that the Democrats have been driving,” he said.

And he warns the Harris campaign is in “deep, deep trouble” in both Arizona and Nevada. The current FiveThirtyEight polling average puts Harris up by one point in Nevada and Trump up by one point in Arizona. Nationally, Harris is up just 2.6 percentage points over Trump.

“Demographically, the shift of North Carolina has made it far more important than Arizona,” he says, “so that if Harris wins North Carolina and Pennsylvania, there’s virtually no roadmap for Trump.”

Madrid believes Harris must focus on suburban women and college-educated voters.

“It’s gonna be the largest gender gap in the history of the country, and it’s correlated into the diploma divide,” he says. “What’s keeping her competitive is she is increasing the margins with college-educated women, and that includes Hispanic women, white women, African American women — all women with degrees are opening up this gap.”

He also warns Democrats to stop focusing so much on Republican “turncoats,” like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, to promote their message.

Madrid says Republicans don’t need someone telling them it’s OK to vote for Harris.

READ MORE: Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity

“You do not need a permission structure to defend your body or your country,” he says on social media. “I’m deeply honored & grateful for those Republicans who have the courage to step forward against Trump. Everything helps at this moment. But let’s be clear – we’re way past a ‘permission structure’.”

“We’re not selling toothpaste folks,” he continues. “The threat to our country and our rights is existential and that’s why 17-20% of Republicans were peeling off Trump – before Nikki Haley, before Liz Cheney, before the convention. Republican defections will win this race for Harris but…We should not put politicians, personalities or pundits in front of the issues proven to move Republican voters. That’s called stepping on your message. Lead with what has proven to work. Lead with the three things that jarred GOP voters out of their haze.”

“There are three issues proven to move Republican voters past ‘The Bannon Line’ from 2020,” Madrid writes. They are, the January 6 insurrection, Trump’s “Big Lie” about voter fraud and a “rigged” election, and the Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to abortion:

“January 6
The Big Lie
Dobbs

Focus on these three issues and you win the race. Harris can pass the Bannon line and get a record number of Republican votes.”

READ MORE: ‘They Are Partners’: Experts Warn on Trump and Putin After Bombshell Woodward Revelations

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