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Stefanik Faces Fury After Asserting ‘Better Off Four Years Ago’ Amid COVID Crisis

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U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the Chair of the House Republican Conference, is under fire after saying Americans were better off four years ago, barely months into the start of the coronavirus pandemic then-President Donald Trump botched, as COVID-19 spread across the country.

“As Ronald Reagan famously asked us, ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’ The answer for hard-working Americans across the country is a resounding ‘no,'” Stefanik claimed (video below).

On March 6, 2020, CNN reported: “8 cases of coronavirus confirmed in Colorado,” “Kentucky confirms 1st coronavirus case,” “Son of nursing home resident with coronavirus describes fight to get mother tested,” “California’s Santa Clara County confirms 4 new coronavirus cases,” and, “Cruise passengers not told about coronavirus test results prior to Pence announcement.”

That last article read: “Passengers aboard the Grand Princess cruise off the coast of California learned that 21 people aboard the ship tested positive for the novel coronavirus by watching Vice President Mike Pence’s announcement this afternoon.”

READ MORE: ‘Cowardly’: NY Times Pummeled for Ignoring NC GOP Nominee’s Hitler and Holocaust Remarks

Some responded to Stefanik’s remarks, reminding her that President Donald Trump tried to keep those cruise ship passengers off land because he didn’t want his COVID statistics to increase.

A CNN report tracked all the times then-President Trump said COVID would disappear that year, including exactly four years ago, March 6, 2020: “I don’t think people are panicking. I said last night — we did an interview on Fox last night, a town hall. I think it was very good. And I said, ‘Calm. You have to be calm.’ It’ll go away.”

By March 6 there was an average of 32 new COVID cases per day. Just one week earlier, on February 29, 2020, the first official COVID-19 death was recorded.

Five days later, on March 11, “After more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries and 4,291 deaths, the WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic,” the CDC reported. Nine days later, on March 15, states began to issue shutdown orders.

On March 31, 2020, “Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Brix announce that between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths in the U.S. are expected— even if social distancing and public health measures are perfectly enacted.”

By the end of 2020, 345,000 people in the U.S. died from COVID, or had COVID as the underlying cause of death, according to a CDC report at Axios.

READ MORE: ‘All Had Security Clearances’: Trump White House Loaded With Speed, Xanax, and Alcohol – Report

The response to Stefanie’s claim from many online was palpable.

“On this day four years ago my husband and I were at a fitting for our wedding suits. In the weeks that followed, our wedding was postponed, the suit company went bankrupt, the stock market tanked and hundreds of thousands of Americans died. So yes, we’re definitely better off,” wrote Democratic strategist Matt McDermott.

“Looked at my 401 k and yes absolutely. Also the president doesn’t target my gay kids for sport and we don’t have bodies piling up in morgues from Covid,” Michigan Advance editor-in-chief Susan J. Demas responded.

“Four years ago (as of next Monday) – the NBA shut down, schools closed, flights were cancelled, N95s out of stock, and refrigerated morgue trucks began to fill New York streets as sirens were heard 24 hours a day for a year. This lying official knows this. And hopes you forgot,” wrote John Bordeaux.

“Four years ago today Donald Trump was explaining that this new virus going around was no big deal because people on Fox News were telling him that a lot of people die from the flu,” wrote Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz.

“Four years ago you couldn’t buy toilet paper while thousands of Americans suffocated to death every day from a preventable disease and then buried in mass graves. Hooray for four years ago,” replied political commentator Bob Cesca, who also shared some images:

Watch below or at this link.

 

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Trump Administration Hit With Lawsuit for Removing Pride Flag

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The Trump administration is facing a lawsuit accusing it of breaking federal law by taking down the LGBTQ+ Pride flag at New York City’s Stonewall National Monument, the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ civil rights movement.

The U.S. Department of the Interior and Secretary Doug Burgum, as well as the National Park Service and Acting Director Jessica Bowron, are named in the lawsuit filed by attorneys for the Gilbert Baker Foundation and others. Gilbert Baker is the artist who created the rainbow Pride flag.

“In the lawsuit,” The New York Times reported, “the Gilbert Baker Foundation argued that the original Pride flag fell under one of the allowed exceptions: to provide historical context at national monuments. This is the exception that allows Confederate flags to be flown at properties managed by the Park Service, including Gettysburg National Military Park.”

READ MORE: ‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

“This was no careless mistake,” the lawsuit reads, according to a screenshot posted by New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman. “The government has not removed other historical flags at other national monuments, most notably Confederate flags.”

