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‘Slitting Throats’ and ‘Stone-Cold Dead’: DeSantis Ramps Up Violent Rhetoric

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Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, on the presidential campaign trail in New Hampshire in late July pledged to supporters he would root out the deep state from the federal government: “we are going to start slitting throats on Day One.”

Responding to DeSantis’ throat-slitting remarks, Professor of Political Science & Public Affairs Mark Copelovitch on August 4 observed, “In an actual serious country, using language like this in re: government employees would result in the man’s immediate resignation as governor & the end of national media covering him as a viable presidential candidate.”

Political historian Brian Rosenwald, also that day, commented on DeSantis’ rhetoric: “Put bluntly: this is the type of language that gets people killed. It reflects DeSantis’s unfitness, and every paper in America should have a headline tomorrow, ‘DeSantis’ violent rhetoric risks violence.'”

It wasn’t the first time DeSantis had used that term but it did make headlines. And it did elicit  letters from concerned federal government union heads.

“Governor DeSantis’ threat to ‘start slitting throats’ of federal employees is dangerous, disgusting, disgraceful, and disqualifying,” said American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley. “Federal employees – over a third of whom are veterans now wearing their second uniform in service to their country – have dedicated their lives to serving their fellow Americans.”

RELATED: DeSantis Using Same White Nationalist Rhetoric as El Paso Mass Shooter Who Slaughtered 23 in Anti-Hispanic Hate Crime

“No federal employee should face death threats from anyone, least of all from someone seeking to lead the U.S. government. Governor DeSantis must retract his irresponsible statement,” Kelley demanded.

Also in July, the Florida governor told the right wing website Real America’s Voice that he would not promote a current military officer to become Secretary of Defense – not because he believes in a civilian-run military, but because he wants his Defense Secretary to “slit some throats.”

“You know, they may have to slit some throats, and it’s a lot harder to do that if these are people that you’ve trained with in the past or that, you know, so we’re going to have somebody out there, you know, be very firm, very strong, but they are going to make sure that we have the best people in the best positions and there’s not going to be necessarily prior relationships that would cloud that judgment,” DeSantis said, according to Florida Politics.

These were not “one-off” gaffes. Ron DeSantis has a history of using violent rhetoric.

The Tampa Bay Times on Friday noted, “Violent imagery is a key part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ verbal arsenal on the campaign trail.”

“DeSantis has used other violent rhetoric on the campaign trail, making headlines earlier this summer with his calls for deadly force against some people trying to break through wall at the U.S.-Mexico border while carrying drugs,” The Washington Post reported in early August.

“We are going to be the first president that’s going to be willing to lean against the Mexican drug cartels,” DeSantis had also said while in New Hampshire. “If they’re trying to bring fentanyl into our communities that’s going to be the last thing they do because at the border they’re going to be shot stone-cold dead.”

DeSantis made almost the exact same remark on Friday:

Law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis, commenting on DeSantis’ “stone old dead” remark, stated: “Extra-judicial executions are just murder by another name.”

The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent in July pointed to DeSantis’ anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis released a plan for the southern border this week that uses the word ‘invasion’ at least five times. He later took this rhetoric to hallucinogenic extremes, declaring on Fox News that anyone with drugs who ‘is cutting through a border wall’ should end up ‘stone-cold dead,’” Sargent wrote. “The specter of a migrant ‘invasion,’ which carries white nationalist overtones, has been a mainstay of Donald Trump’s political vocabulary ever since he ran for president in 2016. But the fact that DeSantis and Trump — the leaders in polls for the Republican nomination — are both all in on this ugly notion shows how profoundly it is capturing the GOP.”

READ MORE: ‘Act of Open Hostility’: Trump Plans to Team Up With Tucker Carlson Instead of Attending GOP Debate

One year ago almost to the day, speaking at a rally in Orlando, DeSantis attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, who for two administrations had been the federal government’s face of the response to COVID-19. the Florida governor said he wanted someone to “chuck” Fauci “across the Potomac.”

Fauci, now retired, was at the time an 81-year old immunologist and the chief medical advisor to the president, who began in public service in 1968 when he joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“I’m just sick of seeing him,” DeSantis said at a Florida GOP rally, as WFLA reported. “I know he says he’s going to retire. Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac.”

