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‘Cancer on Democracy’: Steve Schmidt Destroys Rupert Murdoch Who ‘Monetized’ Trump’s ‘Insanity’ With ‘Hate’

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Lincoln Project co-founder and former Republican Steve Schmidt is blasting Donald Trump, the former president, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Rupert Murdoch, the head of the multi-national conglomeration that includes far right wing outlets like Fox News.

Schmidt in a Twitter thread Sunday night discussed his recent trip to Paris, which of course is also battling COVID-19 but without the presence of Trump and Murdoch, focusing his ire on the latter.

In France says Schmidt, COVID-19 is much more a medical issue than a political one, thanks to their not having the three billionaires.

“Trump is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans because of his insanity, narcissism, incompetence, malice and selfishness,” Schmidt writes. “Murdoch monetized the insanity by stepping on the gas and building a community of anger fueled by conspiracy, rage, hate, racial animus, nativism, jingoism, misinformation, venal stupidity and contempt for American ideals of equality, fairness, justice and democracy.”

“Zuckerberg built a mass surveillance company that imprisons victims (Americans) in an information archipelago guarded by malevolent algorithms that turn Trump’s insanity and Murdoch’s nihilism into a dogma that is tearing the country apart when it should be coming together in the common cause of defeating a terrible and shared common enemy, a disease that can take any of us or the people we love at any time.”

Murdoch, adds Schmidt, “has been a pancreatic cancer on democracy, pluralism and decency.”

 

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COMMENTARY

Antidepressants, Pot, and Women to Blame for Horrific July 4 Mass Shooting According to Tucker Carlson

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20 hours ago

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July 6, 2022

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Barely hours after authorities announced charges against the 21-year-old police believe shot and killed seven people and wounded scores of others at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, Tucker Carlson explained to his Fox News audience why Robert Crimo allegedly committed mass murder: women, marijuana, and antidepressants, along with a life filled with pornography, video games, and social media.

Experts disagree.

Carlson said Crimo seems “like a nutcase,” but he “he didn’t stand out, maybe because there’s a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act a lot like this guy.”

“That’s not an attack, it’s just true,” Carlson insisted, as Media Matters reports. “Like Crimo, they inhabit a solitary fantasy world of social media, porn, and video games. They are high on government-endorsed weed. ‘Smoke some more! It’s good for you,'” he mocked.

“They’re numbed by the endless psychotropic drugs that are handed out at every school in the country by crackpots posing as counselors,'” Carlson claimed, apparently referring to antidepressants, also known as SSRIs. School counselors, unless they are also MDs, cannot prescribe SSRIs.

(SSRIs are prescribed for “depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), premenstrual dysphoric disorder, migraine (prophylaxis), and other conditions.”)

RELATED: Highland Park Shooting Deaths Include Both Parents of Two Year Old Found at Scene of July 4th Massacre

Then Carlson arrived at the root of what he determined drives these young men, presumably these young men who kill.

Carlson, who has been labeled a “white nationalist,” and a “white supremacist,” neglected to mention the young men who are pulling the trigger at mass shootings are almost always white.

Instead, he says, “they are angry.”

Why?

Because, Carlson declares, “the authorities in their lives — mostly women — never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. ‘You’re male! You’re privileged.’ Imagine that. Try to imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that. So, a lot of young men in America are going nuts. Are you surprised?”

Meanwhile, very little is known about the shooter. It is not known if he’s taking antidepressants, using pot, has a mother who attacks him for his privilege, or uses porn. But Carlson and others at Fox News are suggesting to viewers they know why he flooded more than 70 rounds into an Independence Day parade.

There have been 320 mass shootings in America this year – and we’re only on day 187.

The nation has suffered 22,583 deaths from guns just this year alone. That’s 120 deaths on average every day.

Despite those numbers, the vast, vast majority of people taking antidepressants, or using pot or porn, are not pulling the trigger in a mass shooting.

Carlson points to no statistics to show women “never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege.”

In fact, he offers up no statistics, no proof at all of any of his claims.

Same with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, who blames the mass shooting on pot.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene quickly dredged up the “psychiatric drugs” allegation less than 24 hours after the shooting started.

“What drugs and/or psychiatric drugs was he on for his mind to be ruined in alternate reality games that caused him to commit a mass shooting? His parents know. The police know. School, arrest, hospital records? The public DESERVES to know.,” she tweeted.

Dr. Sherry Pagoto is a licensed clinical psychologist, social media researcher, professor at the University of Connecticut, and Director of the UConn Center for mHealth and Social Media. She’s also the former president of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

And she’s pushing back against the SSRI blame game.

