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‘Seditious Scumbag’: Retired USAF Colonel Likens ‘60 Minutes’ to Fox News After Marjorie Taylor Greene Interview

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Many journalists and political commentators have been leveling strong criticism at “60 Minutes,” CBS News, and Lesley Stahl over their decision to air a “softball” interview with U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Sunday night, normalizing and mainstreaming the far-right Georgia Republican, but perhaps few have done so as expressively as retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Moe Davis.

During her conversation with Stahl, an Emmy-award winning journalist who has been at CBS News for more than 50 years, the conspiracy theorist Congresswoman baselessly defended calling Democrats the “party of pedophiles,” by saying, “they support grooming children.” When Stahl objected, Greene weaved a false, illogical comparison with gender-affirming treatment for transgender children – supported by every major medical organization – by saying, “sexualizing children is what pedophiles do.”

That was just one small part of their discussion, parts of which were filmed inside the U.S. Capitol, further serving to normalize the far-right wing Republican who even Stahl reminded has been called “Crazy, Q-clown, Looney Tune, unhinged, moron.”

But the “60 Minutes” decision to normalize and mainstream Greene, who infamously – before Georgia voters sent her to Washington – “indicated support for executing prominent Democrats,” including then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, began even before the interview aired.

READ MORE: ‘F*** ’Em Up’: Trump Has Told Advisors He Will Target Manhattan DA With Increasing Attacks – Report

On Friday, in a promotional tweet for the upcoming interview, “60 Minutes” claimed, “Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, nicknamed MTG, isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are. She sits down with Lesley Stahl this Sunday on 60 Minutes.”

As much as Greene would like to have a nickname like her top nemesis, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who the media for years have suggested she is “obsessed” with, “MTG” isn’t it.

In fact, typing MTG into a simple Google search before the “60 Minutes” interview served up no mentions of Marjorie Taylor Greene (it does now, thanks to her interview with Stahl). Instead, as far as Google is concerned, MTG stands for “Magic: The Gathering.”

But back to Colonel Moe Davis.

Col. Davis, for those unaware, was a top Guantanamo prosecutor who resigned after his superiors refused to support his policy that no evidence obtained via waterboarding would be used in prosecutions. In 2020 he ran against, and lost to, Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina.

On Monday, Davis slammed “60 Minutes” for using its platform to normalize Greene.

READ MORE: Special Counsel Has Gathered More Evidence of Possible Trump Obstruction on Two Fronts: Report

“Little difference in @FoxNews knowingly promoting the Big Lie and @60Minutes knowingly promoting a seditious scumbag … it’s all about the $$$. And don’t buy any high minded journalism bullsh*t … that’s the same excuse I heard from @jaketapper when he normalized Trump in 2015,” Davis tweeted.

He was not finished.

In a series of tweets, Col. Davis related a story from when he was the top Guantanamo Bay prosecutor, calling “60 Minutes” “just as mercenary and ratings motivated as Fox.”

“I’m not surprised by the conduct of @60Minutes. When I resigned at GTMO Chief Prosecutor, they asked for an exclusive and I spent a day with Morley Safer in my house. The piece was set to air and then the Pentagon asked for a chance to respond. The response interview with a 1-star did not go well, so the Pentagon traded the video of Omar Khadr making bombs (which was classified) in return for 60 Minutes shelving the piece on my resignation. Back then, a 60 Minute piece could have made a difference. Instead, it’s 16 years later and GTMO is still a lingering stain on America’s reputation. In essence, 60 Minutes did a David Pecker style ‘catch and kill.’ Despite their desire to be perceived as high-minded journalists, they are just as mercenary and ratings motivated as Fox or anyone else.”

 

 

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‘Careening’ Toward ‘Risk of Political Violence’: Experts Sound Alarm After Trump Floats Executing His Former General

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Political experts are sounding alarms after Donald Trump‘s weekend of attacks on the military and the media, with some cautioning America is “not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.”

Friday evening the ex-president said General Mark Milley, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom he appointed to that role, “in times gone by” would have been executed for treason.

Trump wrote, “if the Fake News reporting is correct,” General Milley “was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”

READ MORE: Gaetz Praises GOP Congressman Who Echoes His Call for Change ‘Through Force’

Foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst David Rothkopf Sunday night warned, “Trump this weekend indicated military leaders who opposed his policies should be put to death and media that presented views he did not like are traitors and will be prosecuted. He is a monster, an aspiring dictator, the greatest threat America faces.”

Sunday evening Trump had also attacked NBC News and MSNBC, along with their parent company, Comcast, all by name. He wrote in part: “I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”

“Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!” Trump said on his social media platform.

Professor of global politics and political scientist Brian Klass at The Atlantic wrote on Monday that General Milley’s phone call to China “was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.”

READ MORE: ‘Corruption of the Highest Order’: Experts ‘Sickened’ at ‘Definitely Bought’ Clarence Thomas and His ‘Pay to Play’ Lifestyle

“And yet,” Klass noted, “none of the nation’s front pages blared ‘Trump Suggests That Top General Deserves Execution’ or ‘Former President Accuses General of Treason.’ Instead, the post barely made the news. Most Americans who don’t follow Trump on social media probably don’t even know it happened.”

