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GOP Lawmaker Tells Incarcerated Addict Life Is Hard: ‘I’ve Got $5 Million of Negative Ads Coming at Me’

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Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Brat hit the campaign trail Thursday by visiting a Virginia county jail to speak with a group of incarcerated addicts. It didn’t go well.

One woman explained to the Virginia Tea Party Congressman she feels she’s getting her life back together, but her real fear is what happens when she gets out of jail. Ben Paviour, politics reporter for NPR station WCVE recorded the audio below and reported the story.

Congressman Brat, who President Trump just endorsed, appeared to be hurrying her up, repeatedly interrupting her by saying “right,” as she told him about her life.

The unnamed woman told Brat she’s worried that everything that she’s accomplished will just “go down the drain.”

“I have a goal and I have a fear because, going to school, going to my meetings,” she said, “is too much for me.”

She talked about not being able to drive because she apparently no longer has a license. And she told Rep. Brat that when she gets released she’ll be able to stay in a recovery house, but only for 90 days, because of lack of funding.

“Now I’m starting to think, once my 90 days are up, what am I going to do?” she said. “I have a fear of that also.”

The sheriff appeared to make a pitch to Brat about getting more funding for the recovery house so addicts can have more time to adjust once they are released from jail.

Rep. Brat didn’t bite, didn’t offer any hope, but he did commiserate, by explaining that life is hard for everyone and they’re wrong if they think the life of a Congressman is easy.

“You think you’re having a hard time? I’ve got $5 million worth of negative ads coming at me,” Brat told the woman. “How do you think I’m feeling? Nothing’s easy. For anybody.”

“You think, I’m a congressman, ‘Oh, life’s easy, this guy’s off having steaks every day,’” he said. “Baloney. I’ve got a daughter, she’s got to deal with that crap on TV every day,” he said of the attack ads facing him.

“So it’s tough,” Brat added. “No one out there’s got some easy life. Right?”

Listen:

Later in the clip, perhaps realizing how offensive his remarks were, Brat acknowledged, “you’ve got it harder.”

“I’m not dismissing that. You’ve got some fierce, real anxiety with coming up with a job or whatever. And what you’ve got to find is a support system.”

That support system, Brat suggested, should include the Bible.

Rep. Brat’s Democratic opponent posted this tweet condemning his remarks:

Rep. Brat’s campaign refused to respond to the reporter who wrote the story, but did manage to link to his audio and send out a faith-focused press release.

Hat tip: The Daily Beast

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

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Lara Trump Thinks Microsoft Office Assistant ‘Clippy’ Is a Real Person Spying on Everything She Writes

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Fox host Lara Trump either has a new conspiracy theory, or she is very confused.

Hosting the 5 p.m. EST hour, Trump was ranting about Microsoft Word’s Clippy and the suggested changes to words like “postman” into “letter carrier” and “mankind” into “humankind.” It’s part of the right’s latest attack on “wokism,” which they define as anything done in polite society that makes them uncomfortable.

“Someone is reading this?! And assessing what I’m writing?” Trump said, assuming that a person was actually watching and reading what she was typing in Word instead of an AI programed into what they call “office assistant.” It was once named Clippy, and it was never a real person.

According to Trump, the “office assistant” is a lot like her fancy new car that doesn’t require a key, just a push-button to start it. She said that the car wouldn’t start if she didn’t jingle the keys around. That’s false. Push-button start cars use safety technology that requires your foot on the break, the car in park, and the key fob in the car with you. It’s essentially a small low-frequency transmitter. So if the car won’t start, it’s likely that you need to replace the batteries.

According to Microsoft, the assistant doesn’t have to be turned on.

“The checker can be turned on and off in a menu called ‘Grammar & Refinements’, which lists everything it checks: Age bias, Cultural bias, Ethnic slurs, Gender bias, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Gender-Specific Language, Racial Bias, Sexual Orientation Bias and Socioeconomic Bias,” said the statement.

See Lara Trump’s rant below:

 

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Trump Official Billed US for $456,000 in Private Jets Over Five Months: Report

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New information is coming out about the use of private jets by Tom Price, the former Georgia congressman who spent eight months as Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2017.

“Tom Price, the health and human services secretary, resigned under pressure… after racking up at least $400,000 in travel bills for chartered flights and undermining President Trump’s promise to drain the swamp of a corrupt and entitled capital,” The New York Timesreported at the time. “Already in trouble with Mr. Trump for months of unsuccessful efforts to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s health care program, Mr. Price failed to defuse the president’s anger by offering regret and a partial reimbursement.”

A Freedom of Information Act request was filed by The Washington Post and the new emails the newspaper obtained shed light on how the scandal began.

It started in April of 2017, only four months after Price took over the department. Price’s staffers sought to fly him to Los Angeles after his Delta Air Lines flight was delayed due to bad weather.

“Officials quickly secured a $29,000 charter flight — which also had to be scuttled, as tornadoes plagued the D.C. region. But the day’s events left a scar on Price’s top aides, who vowed that the Trump Cabinet official would never again wait on a commercial airline’s schedule, and foreshadowed a five-month travel sprint in which the health department spent $456,000 in taxpayer money on Price’s charter flights across the United States,” the newspaper reported.

In one case, Price did not even need to fly at all, much less on a private jet.

“One of the final trips came in September 2017, when health officials chartered a jet for Price, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and their aides to fly round trip between Washington and Philadelphia — at a cost of $14,955 to taxpayers, according to government records,” The Post reported. “The department’s Office of Inspector General later concluded that Price’s flight to Philadelphia wasted more than $10,000 in taxpayer money compared with flying commercial, and that he could have made the trip by train.”

Prior to joining the Trump administration, Price spent a dozen years in Congress and chaired the House Budget Committee.

Read the full report.

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Launches Paranoid Rant: ‘Had to Get on My Knees and Pray to God’ US Gov’t. Didn’t Kill Him

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell defended his appallingly bad and debunked three-hour election conspiracy theory “documentary” called “Absolute Truth,” by saying he was so scared for his life during the Trump presidency that he prayed the federal government did not summarily execute him.

“Yeah, yeah, the ‘Absolute Proof,’ let me tell you the key part of that,” Lindell said. “This is probably the only time where I had a little fear and I had to pray, get on my knees and pray to God. This was 10 days before the impeachment trial. And let me tell you I’m 10 days before, and remember at the time that that was like the towards the end of January, you know the impeachment trials were Tuesday following like the February 8, okay?”

The second Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump was February 9-13. The House impeached Trump for a second time on January 13 in a 232–197 vote.

“And this was about maybe January 25 or so. I’m sitting there I go, ‘Wow, They’re gonna impeach him,’ and I had word that they were gonna impeach him,” Lindell said, presumably meaning “convict,” given Trump had already been impeached.

“We were not going to be able to show evidence at that trial,” Lindell continued, although it’s unclear why he said “we” since he was not on trial and was not legally part of Trump’s defense.

He then went on to call the January 6 insurrection, for which well over 600 people have been arrested and charged a “big fake insurgency or whatever that you’re against the government.”

“And guess who was number one on that list to come and get? Me. And they were coming, I’m going, ‘God they’re gonna kill me.’ You know, they’re gonna put me and hang me. And basically is what I’m thinking and at that moment he said, You know, I got to put a documentary, just put the evidence out there and make it.”

It’s also unclear why he would think the Trump DOJ or other agencies of the Trump administration would murder him.

Watch:

 

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