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‘Outlandish and Feral’: Trump Plans to Turn DC Trial Into Conspiracy-Fueled Reality TV Show

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Donald Trump is planning to turn his federal 2020 election subversion case into a campaign-style conspiracy-theory-fueled reality TV show filled with falsehoods about the “deep state,” Nancy Pelosi, January 6, Antifa, the FBI, and even his former attorneys – and he’s demanding it be televised.

One person with knowledge of the plans called it a “MAGA freak show,” according to Rolling Stone‘s exclusive reporting. The items Trump and his attorneys have been discussing and planning include:

“Attempts to drag Nancy Pelosi into court to berate her on the stand and, hopefully, on live TV. Claims that the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was an FBI frame job, with an assist from Antifa. Conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was indeed ‘stolen,’ supposedly backed up by still-classified documents. Unhinged assertions that President Joe Biden is now secretly, personally orchestrating an unprecedented act of political persecution. Calls to publicly unmask the federal officials and lawyers investigating the former (and perhaps future) president of the United States. Efforts to blame any illegality on some of the ex-president’s closest confidants and former legal allies. Insinuations of election meddling by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.”

READ MORE: ‘Video Voyeurism’: Police Expand Investigation Into Embattled GOP Chair Accused of Rape

Rolling Stone calls the defense strategy, “outlandish and feral, even by Trumpland standards, to the point that it’s baffling some of the ex-president’s former lawyers and senior administration officials. One person with knowledge of these strategic and legal discussions bluntly describes the plans as a blueprint for staging a ‘MAGA freak show’ at Trump’s federal election subversion trial.”

The ex-president is facing four federal felony charges in the D.C. case, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, which NPR reports “refers to Trump and his co-conspirators alleged attempts to ‘oppress, threaten and intimidate’ people in their right to vote in an election.”

Former top Trump attorney Tim Parlatore, who has represented far-right Christian nationalist GOP lawmaker and conspiracy theorist Doug Mastriano, spoke to Rolling Stone.

“From what I can tell — as an outside observer and former member of Donald Trump’s legal team — about how the trial strategy is taking shape, all I can say is: It is a terrible idea to try to use a criminal trial to stage a political campaign ad,” Parlatore said. “That would be incredibly detrimental to the client.”

“It is also a surefire way for you to quickly alienate jurors, particularly when you’re dealing with a jury pool like Washington, D.C.’s,” Parlatore added. “If I were still on the team, that is not how I would be doing it.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is also prosecuting the government’s case against Trump on his alleged unlawful removal and refusal to return classified and top secret documents, is opposed to televising the proceedings.

“Smith’s team has warned that Trump and his legal team are requesting camera access because they want ‘to create a carnival atmosphere from which he hopes to profit by distracting, like many fraud defendants try to do, from the charges against him.'”

READ MORE: ‘The People Closest to Him’: Republicans Question Trump’s Mental Health, Reporter Says

“It is clear the [former] president would like to turn the trial into a campaign ad as much as he can,” a source “who has legally advised Trump in recent years,” told Rolling Stone. “I mentioned to him that cameras in the courtroom is not what you’d want to do in a case like this. But he and his team see it very, very differently than I do, unfortunately… [Based on what I know], I think they’re going to make it feel like reality TV.”

Former Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb told Rolling Stone, “It’s not gonna work.”

“Trump and his lawyers, I’m sure, would like to see [the trial] devolve into a chaotic circus, but I don’t think they’re even going to get that… The biggest problem Donald Trump and his lawyers have is that they have no evidence and they have no witnesses… I haven’t seen a single email or document that would be helpful to him… Even if Rudy Giuliani testified for Trump’s defense, Rudy could easily end up making the government’s case for them. So who can they call? They don’t have anybody!”

Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman, writing on the social media site Threads, calls the Trump defense strategy “batshit crazy.”

 

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‘Close’: Trump Claims World War III Could Erupt if He Does Not Become President Again

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19 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, Donald Trump declared World War III is “close,” and issuing a warning suggesting if he does not win re-election in November it could erupt.

Video of his full remarks was published by Florida’s WPTV. A shorter clip is below.

Trump’s meeting, criticized by some as a violation of the Logan Act, comes at a critical time for the U.S. and Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, a Trump-supporter who is considered by some to be refusing to end the Gaza War, addressed Congress on Wednesday at the invitation of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Netanyahu on Thursday.

In May, The International Criminal Court (ICC) filed to obtain arrest warrants for Netanyahu, alleging war crimes.

READ MORE: JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

Trump quickly launched into an attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, who is his likely 2024 presidential opponent, telling reporters she is, “a radical left person, San Francisco, destroyed San Francisco. She’s really a destroyer. She isn’t a builder.”

“I actually don’t know how a person who’s Jewish can vote for her. But that’s up to them,” Trump added.

“Now she’s taken over and she’s worse than him. She’s actually worse than him. So we’ll see how it goes. But if it all works out. If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all gonna work out and very quickly.”

