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Watch: Kari Lake Ad Features Pastor Who Frames LGBTQ People as Sex-Obsessed Violent Criminals

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In two weeks Arizona voters could elect a Trump-endorsed Republican and former TV news reporter who just approved an ad featuring what many would assume is a mild-mannered small business owner who apparently was thinking of voting for Democrat Katie Hobbs for governor but says she’s just “too liberal” so he has to vote for Kari Lake because of “President Biden’s” inflation.

Lake is a far-right extremist who says Democrats are pushing a “demonic agenda.” She is also anti-immigrant, an election denier, and an anti-science Christian nationalist who opposes mask or vaccine mandates, claims she has not been vaccinated, and promoted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as “lifesaving drugs” in the fight against COVID-19. Lake opposes legal protections for LGBTQ people.

In reality, as Mother Jones‘ David Corn reveals, the man in the ad who describes himself as “a husband and father of five” and runs “a small business in Phoenix” is a viciously anti-LGBTQ pastor who as far back as 2014 has preached outrageous and dangerous lies about gay men.

Justin Erickson is the head of Hard Wired Coaching, but he is also a “homophobic bigot” who “has spread vicious falsehoods about gay and lesbian people, casting them as depraved, wicked, and criminally-inclined. He has vilified Islam. And his church, which holds services in the gym of a charter school, demands the subservience of women.”

READ MORE: Arizona GOP Nominee Caught Red-Handed Using Footage of Russian Troops Marching in a Victory Parade in Her Campaign Ad

He does all this as the “pastor at the fundamentalist Desert Bible Church in Scottsdale.”

According to Mother Jones, Pastor Erickson – most gay men will be surprised to learn – claims that three in ten gay men have had over 1000 different sexual partners, and some have over 300 different sexual partners every year, which means on average they have sex once a day six days a week 52 weeks a year.

If you’re math-inclined you’ll find the next statistic even more startling.

According to Erickson, most gay men, including those who have over 1000 sexual partners in their lives, don’t even live to be 40.

And half of them have AIDS, Erickson falsely claimed.

READ MORE: 2020 Election Denier Kari Lake Lashes Out at CNN Host After She’s Asked if She’ll Accept 2022 Results

In fact, it’s all false, and according to Mother Jones, “reckless.”

“In a 2014 sermon on homosexuality,” Mother Jones reports, “Erickson proclaimed that ‘fifty percent of the homosexual LGBT-Now-Q community, 50 percent have AIDS. One in twenty are child molesters, on the sex offender registry.’ These numbers were way off. In 2014, Gallup found that about 9 million Americans self-identified as LGBT, and a different study concluded that about 700,000 gay and bisexual men were living with HIV, far fewer than half the gay and lesbian population. Moreover, Erickson’s stats about LGBT child molesters were dangerously false.”

“Under his math, about half of the 800,000 or so people on sex offender registries would have to be gay, yet according to one study, heterosexual pedophiles outnumbers homosexual pedophiles by 11-to-1. He was recklessly and inaccurately depicting LGBT people as threats to children.”

There’s more.

The man in the Kari Lake-approved ad has also claimed that “80 percent of homosexuals have STDs, and—how sad is this?—2 percent, 2 percent of homosexuals in the LGBT community make it to the age of 65. The average lifespan for an average person in our world is 75. Those is the LGBT community, most of them don’t make it to 39.”

All of these claims are false.

READ MORE: Armed ‘Vigilantes’ Intimidate Arizona Voters at Mail-In Ballot Drop Boxes

Mother Jones reports there “seems to be no scientific basis for these claims. Though HIV still presented a health risk for gay men, the American Journal of Public Health in 2016 noted, ‘no general population-based survey, to the best of our knowledge, has examined whether self-identified lesbians, bisexuals, or gay men are more likely than are heterosexuals to experience early mortality.'”

“Erickson claimed that the ‘average homosexual has had in a lifetime over 500 sexual partners. Eighty percent admit that half of them are absolute total strangers. Thirty percent of those who commit homosexuality, 30 percent, have had over 1000 partners. Three hundred different people a year.’ A 2013 study found that the mean number of male sexual partners for gay and bisexual in the preceding year men was 2.3—which indicates the ‘average’ gay man does not have hundreds of sexual partners.”

What about that “homosexual love quarrel” claim?

Erickson says that in Los Angeles, the LAPD assume when they see a vicious, brutal murder, it’s the result of a “homosexual love quarrel.”

“The LAPD has a statistic,” Erickson claimed, “when they, when the officers come on to a crime scene and there is a murder and the murder itself has been an absolute bludgeoning, multiple stab wounds, multiple gunshot wounds, they immediately begin with the premise that this is a homosexual love quarrel.”

Lake has been highly criticized for her associations with other far-right extremists and extremism.

