News
Watch: Kari Lake Ad Features Pastor Who Frames LGBTQ People as Sex-Obsessed Violent Criminals
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.”
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.
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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According to a report from former Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchell Epner at the Daily Beast, Donald Trump’s legal problems may be growing exponentially because there appears to be evidence he attempted to use the IRS to persecute political enemies before he lost re-election.
At issue, Epner wrote, are accusations from former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that the former president demanded the IRS look into tax returns filed by, among others, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
According to the legal expert, there is already an investigation by the IRS inspector general into the suspicious audits of the two FBI officials, with Epner writing, “As reported earlier this summer, both Comey and McCabe were subjected to highly unusual IRS audits. The odds of an individual randomly being subjected to this type of audit are similar to being struck by lightning. For both to be the subject of special audit by happenstance is about as likely as a whale falling from the sky and landing in the middle of a mountain range.”
As he notes, there is evidence Kelly is willing to provide evidence about Trump’s illegal demand, with Epner writing that “a president who unlawfully seeks to have an individual audited is subject to up to five years in prison. The crime does not require that the IRS actually carry out the audit. The crime is completed with the mere request.”
RELATED: The coming indictment of Donald Trump will break his power: former Obama lawyer
“If Trump made this demand while he was president, that is an unambiguous felony. Section 7217 of Title 26 of the United States Code makes it a crime for the ‘President’ to ‘request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer,'” he wrote before adding, “Based on my training and experience as an Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted tax offenses, I expect that each IRS employee along the chain of command kept detailed notes and records of who ordered them to conduct the audit, and on the facts that were cited to support that audit demand. I would not be surprised if each of those IRS employees cooperated with the DOJ, with all fingers pointing in Trump’s direction.”
He concluded that “the nice thing about prosecuting tax crimes is that the crimes are very clearly delineated. Few jurors have any sympathy for people who cheat on their taxes or wrongfully sic the IRS on an individual to carry out a personal vendetta.”
You can read more here.
Image by Evan El Amin/Shutterstock
News
Trump Complains the ‘Fake News Went Crazy’ With Coverage of His 2-Hour Meeting With Notorious Racist He Won’t Condemn
On Saturday evening, Donald Trump issued a fourth statement on his meeting with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and once again refused to denounce his racism and anti-Semitism.
Trump posted to his Truth Social account, “so I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice.’”
“He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years. I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went crazy,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s dinner has already become an issue in the 2024 presidential campaign and could play a role in determining the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. Trump’s ambassador to Israel condemned him dining with “human scum.”
Trump has received harsh headlines.
“Trump criticized for dining with far-right activist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye,” headlined The Washington Post.
“Trump’s Latest Dinner Guest: Nick Fuentes, White Supremacist,” was The New York Times headline.
“Trump world reels after white nationalist dinner,” headlined Politico playbook.
“Trump’s former US ambassador to Israel blasts meeting with Ye, Nick Fuentes: ‘You are better than this,'” Fox News headlined.
NBC News headlined, “‘F—ing nightmare’: Trump team does damage control after he dines with Ye and white supremacist Nick Fuentes”
In an interview with The Guardian, one of Donald Trump’s former senior advisers stated that the word he is getting from people he has spoken to is that they want the former president to be put out to pasture after the poor midterm election results for Republicans weeks ago.
According to John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser, it’s time for the GOP to move on from the former president if the party wants to reclaim the Oval Office in 2024.
Bolton, whose tenure serving under Trump ended acrimoniously, told the Guardian’s David Smith that there are a multitude of reasons to put Trump in the rearview mirror, but the impact that the former president had on GOP fortunes in the midterms seems to be the final straw with many conservatives.
“There are a lot of reasons to be against Trump being the nominee but the one I’m hearing now as I call around the country, talking to my supporters and others about what happened on 8 November, is the number of people who have just switched Trump off in their brain,” Bolton explained.
ALSO IN THE NEWS: Trump’s new Mar-a-Lago scandal proves why aides want him to stick to a teleprompter
Elaborating, he continued, “Even if they loved his style, loved his approach, loved his policies, loved everything about him, they don’t want to lose and the fear is, given the results on 8 November, that if he got the nomination, not only would he lose the general election, but he would take an awful lot of Republican candidates down with him.”
“There’s no doubt Trump’s endorsement in the primary can be very valuable to a candidate in the Republican party. But relying on that endorsement or trumpeting yourself as the Trump-endorsed candidate is poisonous in the general election. So if you actually want to win elections, Trump is not the answer,” Bolton continued. “William F Buckley [the conservative author] once had a rule that in Republican primaries he supported the most conservative candidate capable of winning the general election and, under that theory, Trump loses.”
The Guardian’s Smith notes that Bolton “… joins Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, attorney general William Barr, UN ambassador Nikki Haley, chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and onetime ally Chris Christie in a growing rebellion among alumni making the case – overtly or subtly – that Trump has become an electoral liability.”
You can read more here.
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
‘Unambiguous Felony’: Trump at Risk in IRS ‘Personal Vendetta’ Audit Investigation – Report
‘Lowest Common Denominator’: Trump Refuses to Denounce White Supremacist He Dined With Despite Advisers’ Urgings
‘Lowest Common Denominator’: Trump Refuses to Denounce White Supremacist He Dined With Despite Advisers’ Urgings
‘Unambiguous Felony’: Trump at Risk in IRS ‘Personal Vendetta’ Audit Investigation – Report
Trump Complains the ‘Fake News Went Crazy’ With Coverage of His 2-Hour Meeting With Notorious Racist He Won’t Condemn
‘Poisonous’: Former Advisor Says Republicans Have ‘Just Switched Trump Off in Their Brain’
Trump’s Dinner With Kanye Also Included a Former Aide Accused in Pay-for-Pardon Play, and White Supremacist Fuentes
COMMENTARY3 days agoWatch: Chasten Buttigieg Says Tucker Carlson Is Focusing on ‘Hate’ After Host’s Latest Anti-Gay Attack on His Husband
News3 days agoTrump’s Dinner With Kanye Also Included a Former Aide Accused in Pay-for-Pardon Play, and White Supremacist Fuentes
News3 days agoTrump Claims He ‘Knew Nothing About’ the White Supremacist Antisemite Who He and Kanye West Dined With at Mar-a-Lago
News2 days ago‘Poisonous’: Former Advisor Says Republicans Have ‘Just Switched Trump Off in Their Brain’
News1 day agoTrump Complains the ‘Fake News Went Crazy’ With Coverage of His 2-Hour Meeting With Notorious Racist He Won’t Condemn
News2 hours ago‘Unambiguous Felony’: Trump at Risk in IRS ‘Personal Vendetta’ Audit Investigation – Report
RIGHT WING EXTREMISM3 mins ago‘Lowest Common Denominator’: Trump Refuses to Denounce White Supremacist He Dined With Despite Advisers’ Urgings