Klass is also warning that America has become “numb” to these attacks.

“Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous, not just because it is the exact sort that incites violence against public officials but also because it shows just how numb the country has grown toward threats more typical of broken, authoritarian regimes. The United States is not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.”

Juliette Kayyem, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a CNN national security analyst Monday morning observed: “To view each of Trump’s calls to violence in isolation — ‘he attacked Milley,’ or ‘he attacked NBC,’ or ‘he attacked the jury, the prosecutor, the judge ‘ — is to miss his overall plan to ‘introduce() violence as a natural extension of our democratic disagreement.'”

Kayyem, a former Asst. Secretary at the Dept. of Homeland Security and a terrorism expert, pointed to her own piece at The Atlantic from July.

“The language” Trump and his allies “are using is filled with words of war, elevating concerns among terrorism experts and security planners that Trump’s supporters pose the same threat of violence that they did before the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol,” Kayyem wrote.

READ MORE: ‘Vulgar and Lewd’: Trump Judge Cites Extremist Group to Allow Drag Show Ban

Klass again sounded the alarm on complacency:

“Bombarded by a constant stream of deranged authoritarian extremism from a man who might soon return to the presidency, we’ve lost all sense of scale and perspective. But neither the American press nor the public can afford to be lulled. The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.”

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‘It Won’t Fare Well’: Legal Expert Trashes Trump’s Hopes for ‘Hail Mary’ Appeal This Week

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The fate of the $250 million Manhattan fraud trial brought against Donald Trump and his Trump Organization by New York Attorney General Letitia James could be determined in two separate court rulings this week with one legal insider claiming Trump shouldn’t get his hopes up.

What is at stake is an expected Tuesday ruling from Judge Arthur F. Engoron on what charges he will accept against the former president for massively overstating the value of his properties, and a “Hail Mary” bid to the appeals court to delay the trial or dismiss it altogether with a deciosn expected on Thursday.

According to a report from the New York Times, Engoron is set to make his ruling after a contentious hearing last Friday where he repeatedly chastised the former president’s legal team and abruptly cut them off.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

That led former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner to suggest on Sunday that the future of the fraud case does not look good for Trump’s legal team.

Kirschner told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, “He [Engoron] called those arguments ‘borderline frivolous.’ He was considering sanctions against Donald Trump’s attorney,” and later added, “I don’t think that hearing went all that well for Trump.”

As for the appeals court, the Times is reporting, “Mr. Trump’s lawsuit — and in turn the fate of Ms. James’s case against him — hinges on a passage in the June appeals court ruling that has become a legal Rorschach test of sorts, in which each side sees what they want. Mr. Trump’s lawyers are convinced that the June ruling effectively tossed out the claims against him, while Ms. James’s team has argued that it had little effect on the accusation at the heart of her case — that Mr. Trump overstated his net worth by billions of dollars in his annual financial statements.”

After noting that, should the appeals court side with Trump, it would likely delay or “defang the case before the trial even begins,” the Times is reporting that some legal experts aren’t expecting Trump’s legal team to come out on top.

According to David B. Saxe, who previously served nearly on the same appeals court, “I think it won’t fare well.”

You can read more here.

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Pete Buttigieg Nails Trump for His Ugly Comments About Wounded Vets

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During his Sunday morning appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called out Donald Trump over reports he told military leaders he didn’t want wounded vets to be seen by the public while he was president.

In a recent Atlantic profile of General Mark Milley, the retiring military office recounted the former president telling him “no one wants to see” wounded soldiers, with Milley adding he found Trump’s attitude to those serving their country “superficial, callous, and, at the deepest human level, repugnant.”

Buttigieg, who served in Afghanistan during his 8 years while in the Naval Reserve, was asked by CNN host Dana Bash about the former president’s apparent distaste for service members.

“I want to ask you about a new Atlantic profile that says that then President Trump complained to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley after an Army veteran who lost a leg in combat sang at an event at the Pentagon,” Bash prompted her guest. “Trump reportedly told Milley, ‘Why do you bring people like that here, no one wants to see that, the wounded.'”

“After that article came out, Trump attacked Milley on social media, kind of a rambling post, but suggested that milley deserved the death penalty. You’re a veteran– what’s your response?” she asked.

“It’s just the latest in a pattern of outrageous attacks on the people who keep the country safe,” the Biden administration official replied.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

After pointing to fellow vets who suffered horrific injuries, he added, “These are the kind of people that deserve respect and a hell of a lot more than that from every American, and definitely from every American president.”

“And the idea that an American president, the person to whom service members look at as a commander in chief, and the person who sets the tone for this entire country could think that way or act that way or talk that way about anyone in uniform, and certainly about those who put their bodies on the line and sacrificed in ways that most Americans will never understand, and I guess wounded veterans make president Trump feel uncomfortable.”

Watch below or at the link.

 

 

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