In August Lake was slammed for endorsing an antisemitic Oklahoma Republican candidate who supports a “white nationalist and neo-Nazi conspiracy theory that is a variation on the so-called ‘great replacement’ theory,” the Arizona Mirror reported.

“The theory, also known as the Kalergi Plan, posits that global elites — especially Jewish people — are trying to rid the world of white people through immigration and interracial breeding,” the Mirror explained. “The idea has led to deadly violence.”

Last week a Lake campaign aide tweeted an image of a bloody human sacrifice and wished everyone a “Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

This week Lake threatened to shut down the Super Bowl in a rant with lies about immigrants.

“You want to tell me, that a bunch of football teams, owned by billionaires, are okay with fentanyl pouring across our border at a record level, killing young people? The No. 1 killer is fentanyl. 18-45. It’s killing a generation of people,” she said, calling for U.S. Military to go after immigrants crossing the border unlawfully.

One of the problems with Lake’s comments is fentanyl is not “pouring across our border at a record level” because of immigrants.

The vast majority of fentanyl being brought across the border into the U.S. is being trafficked for personal use and for illegal sales by U.S. citizens, not asylum-seeking immigrants.

Watch the Lake-approved ad below or at this link.

 

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‘Repercussions’: Democrats and Republicans Stand Against ‘Pro-Putin’ House GOP Faction

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14 hours ago

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April 18, 2024

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Some House Democrats and House Republicans are coming together toward a common opponent: far-right “pro-Putin” hardliners in the House Republican conference, who appear to be led by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

Congresswoman Greene has been threatening to oust the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Last month she filed a “motion to vacate the chair.” If she chooses to call it up she could force a vote on the House floor to try to remove Speaker Johnson.

House Democrats say they are willing to vote against ousting Johnson, as long as the Speaker puts on the floor desperately needed and long-awaited legislation to fund aid to Ukraine and Israel. Johnson has refused to put the Ukraine aid bill on the floor for months, but after Iran attacked Israel Johnson switched gears. Almost all Democrats and a seemingly large number of Republicans want to pass the Ukraine and Israel aid packages.

RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘Putin’s Envoy’? Democrat’s Bills Mock Republican’s Actions

Forgoing the possibility of installing Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, which is conceivable given Johnson’s now one-vote majority, Democrats say if Johnson does the right thing, they will throw him their support.

“I think he’ll be in good shape,” to get Democrats to support him, if he puts the Ukraine aid bill on the floor, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) told CNN Thursday. “I would say that there’s a lot of support for the underlying bills. I think those are vital.”

“If these bills were delivered favorably, and the aid was favorably voted upon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene went up there with a motion to remove him, for instance, I think there’s gonna be a lot of Democrats that move to kill that motion,” Congressman Krishnamoorthi said. “They don’t want to see him getting punished for doing the right thing.”

“I think it is a very bad policy of the House to allow one individual such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an arsonist to this House of Representatives,” U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) told CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane, when asked about intervening to save Johnson. He added he doesn’t want her “to have so much influence.”

U.S. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, one of several Republicans who won their New York districts in 2022, districts that were previously held by Democrats, opposes Greene’s motion to vacate – although he praised the Georgia GOP congresswoman.

CNN’s Manu Raju reports Republicans “say it’s time to marginalize hardliners blocking [their] agenda.”

D’Esposito, speaking to Raju, called for “repercussions for those who completely alienate the will of the conference. The people gave us the majority because they wanted Republicans to govern.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, like D’Esposito is another New York Republican who won a previously Democratic seat in 2022. Lawler spoke out against the co-sponsor of Greene’s motion to vacate, U.S. Rep. Tim Massie (R-KY), along with two other House Republicans who are working to block the Ukraine aid bill via their powerful seats on the Rules Committee.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a former Navy pilot, blasted Congresswoman Greene.

RELATED: ‘They Want Russia to Win So Badly’: GOP Congressman Blasts Far-Right House Republicans

“Time is of the essence” for Ukraine, Rep. Sherrill told CNN Wednesday night. “The least we can do is support our Democratic allies, especially given what we know Putin to do. To watch a report and to think there are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right that are pro-Putin? That are pro-Russia? It is really shocking.”

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), as NCRM reported Thursday, had denounced Greene.

“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it,” he said, referring to the Ukraine aid bill Greene and her cohorts want to tank. “I mean that’s a strange position to take.”

The far-right hardliners are also causing chaos in the House.

“Things just got very heated on the House floor,” NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin reported earlier Thursday. “Group of hardliners were trying to pressure Johnson to only put Israel aid on the floor and hold Ukraine aid until the Senate passed HR2.”

HR2 is the House Republicans’ extremist anti-immigrant legislation that has n o chance of passage in the Senate nor would it be signed into law by President Biden.

“Johnson said he couldn’t do it, and [U.S. Rep. Derrick] Van Orden,” a far-right Republican from Wisconsin “called him ‘tubby’ and vowed to bring on the MTV [Motion to Vacate.]”

