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Biden Travels to Kentucky to Console Flood Survivors After 37 Died – Some Angered McConnell and Paul ‘MIA’

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On the first full day he has been free from COVID President Joe Biden traveled to Kentucky, the home state of the Senate Republican Minority Leader, to visit with flood survivors devastated by lost lives and lost property.

On August 1, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced the historic floods had killed 37 people. Hundreds more were unaccounted for.

“I still have aunts and uncles that are stuck in hollers. They are diabetics. They need insulin,” Knott County resident Zack Hall said to CNN the following day, August 2. “I went to visit one yesterday — was lucky enough to get up there (and deliver supplies) with an ATV. But there was no road … and that’s what people need to understand, is the infrastructure here is just completely destroyed and it makes relief efforts [difficult].”

READ MORE: ‘It’s So Gross’: NY Times Blasted for Negative Reporting on Biden by ‘Blindered Horse-Race Analysts’

On Monday, six days later, President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden flew down to Kentucky, where they were met by Gov. Beshear. The President, the governor, and the First Lady toured the devastation as President Biden spoke privately and on camera with survivors.

Conspicuously absent? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. Neither according to reports have toured the devastation.

Not absent was public support for the President and public outrage for the two Kentucky Republicans.

READ MORE: Republicans Largely Ignore Biden Killing of Top al-Qaeda Terrorist While Some Use It to Attack the President

“I’m a Kentuckian born and raised,” wrote former pro-basketball player Rex Chapman, now a social media influencer who has played on four NBA teams. “It is absolutely mind boggling to me that Joe Biden has been to visit families of eastern Kentucky who’ve been absolutely devastated by floods — and Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul haven’t.”

Chapman’s remarks were in response to this video of President Biden in Kentucky on Monday.

In. it, Biden says the survivors he talked to are “not just Kentuckians, they’re Americans.”

“This happened in America,” Biden said forcefully. “And everybody has an obligation to help.”

“I promise you,” He told the survivors, “we’re staying, the federal government along with the state and county, we’re staying until everybody’s back to work.”

And he promised they would not just be made whole, but “better than they were before.”

Chapman added, “Biden has had COVID – and the second he could go to Kentucky he went. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell live there and they couldn’t be bothered.”

Award-winning political and communications strategist Greg Pinelo weighed in, writing: “Noting for the record, Joe Biden went to the disaster zone in Kentucky before either Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul. They’ll say they were busy voting against climate change action and making insulin affordable, but it’s been 8 days.”

Coincidentally, Biden and the Democrats on Sunday capped the price of insulin for Medicare patients at $35 and passed the largest bill to address climate change in history. Republicans killed an legislation that would have capped the price at $35 for all Americans. Earlier in his term President Biden signed into law a huge infrastructure bill that would help prevent flooding and create roads and bridges that would withstand heavy flooding.

This isn’t the first time McConnell and Paul were MIA as President Biden toured natural disaster devastation. In mid December last year Biden traveled to Dawson Springs, Kentucky, to visit with survivors of massive tornado damage.

One day later award-winning writer Chip Franklin tweeted, “Who else thinks its reprehensible Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul refused to accompany President Biden in Kentucky?”

Noting Biden isn’t doing this to score political points, attorney Adam B. Bear wrote Monday: “The last time Kentucky voted for a Democrat in a Presidential race was for Bill Clinton in 1996. Not to forget about Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul… Regardless, President Biden is in KY consoling people whose lives have been upended by a terrible storm.”

Others on social media also blasted McConnell and Paul.

Journalist Aaron Rupar noted, “Biden lost Kentucky by 26 points. He works for Kentuckians all the same, as any solid president should.”

“Rand paul? Mia,” tweeted one user, noting Sen. Paul is missing in action. Her bio says she’s a “life long republican. US Navy vet,” and “unabashed anti trump.”

“Mitch McConnell? Mia. The dude with the paper towels?” she added, referring to President Donald Trump’s disastrous visit to hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico, “Mia.”

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Fox Hosts Try to Convince Viewers Trump ‘Not Really All That Different’ From Them

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Fox News hosts are suggesting that President Donald Trump is just an average guy.

In a segment on the cable network’s “Outnumbered” on Wednesday, co-host Harris Faulkner told her colleagues, “it’s ironic, though, but he’s not really all that different.”

