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Fox News’ Todd Starnes: Democrats Going ‘Bat-Crap Crazy’ Over Trump Call for 2nd Amendment Violence

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Conservative Commentator Says Mainstream Media Needs ‘Xanax’

Todd Starnes is accusing the “Mainstream Media and Democrats” of having “gone bat-crap crazy over Donald Trump” and his comments calling for Second Amendment violence against Hillary Clinton.

“I mean it’s full-blown, head-spinning, Linda Blair-projectile vomiting kind of crazy, folks,” Starnes, a Fox News columnist and contributor, told his viewers (video above) and readers Wednesday. Calling it “full-blown liberal media bias,” Starnes compares Trump’s call for violence – which was so offensive and outrageous the Secret Service was forced to issue a statement – to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s comment she wishes Trump would just disappear.

“Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told MSNBC that she wanted to make Trump ‘disappear.’ Was that a threat? What exactly did the senator mean by wanting to make Trump disappear?,” Starnes falsely claimed. “Where was the Mainstream Media outrage to such a nefarious suggestion? Where was the wall-to-wall speculation, smothered in righteous indignation? There was none – nary a peep,” he lamented.

Why?

Because Starnes was lying.

Here’s what Senator Warren actually said, per Politico:

“I wish Donald Trump would just disappear. Close down his Twitter account, drop out of the race and I’d be the happiest girl on the face of this Earth.”

Memo to Todd Starnes and his apparently non-existent editors and fact-checkers: there’s a difference between calling for Second Amendment violence and wishing someone would disappear.

Starnes is a serial liar, yet Fox News lets him get away with it, and has for years.

Starnes used to just stick to made-up “religious freedom” issues while attacking big-city liberals and LGBT people, but recently he has expanded his territory in the Fox News universe and now is a full-fledged political commentator who continues to give news stories his same unique treatment. 

What does that mean?

Let’s harken back to a few weeks before Christmas, 2013, when Starnes told his readers and listeners at Fox News (he used to be mostly just a Fox News radio guy) that a Georgia public school was confiscating Christmas cards. Starnes, who attended college in Georgia, surely knew the powder keg he was lighting, and so he did it.

“For as long as anyone can remember, teachers at Brooklet Elementary School have posted Christmas cards in the hallways outside their classrooms – until Monday,” Starnes wrote in a post titled, “Georgia School Confiscates Christmas Cards.” 

When boys and girls returned from Thanksgiving break, they discovered that their teachers’ Christmas cards had been removed – under orders from the Georgia school’s administration. Robb Kicklighter’s wife is a third grade teacher at the school. He said many teachers are disgruntled by the school’s decision to confiscate the Christmas cards. “They took down the cards so the kids can’t see them,” he told me. “Some of the cards had the word ‘Christmas’ and some had Nativity scenes.” The Christmas card censorship comes as the Bulloch County Board of Education cracks down on religious expression in their schools.

Was this true?

Of course not.

Starnes didn’t bother to actually do the work of a journalist, he did the bidding of his buddies of the religious right.

What was the truth?

The cards belong to school staff and “due to a legitimate, personal privacy concern raised by one of the school’s staff members,” the school moved the cards into the the staff office so “so that the staff member could still participate in the tradition,” according to Principal Marlin Baker.

In other words, it was none of Starnes’ business. (Nor yours, nor mine.)

And what happened?

“Unfortunately, today the school was terrorized by an intentional and vicious dissemination of untrue information that disrupted the good work going on inside,” Principal Baker and the school system said in a statement. “Fox News Radio Commentary Host Todd Starnes, acting on misinformation that neither he, nor his media outlet corroborated with the school system or Baker, misreported a story about student Christmas Cards being removed from the school. Baker did not receive any questions from the local community either.”

Let’s do that again: “the school was terrorized by an intentional and vicious dissemination of untrue information” by Todd Starnes.

Fox News, with or without Roger Ailes, is still Fox News. 

EARLIER:

Dan Rather: ‘No Citizen Who Cares About the Country and Its Future Can Ignore What Trump Said’

Why Trump’s ‘Second Amendment’ Attack on Clinton Is Even More Dangerous Than You Might Have Thought

NRA Launches $3 Million Anti-Clinton Ad Buy on Heels of Trump Call for ‘Second Amendment’ Violence

‘It’s an Assassination Threat’: Democratic Lawmakers Slam Trump for ‘Second Amendment’ Remarks

Secret Service Is ‘Aware’ of Trump’s ‘Second Amendment’ Comments Against Clinton

Former CIA Director Weighs in on Trump’s Call for ‘Second Amendment’ Violence Against Clinton

Clinton Campaign Responds to Trump’s Call for ‘Second Amendment’ Violence Against Her

Donald Trump: ‘The Second Amendment People Maybe’ Can Stop Clinton From Picking SCOTUS Judges (Video)

 

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COMMENTARY

‘I’m Broke’: One Day Before Shutdown and With No Plan McCarthy Says He Has ‘Nothing’ in His ‘Back Pocket’

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Just 30 hours before his own Republican conference likely will have succeeded in shutting down the federal government of the United States, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy candidly admitted to reporters he’s run out of ideas.

Earlier Friday in an “embarrassing failure,” 21 House Republicans killed legislation from their own party, a short-term continuing resolution, that would have kept the federal government open.

Later on Friday afternoon, swarmed by reporters, McCarthy was asked if he was going to tell them what his plans are. He sarcastically replied, “No, I’m going to keep it all a secret.”