“Psychologist here,” writes Dr. Pagoto. “Yep. And far more women take SSRIs than men and yet women never commit mass shootings. The SSRI hypothesis has absolutely no scientific support. Quite the contrary, SSRIs save lives.”

In 2019 Politifact looked at the “dubious claim that psychiatric drugs fuel mass shootings?” The fact-checking group talked with six medical experts, with one explaining “that in her view there is no evidence that psychiatric medicine is linked to mass shootings.”

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COMMENTARY

Grassley Slammed for Turning Photo With Iowa Family Who Drove 856 Miles to DC Into ‘Cheap Political Talking Point’

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4 weeks ago

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June 7, 2022

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Seven-term Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, who has served the people of Iowa since 1959, is being criticized for using a photo of a family from his home state who drove all the way to Washington, D.C. He suggested they complained about the price of gas after their long journey, and his caption on the photo of him with the family ties into his campaign re-election talking points.

Senator Grassley, 88, who is running for re-election and known for a unique style of tweeting, posted this on Monday:

That same day Grassley posted this tweet about gas prices, a common GOP talking point they are falsely blaming on President Joe Biden.

Writer, activist, former press secretary and communications director Charlotte Clymer blasted Senator Grassley, saying the family deserved “a hell of a lot better” than to be used for “a cheap and ridiculous political talking point.”

Other responses to the photo of Grassey and the Iowa family pointed out the obvious fact that if their goal was to talk about the price of gas they could have saved a 13 hour and 26-minute drive, each way (according to Google Maps) and just picked up the phone or met their Senator in a local office.

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COMMENTARY

‘Find a Spine’: State Farm Criticized After Celebrating Pride Then Dropping Program Supporting LGBTQ Books in Schools

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1 month ago

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May 24, 2022

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Over the past year, insurance giant State Farm has posted ten tweets supporting LGBTQ people, programs, and organizations, as recently as last week:

The $79 billion company will turn 100 years old next month, which coincidentally is LGBTQ Pride Month. It has made strong statements in support of LGBTQ equality and diversity. Just last June they tweeted: “We believe no one should be afraid to celebrate who they are. Let’s support our LGBTQ+ neighbors and show our Pride together!” They even tagged the tweet with their own corporate branding, using #GoodNeighbor and #PrideMonth hastags.

So many were left stunned when the Illinois-based corporation’s chief diversity officer sent an email to employees and agents, as The Daily Beast reports, stating it was dropping its “support of a philanthropic program, GenderCool,” saying it “has been the subject of news and customer inquiries.”

The program helps put LGBTQ-inclusive books into libraries and schools.

“This program that included books about gender identity was intended to promote inclusivity,” Victor Terry continued. “We will no longer support that program.”

And in an apparent bowing down to rising far right-wing extremism and anti-LGBTQ hate, the diversity expert declared, “conversations about gender and identity should happen at home with parents.”

The right-wing outlet Washington Examiner on Monday, as part of a series titled “Restoring America” published a report on State Farm’s support of LGBTQ students: “Backlash prompts State Farm to end program donating trans books to schools.” That article was a follow-up to one the very same day titled, “State Farm donating transgender books for 5-year-olds to schools in Florida.”

Here’s what those two pieces look like:

 

Outrage over State Farm’s “180” was immediate.

Well-known LGBTQ Activist and writer Charlotte Clymer explained via her Substack platform:

Parker Molloy, also a well-known LGBTQ activist and writer, blasted State Farm.

She adds: “One of the reasons this is getting to me so much has to do with the fact that my dad (who is great and accepting, etc.) is a State Farm agent. That company has been a part of my life for as long as I’ve been alive.”

Bobby Lewis, who writes for Media Matters, tweeted, “something as anodyne as a fucking insurance company buying kids books turned into another fascist outrage campaign, and the corporate cowards caved in a second. it’s pathetic.”

He wasn’t finished, adding: “corporate pride is all window dressing that will never save anyone, but goddamn find a spine you sniveling cowards.”

RELATED –
Far Right Activist Behind CRT Panic Brags About Attacks on Disney, State Farm for LGBTQ Support: Others ‘Will Be Next’

Veteran journalist Michelangelo Signorile, host of the SiriusXM Progress’ “Signorile Show” and writer of The Signorile Report newsletter calls State Farm’s actions “grotesque as LGBTQ rights are backsliding across the country. Now companies joining Ron DeSantis, MAGA and the ‘don’t say gay’ purge.”

More responses:

 

Image by State Farm via Flickr and a CC license

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