“If we don’t we’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a Third World War. You are closer to a Third World War right now than at any time since the Second World War. We’ve never been so close because we have incompetent people running our country,” Trump claimed.

Watch video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Said Some Disabled People – Including His Young Relative – Should Just ‘Die’: Nephew

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JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

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20 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Trump vice presidential running mate JD Vance, under fire for his 2021 remarks calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” and saying parents should be given more voting rights than those without children, is now being criticized after video resurfaced of him suggesting people who don’t have children should be punished, because not having kids is “bad.”

Vance, closely tied to the “broligarch” class of right-wing tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, is a venture capitalist whose memoir catapulted him to national attention, which he parlayed into a successful U.S. Senate run with the backing of his uber-wealthy mentors.

Before announcing his 2022 Senate run, Vance made numerous public appearances, including sharing his extremist views with powerful talk show host, far-right wing activist, and Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk.

“So JD,” Kirk, a member of the highly-secretive Council on National Policy asked, according to ABC News, “what are you going to do to change this conversation? Everything we have to do should be about moving ideas from unthinkable, to sensible, to popular, to policy.”

READ MORE: Trump Said Some Disabled People – Including His Young Relative – Should Just ‘Die’: Nephew

“In response,” ABC News reports, “Vance, who at the time had not yet officially launched his 2022 Senate campaign, suggested that the country needed to ‘reward the things that we think are good’ and ‘punish the things that we think are bad’ — before suggesting that individuals without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children.”

The full quote, contained in video (below) posted Friday by the liberal super PAC and opposition research firm American Bridge, which comports with ABC News’ reporting, is, “we need to reward the things that we think are good and punish the things that we think are bad. So you talk about tax policy, let’s tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good. If you’re making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you’ve got three kids, you should pay a different, lower rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids. It’s that simple.”

In that same year, 2021, Vance called universal child care, “a massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent over the preferences of the middle and working class.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump’s Sudden Debate Withdrawal Linked to Looming Criminal Sentencing: Legal Experts

 

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‘Extraordinary Weakness’: Trump ‘Pulling Out’ of Debate Shows ‘He’s Afraid’ Buttigieg Says

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23 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Pete Buttigieg says Donald Trump’s decision to “pull out” of a previously agreed presidential debate is an “extraordinary show of weakness,” especially for a candidate whose “calling card” is being a tough guy. The Transportation Secretary also observed the Trump campaign has been unable to adapt to President Joe Biden withdrawing from the race and endorsing his Vice President for the top of the ticket.

“Former President Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday said it will not commit to a debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, at least until the Democratic Party makes a formal decision on its nominee,” Forbes reports.

Trump earlier this week had said he was uncomfortable with the debate being hosted by ABC News, despite having agreed to it back in May. But late Thursday night the Trump campaign served up a different reason when announcing the ex-president’s decision: “it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”

MSNBC’s Sam Stein Thursday night described it as “backing out.”

“It’s extraordinary,” Buttigieg said on MSNBC Friday (video below), “tough talk is this guy’s calling card and now there’s this extraordinary show of weakness. He agreed to, you know, he said, ‘anytime, anyplace.’ But more than that, he agreed to this specific debate on this specific network on this specific date. And now he’s pulling out, and of course it shows that he’s afraid, it shows that he knows if the two of them are on a stage together, it’s not going to end well for him.”

RELATED: Buttigieg Top Choice for Harris VP Among Available Candidates: Poll

Buttigieg, one of about a dozen candidates being vetted to be Kamala Harris’s vice presidential running mate, added that Trump’s campaign “really has struggled to be about anything but Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and I think that’s the bigger pattern that you’re seeing here and part of why the Trump campaign is having such a hard time adapting.”

“Think about it: just in a matter of two or three days her campaign adapted to literally the biggest possible change, which is a change in the top of the ticket and yet, you know, within a couple of days that support consolidated and that message was clear.”

By comparison, Buttigieg said, the Trump campaign has “been flailing in a way that shows they’re unable to adapt. And to me, it’s not just that their entire strategic apparatus was built around tearing down Joe Biden. I think there’s something deeper, which is Donald Trump cannot conceive of a campaign that isn’t about the candidates.”

Earlier this week, Buttigieg targeted Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance, for his widely-criticized “childless cat ladies” comments from 2021. Vance, in part, had also claimed that the “entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

READ MORE: ‘Super Creepy’: Vance and Masters’ Belief Politicians Have to Have Kids Called ‘Repugnant’

Buttigieg had responded, saying, “it’s not about his kids, or my kids, or the vice president’s family. It’s about your family, people’s families, whose well-being will depend on whether we go into a future led by somebody like Kamala Harris, who is focused on expanding the prosperity, the freedom, the well-being of our families.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

RELATED: Trump’s Sudden Debate Withdrawal Linked to Looming Criminal Sentencing: Legal Experts

 

 

 

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