“No one in the group (Gaetz, Boebert, Burchett, Higgins, Donalds et al.) were threatening Johnson with an MTV,” Tsirkin added. “Van Orden seemed to escalate things dramatically…”

Despite Greene’s pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine positions, her falsehoods about “Ukrainian Nazis,” and Russians not slaughtering Ukrainian clergy, reporters continue to “swarm”:

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Afraid and Intimidated’: Trump Trial Juror Targeted by Fox News Dismissed

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‘They Want Russia to Win So Badly’: GOP Congressman Blasts Far-Right House Republicans

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18 hours ago

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April 18, 2024

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A sitting Republican Congressman is harshly criticizing far-right House Republicans over their apparent support of Russia.

“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it. I mean that’s a strange position to take,” U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a three-term Texas Republican rated a hard-core conservative told CNN’s Manu Raju, in video posted Thursday. “I think they want to be in the minority too. I think that’s an obvious reality.”

Congressman Crenshaw was referring to the movement led by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), now joined by U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), over the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s decision to finally put legislation on the floor to provide funding to Ukraine to support that sovereign nation in its fight against Russia.

“I’m still trying to process all the b*llsh*t,” Crenshaw added.

Crenshaw on Thursday also commented on Speaker Johnson’s remarks, stating he will hold the Ukraine funding vote regardless of attempts to oust him over it.

“To be clear, he’s being threatened for even allowing a vote to come to the floor. For allowing the constitutional process to play out as intended by our Founders. That’s a wild thing to consider, especially when his enemies consider themselves ‘conservative.’ Not conserving the painstaking constitutional process our Founders created, that’s for sure. Conserving Putin’s gains on the battlefield, more like it.”

Journalist Brian Beutler, a former editor-in-chief at Crooked Media, called it, “darkly funny to me that a pincer movement of MAGAns and leftists mock liberals for claiming the GOP works hand in glove with Russia, and then multiple conservative Republican dissenters are like ‘no it’s true, we’re lousy with Russian influence.'”

Watch Crenshaw’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘Putin’s Envoy’? Democrat’s Bills Mock Republican’s Actions

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‘Afraid and Intimidated’: Trump Trial Juror Targeted by Fox News Dismissed

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21 hours ago

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April 18, 2024

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One of seven jurors selected to serve on the New York criminal trial of Donald Trump has been dismissed after telling the judge she became concerned about her ability to remain impartial. That concern came after too many identifying details about potential jurors this week were reported by the press, leading the judge to admonish the media Thursday morning.

“Although the jurors’ names are being kept confidential, the woman, a nurse, ‘conveyed that after sleeping on it overnight she had concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial in this case,’ New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan said before calling her into the room for questioning,” the Associated Press reports. “The woman said her family members and friends were questioning her about being a juror.”

Judge Merchan, after he had questioned the juror, chastised the media, specifically directing reporters to “abide by common sense” and not report jurors’ identifying information, as some in the press had done as soon as jury selection began.

“As evidenced by what’s happened already, it’s become a problem,” Judge Merchan said.

“We just lost what probably would have been a very good juror,” he noted. “She said she was afraid and intimidated by the press, all the press.”

RELATED: ‘Big Journalism Fail’: Mainstream Media Blasted Over Coverage of Historic Trump Trial

Alexander Panetta of Canada’s CBC News adds, “Merchan wants changes in the juror info that gets out to the public. He says jurors’ employer name will be redacted from court records.”

But he also reports the now-excused juror “says family and friends [said] that she had been easy to identify, based on publicly available info about her from the court. She said she definitely has concerns now.”

Merchan also “lamented that media reported another juror has an Irish accent. He asked media in the room to be more careful.”

Responding to the loss of the juror, The Atlantic’s David Drum remarked, “[Trump] juror intimidation gets results.”

The dismissed juror had been targeted by Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Tuesday (video below).

“I’m not so sure about Juror No. 2,” Watters told Fox News views.

Trump on Wednesday, appearing to violate his gag order, had targeted the jurors.

READ MORE: ‘Stop Bringing Up Nazis and Hitler’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Smacked Down by Democrats

Former state and federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch Network, commented, “Fox & Trump are coordinating to intimidate jurors.”

Mediate reported, “Donald Trump appeared to violate the gag order set forth by Judge Juan Merchan.”

“On Wednesday, Trump took to Truth Social and quoted comments made about potential jurors by Fox News host Jesse Watters on The Five Wednesday night.”

Trump quoted Watters, posting: “They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury.”

“That post appears to be in direct violation of Merchan’s gag order, a reality highlighted by JustSecurity’s Ryan Goodman,” Mediate added.

On Wednesday Watters had gone even further and presented biographical and identifying details of all seven jurors. That video is currently at the top of a pinned post on the Fox News website.

READ MORE: Fox Personality’s Tweet Called ‘Jury Tampering’ by US Congressman

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