Back in June journalist Thomas Kennedy pointed to a photo from a DeSantis rally with an anti-immigration poster that read, “Stop the invasion.”

“Same rhetoric employed by the El Paso shooter and other violent white supremacists,” he noted. “They are inciting violence and they know what they are doing.”

MSNBC’s Medhi Hasan in June discussed DeSantis’ promise to “destroy leftism,” which he says is “dangerous.”

“Everyone knows if I’m the nominee, I will beat Biden and I will serve two terms. I will be able to destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology on the dust bin of history,” DeSantis pledged.

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Hunter Biden Plans Lawsuit Against Fox News Amid ‘Conspiracy of Disinformation’

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Attorneys for Hunter Biden have notified Fox News he plans to sue the right-wing cable TV network and its digital entities, after lawyers for the President’s son spent more than a year investigating. Among other issues the letter reportedly mentions Fox News citing a now-indicted former FBI informant, and points to “revenge porn” laws.

The letter, NBC News reports, is dated last week and specifically points to alleged bribery allegations as well as “Fox’s airing of ‘intimate images’ belonging to Hunter Biden that his lawyers claim were ‘hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated’,” that they say violate “Biden’s civil rights as well as copyright law.”

CNN, focusing in the intimate images, reports that “Hunter Biden is demanding that Fox News remove from its platforms sexually explicit images that President Joe Biden’s son says are private, according to a letter obtained by CNN, as part of his strategy to publicly fight back against conservative media.”

“The media outlet aired a mock trial of Hunter Biden on the streaming platform Fox Nation in 2022,” CNN also reports, “focused on the unproven bribery allegations, and published ‘intimate images of Mr. Biden depicting him in the nude as well as engaged in sex acts,’ according to the letter, which demands that Fox immediately remove the series from all streaming platforms.”

READ MORE: Noem Doubles Down With ‘Legal Cover’ For Shooting Her Puppy to Death

“’FOX knows that these private and confidential images were hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated digital material,’ Hunter Biden’s attorneys wrote in the letter, which contained several of the explicit images, some of which were blurred,” CNN adds. “Publishing these images, the attorneys said, violated ‘the majority of states’ laws against the nonconsensual disclosure of sexually explicit images and videos, sometimes referred to as ‘revenge porn’ laws.’ ”

In a statement Hunter Biden’s attorney, Mark Geragos, expanded on the apparently pending lawsuit.

“For the last five years, Fox News has relentlessly attacked Hunter Biden and made him a caricature in order to boost ratings and for its financial gain,” Geragos stated. “The recent indictment of FBI informant Smirnov has exposed the conspiracy of disinformation that has been fueled by Fox, enabled by their paid agents and monetized by the Fox enterprise. We plan on holding them accountable.”

Media Matters last week reported, “Fox News has mentioned Hunter Biden at least 13,440 times since January 3, 2023, when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives after promising to use their power to investigate the business interests of President Joe Biden’s son, according to a Media Matters review.”

“Fox’s on-air coverage of Hunter Biden has … plummeted in recent months,” Media Matters added. “Mentions of the president’s son on the network peaked at 2,356 in July, when his federal plea deal on two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes fell apart, and mentions exceeded 1,300 in four other months, most recently in December.”

READ MORE: Peter Navarro’s Latest Attempt to Get Out of Jail Smacked Down by SCOTUS

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Peter Navarro’s Latest Attempt to Get Out of Jail Smacked Down by SCOTUS

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Former top Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro, in prison for criminal contempt of Congress, has failed in his latest attempt to be released early, after the U.S. Supreme Court once again denied his request.

Navarro, 74, the first and only former White House official ever to be imprisoned for contempt of Congress, is serving out his four-month sentence in Miami. His efforts to stay out of jail were first denied by Chief Justice John Roberts, before he reported to the prison in mid-March. He was found guilty in September after a short trial. After his arrest he hawked his book and begged for money on national television.