Faulkner then sought to portray Trump — a billionaire real estate developer who owns multiple golf courses and the Mar-a-Lago resort — as relatable, describing him as “just a guy’s guy” and “not really all that different” from ordinary Americans.

“He loves McDonald’s,” she said.

“He likes to hang.”

“He loves his family.”

“And kind of, like, not that McDonald’s is poor to being, like, an all American, but I think it is — love those fries,” Faulkner remarked.

READ MORE: House Republican Calls for Bondi to Testify Over Epstein Files ‘Failure to Comply’

“But, I mean, he’s all those things that you don’t have to have a billion dollars or have to have zero dollars to get,” she exclaimed. “He’s just a guy’s guy.”

Faulkner went on to say that Trump “respects women.”

“He’s hired a lot of tremendously talented women — we’ve met them.”

“My dad,” she added, “used to say, the test of a man is how he treats the women in his life.”

“Can he be that alpha, and be loving, and generous, and all those things?”

Co-host Riley Gaines added, “They called him a misogynist but really he’s the worst misogynist, ever.”

READ MORE: Trump Blasted Federal Prosecutors as ‘Weak’ for Not Targeting His Adversaries: Report

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House Republican Calls for Bondi to Testify Over Epstein Files ‘Failure to Comply’

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A prominent House Republican is calling for U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify before Congress over her failure to comply with the requirements of federal law surrounding the release of the Epstein Files.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the federal government to release all unclassified documents in the Epstein files by December 19. Reports state that less than one percent of all the documents have been made public.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the lead co-sponsor of legislation forcing a vote on the release of the files, on Wednesday said that the Attorney General “should be called to testify in the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee where she must answer for her failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

READ MORE: Federal Officer Who Shot Renee Good ‘In Hiding’: Report

Congressman Massie also called it “unusual” that Bondi has “never appeared in front of the House Judiciary Committee.”

Massie, along with California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, last week asked a federal judge to consider appointing a special master to oversee the production and publication of the Epstein Files.

“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” Massie and Khanna wrote to Judge Paul E. Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York, according to Politico.

“I think it’s the quickest way to produce, to expedite the document production, because these lawyers at the DOJ understand what judges can do in courtrooms,” Massie added. “And they are already communicating with that judge, even though they’re not communicating with us.”

U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) told CNN that “Donald Trump continues to lead a White House coverup of the Epstein files.”

“Why has it been weeks now, weeks, that the date has passed, where all the files should have been released to the Congress and to the public? We have received one percent of the files. That is criminal, it’s illegal. What is Pam Bondi and Donald Trump hiding?”

READ MORE: Trump Blasted Federal Prosecutors as ‘Weak’ for Not Targeting His Adversaries: Report

 

Image via Reuters

 

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Federal Officer Who Shot Renee Good ‘In Hiding’: Report

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross, who reportedly fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, at point-blank range in Minneapolis last week, is now said to be in hiding.

“I know for a fact now he has to be in hiding … for the safety of him and his family,” Trump border czar Tom Homan said during an episode of the “Will Cain Country” podcast, according to The Hill.

Homan alleged that there are “wanted” posters with Ross’ picture and license plate number, and said that Ross is receiving death threats.

“It’s beyond the pale,” Homan added.

READ MORE: Trump Blasted Federal Prosecutors as ‘Weak’ for Not Targeting His Adversaries: Report

He also suggested that Ross may decide to take legal action against those who have labeled him a murderer.

Vice President JD Vance said that Ross and all ICE officers have absolute federal immunity. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Ross has “federal immunity.”

“The precedent here is very simple,” Vance said, according to CNN. “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action – that’s a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

Legal experts disagree.

“The idea that a federal agent has absolute immunity for crimes they commit on the job is absolutely ridiculous,” said Michael J.Z. Mannheimer, a constitutional law expert, told CNN.

The Trump Department of Justice has said it will not open a civil rights investigation into Ross’ shooting of Good.

President Donald Trump claimed that Good was acting in a “disrespectful” manner while he defended the ICE officer.

READ MORE: Trump Declares Grocery Prices ‘Rapidly Down’ as Cost of Food Surges to 3-Year High

 

Image via Reuters 

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