When pressed, he said he would “keep working, and make sure we solve this problem.”

“What’s in your back pocket, Speaker?” another reporter asked, pressing him for an answer.

“Nothing right now. I’m broke,” he admitted, apparently referring to options and ideas to avoid a shutdown.

READ MORE: ‘Bad News’ for Sidney Powell as First Trump Co-Defendant in Georgia RICO Case Takes Plea Deal: Legal Expert

But another reporter asked Speaker McCarthy the main question: Would he partner with House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to put the Senate’s bill before the House.

He refused to answer.

Just before 5 PM CNN’s Manu Raju reported on the ongoing House Republicans’ closed-door meeting with the Speaker, a meeting where the 21 Republicans who will likely be effectively responsible for the shutdown reportedly did not attend.

“McCarthy is telling [Republicans] now there aren’t many options to avoid a shutdown, according to sources in room. He says they can approve GOP’s stop-gap plan that failed, accept Senate plan, put a ‘clean’ stop-gap on floor to dare Democrats to block it — or shut down the government.”

READ MORE: Will McConnell and Senate Republicans Use Feinstein’s Passing to Grind Biden’s Judicial Confirmations to a Halt?

He adds, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) largely responsible for the impending likely shutdown and the impending possible ouster of McCarthy said: “We will not pass a continuing resolution on terms that continue America’s decline.”

At midnight Saturday Republicans will likely have succeeded in furloughing 3.5 million million federal workers – two million of them service members in the U.S. Armed Forces – and countless contractors, while financially harming untold thousands of businesses that rely on income from all those workers to keep running – unless Speaker McCarthy puts a bipartisan continuing resolution approved by at least 75 U.S. Senators on the floor, legislation every House Democrat is likely to vote for.

Should he do so, many believe he will have also signed his own pink slip.

But whether or not the government shuts down, and whether or not McCarthy puts the Senate’s CR on the floor, according to The Washington Post the far right extremists in his party are already moving to oust him “as early as next week.”

The Biden campaign is making certain Americans realize the blame for the impending shutdown sits at McCarthy’s feet.

At 6:23 PM Friday evening, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman wrote on social media: “HOUSE REPUBLICANS HAVE NO PLAN TO KEEP GOVERNMENT OPEN.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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News

‘Bad News’ for Sidney Powell as First Trump Co-Defendant in Georgia RICO Case Takes Plea Deal: Legal Expert

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The first of 19 co-defendants in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ RICO and election interference case against Donald Trump has pleaded guilty in what is being described as a “plea deal.”

“Under the terms of an agreement with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office, Hall pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit computer theft, conspiracy to commit computer trespass, conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy, and conspiracy to defraud the state,” NBC News reports. “Under the terms of the deal, he’s being sentenced to five years probation.”

CNN previously reported “Hall, a bail bondsman and pro-Trump poll-watcher in Atlanta, spent hours inside a restricted area of the Coffee County elections office when voting systems were breached in January 2021. The breach was connected to efforts by pro-Trump conspiracy theorists to find voter fraud. Hall was captured on surveillance video at the office, on the day of the breach. He testified before the grand jury in Fulton County case and acknowledged that he gained access to a voting machine.”

READ MORE: Will McConnell and Senate Republicans Use Feinstein’s Passing to Grind Biden’s Judicial Confirmations to a Halt?

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and frequent MSNBC contributor, says Hall “was in the thick of things with Sidney Powell on Jan 7 for the Coffee County scheme involving voting machines. If he’s cooperating, it’s a bad sign for her.”

Hall’s plea deal “spells bad news for, among others, Sidney Powell,” says former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, an NYU Law professor of law. Goodman posted a graphic showing the overlap in charges against Hall and Powell, which he called “alleged joint actions.”

See the graphic above or at this link.

 

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News

Far-Right Republicans Kill GOP Bill to Keep Government Running in ‘Embarrassing Failure’ for McCarthy: Report

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With a shutdown less than 36 hours away, far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives Friday afternoon voted against their party’s own legislation to kept the federal government running. Democrats opposed the content of the bill and voted against it. Just 21 far-right members of the GOP conference were able to effectively force what appears to be an all but inevitable shutdown at midnight on Saturday.

“HARDLINE HOUSE RS take down stopgap funding bill. 21 GOP no votes. 232-198,” reported Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman just before 2 PM Friday.

NBC News reported that a “band of conservative rebels on Friday revolted and blocked House Republicans’ short-term funding bill to keep the government open, delivering a political blow to Speaker Kevin McCarthy and likely cementing the chances of a painful government shutdown that is less than 48 hours away.”

READ MORE: Will McConnell and Senate Republicans Use Feinstein’s Passing to Grind Biden’s Judicial Confirmations to a Halt?

“Twenty-one rebels, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a conservative bomb-thrower and a top Donald Trump ally, voted Friday afternoon to scuttle the 30-day funding bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, leaving Republicans without a game plan to avert a shutdown. The vote failed,” NBC added. “The embarrassing failure of the GOP measure once again highlights the dilemma for McCarthy as his hard-liners strongly oppose a short-term bill even if it includes conservative priorities. It leaves Congress on a path to a shutdown, with no apparent offramp to avoiding it — or to quickly reopen the government.”

A bipartisan group of at least 75 U.S. Senators has passed two bills this week that would keep the government running. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has refused to allow it to come to the floor for a vote.

 

 

 

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