CBS News reports “15 days into his sentence, Navarro renewed his request to halt his surrender to Justice Neil Gorsuch, which is allowed under Supreme Court rules. His bid for emergency relief was referred to the full court, which denied it. There were no noted dissents. Attorneys for Navarro declined to comment.”

CNN called the decision to petition Justice Gorsuch “a procedural maneuver that has not worked in decades.”

RELATED: ‘Bro, You’re Already Facing Charges’: Protestor Mocks Peter Navarro as He Tries to Grab ‘Trump Lost’ Sign

“Gorsuch referred the request to the full court, which considered it during its closed door conference on Friday. The court denied the request on Monday without comment.”

Navarro’s prison sentence is the result of his refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Navarro claims he had executive privilege, but offered no proof, and refused to show up as ordered.

Legal experts accurately had predicted a “quick conviction” after Navarro, called a “conspiracy theorist” who promotes “fringe” economic theories, had called no witnesses. The jury deliberated for under five hours. He faced up to two years in prison.

CBS News adds Navarro “is not the only member of the Trump administration to be convicted of the charge. Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist, was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in prison. The judge overseeing that case, however, put his prison term on hold while Bannon appeals.”

READ MORE: Noem Doubles Down With ‘Legal Cover’ For Shooting Her Puppy to Death

 

 

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Noem Doubles Down With ‘Legal Cover’ For Shooting Her Puppy to Death

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South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem has been under bipartisan fire since Friday after an excerpt from her soon-to-be published book reveals her bragging about shooting to death her 14-month old puppy, and later that day, a goat. Noem, considered at least until last week a top contender to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, is doubling-down defending herself but now she’s serving up some “legal cover” as well.

“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20 year old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book — No Going Back. The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned,” she wrote on Sunday, after The Guardian‘s damning report. “The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”

Law & Crime on Monday reports the governor is “providing herself legal cover for the act.”

Noem “acknowledged that ‘some people’ were upset about the story — and she specified that it happened two decades ago, seeming to place the incident well beyond the statute of limitations.”

RELATED: Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

“Noem additionally cited South Dakota law in support of her decision,” Law & Crime adds, noting the “reported book excerpt had said that Cricket tried to bite Noem and attacked her chickens.”

“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down,” Noem wrote, an apparent attempt to preempt any possible legal issues. “Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”

Law & Crime explains that “South Dakota notes that an exemption to animal cruelty laws is the ‘destruction of dangerous animals.’ The law specifies that ‘[a]ny humane killing of an animal’ and ‘[a]ny reasonable action taken by a person for the destruction or control of an animal known to be dangerous, a threat, or injurious to life, limb, or property’ are exempt from prosecution.”

Noting that Noem’s attempt “to lean into the right’s embrace of political incorrectness … didn’t fly with members of her own party,” The Daily Beast pointed to well-known Republicans including former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farrah Griffin and Meghan McCain who publicly condemned Noem’s actions.

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

The Guardian’s excerpt from Noem’s book does not state that Cricket bit people, although Noem states Cricket “whipped around” to bite her. It’s possible biting others is in the book but did not make it into The Guardian’s report.

Describing Cricket killing chickens, Noem “grabbed Cricket, she says, [and] the dog ‘whipped around to bite me’. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check ‘for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime’.”

“Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was ‘the picture of pure joy’,” The Guardian reports. “’I hated that dog,’ Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself ‘untrainable’, ‘dangerous to anyone she came in contact with’ and ‘less than worthless … as a hunting dog’.”

Meanwhile, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Monday said Noem’s pride and decision making surrounding killing the puppy make her unfit to be “in charge.”

Describing how she grew up on a family farm, Brzezinski said they hunted, and “there was absolutely a dense of life and death.” There was “never a joy in killing and there was a respect to it, and a process if you were hunting.”

READ MORE: CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

“But this story was more about how she felt killing an animal, and that’s what’s scary about it – the impatience, kind of like a switch flipped in her brain and she decided she needed to kill it? Like this is not someone you want in charge, not someone thinking through the process of life and death.”

“The most remarkable part of it,” Scarborough added, “is that the conservative movement has been so corrupted by Donald Trump and his reached such new lows, that she actually put that in, about the killing of a happy puppy because she thought it would help her with the base.”

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