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Trump Now Taking Direct Credit for Abolishment of Roe v. Wade but ‘Muddling Around’ on an Actual Abortion Policy

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Recognizing the vast majority of Americans remain committed to abortion as a constitutional right yet desperate to appeal to his base, Donald Trump is now taking direct credit for the U.S. Supreme Court having overturned Roe v. Wade last year while falsely claiming many in the “pro-life” movement sees a six-week ban, which his likely 2024 opponent Ron DeSantis recently signed into law, as too extreme.

“I was able to get us to the table by terminating Roe v. Wade. That’s the most important thing that’s ever happened for the pro-life movement,” Trump told The Messenger, a new news outlet that launched Monday.

He did not stop there.

“I know it’s shocking. But it’s happening,” Trump told The Messenger’s Marc Caputo. “For 50 years, they’ve been trying to get rid of Roe v Wade. I was able to do it. Nobody else could have done that but me. And I was able to do it [by nominating] three excellent judges on the Justices of the Supreme Court. And I was able to do that. What it did more than anything else is it gave us a tremendous power of negotiation, which we didn’t have, the pro-life movement, a tremendous power of negotiation. … Now the pro-life movement has the power to negotiate a deal that’s acceptable for them.”

READ MORE: GOP Congressman’s Aide Tied to Neo-Nazi: Report

The “pro-life” movement, which does not consist of any one particular organization, largely demands a compete and total ban on all abortion. Many also demand no exceptions for rape or incest, and rarely exceptions of the life of the mother.

Worse, as The New York Times reported in January, even in states that have banned abortion but allow exceptions, few are actually granted.

Caputo asked Trump specifically about Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, expected to formally announce his 2024 presidential run within days. DeSantis, behind closed doors surrounded by several dozen anti-abortion activists, quietly signed a six-week ban into law last month.

“Well, he has to do what he has to do,” Trump said of the Florida far-right governor. “If you look at what DeSantis did, a lot of people don’t even know if he knew what he was doing. But he signed six weeks, and many people within the pro-life movement feel that that was too harsh.”

READ MORE: DeSantis Just Made It Illegal for Doctors to Refuse to Treat Unvaccinated Patients – But Legal to Refuse LGBTQ Ones

Republican turned Democrat Ron Filipkowski, a former federal prosecutor and current frequent political commentator and activist, says this interview “out today from Trump really has the pro-lifers upset.”

“He is muddling around trying to find a path to take on the abortion issue, which he blames for their poor showing in the midterms. This nonsense answer satisfies nobody and has them pretty confused.”

“When he says ‘many people within the pro-life movement,’ there is NOBODY in the pro-life movement who feels this way,” Filipkowski adds.  “This is the way HE feels because he knows that is what the polls show.”

Asked if he thinks six weeks is too harsh, Trump tells Caputo, ““I’m looking at all alternatives. I’m looking at many alternatives. But I was able to get us to the table by terminating Roe v. Wade. That’s the most important thing that’s ever happened for the pro-life movement.”

Trump refused to be pinned down.

When asked if he would sign a six-week ban, all he would say was, “I’m looking at all [options].”

 

 

 

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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.

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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.

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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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