The suit alleges that the “assault on Stonewall is the latest example in a long line of efforts by the Trump Administration to target the LGBTQ+ community for discrimination and opprobrium.”

“In February 2025, for instance, the administration removed the word ‘transgender’ from prominent sections of the Stonewall monument’s website, as part of its wider campaign to demean and erase the transgender community,” it states.

“The Trump Administration has deleted numerous NPS websites discussing LGBTQ+ history,” it continues, “fired at least one federal employee for displaying a pride flag in his office; banned the use of pronouns in email signatures; renamed a John Lewis-class replenishment oiler named after Harvey Milk, a pioneering gay rights leader who served as a Navy officer and one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States.”

READ MORE: ‘Insulting’: Fox News Panel Implodes as Host Clashes With Liberal Guest Over Voter ID

It also cites what it calls “a particularly absurd example,” in which images of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay — the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb — were flagged for deletion, apparently because the images included the word “Gay.”

The lawsuit alleges a “pattern of systemic targeting of the LGBTQ+ community—combined with the starkly disparate treatment of the Pride flag,” which it claims “demonstrates that the decision to alter the Stonewall monument was not just a mistake. It was based on an impermissible animus.”

Numerous New York elected leaders at all levels, including U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, denounced the administration’s removal of the flag.

The removal became a national flashpoint, drawing hundreds of locals to protest and prompting elected leaders to vow to raise it again.

Activists and officials gathered for multiple demonstrations at the Stonewall National Monument, where they raised a new Pride flag — an act that the Trump administration condemned as a “political stunt.”

READ MORE: Massie Warns of Growing GOP ‘Defections’

 

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Massie Warns of Growing GOP ‘Defections’

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A prominent House Republican who successfully advanced bipartisan legislation to release the Epstein files is predicting there will be more GOP “defections” once the primaries are over.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Politico that because Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority is so thin, “on any given day, I would just need one or two of my own co-conspirators to get something done” that goes against the Trump administration’s agenda.

He said that “what’s happening is that the retirement caucus is growing and primary days are coming up and passing. Once we get past March, April and May, which contain a large portion of their Republican primaries, I think you’re going to see more defections.”

Massie added that “quietly and privately, people are telling me they agree with me.”

In a surprising revelation, Massie said that House Republicans “are being told every week to stand down, bite their tongue, sit on their hands, do what they’re told, be part of the team and put their brain in neutral.”

READ MORE: ‘Insulting’: Fox News Panel Implodes as Host Clashes With Liberal Guest Over Voter ID

Massie also offered several other pointed remarks.

He noted that after President Trump called him a “moron” at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, pastors were “not impressed and I don’t think anybody was impressed by his performance at the prayer breakfast. It was completely political.”

The Kentucky Republican further directed strong criticism toward Attorney General Pam Bondi after being the only member of his party to, as Politico reported, “spar” with her at last week’s contentious congressional hearing.

“When the attorney general is reduced to a stack of pre-prepared insults to deliver, and when the DOJ is responding to my every tweet with additional unredactions, I don’t think I’m going to change what I’m doing just yet,” he said.

Massie described Bondi as looking “weak and frustrated” at the hearing “when she started talking about the Dow Jones, which has literally nothing to do with her job.”

“I thought that looked bad,” he said. He also pointed to her “stack of insults that were pre-prepared — in politics you might call it oppo research — and you could see her shuffling through them to try and find which one matched the person who was trying to ask her a question at the time. She found my card like right at the end, as you can see she was looking for it.”

READ MORE: ‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

 

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‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

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Far-right extremist leader Nick Fuentes — who brands himself “America First” — once again is putting President Donald Trump and the GOP on notice, saying that Republicans are “gonna get destroyed” in the 2026 midterms and by 2028 it will be “Democrats on steroids.”

“We are headed for an utter and total defeat in the midterms,” Fuentes predicted on his Rumble streaming show on Monday, urging his supporters to not vote in November. Fuentes has 1.2 million followers on the X social media platform.

He said that “the Democrats will take the House, and then it is impeachment City. We are taking a trip to impeachment City.”

Democrats, Fuentes declared, will win the House and the Senate, and “then it’s impeachments, subpoenas, depositions, investigations. Trump might even be removed from office.”

“When all is said and done, he might even be pulled by his own people. That — there is a non-zero chance. As a matter of fact, there’s a good chance that’s gonna happen.”

READ MORE: Rogan on Epstein Files: ‘Looks Terrible’ for Trump

“Trump is getting impeached,” Fuentes continued. “Vance is getting impeached. Hegseth is — they’re all getting impeached. They’re all being subpoenaed. They’re all being deposed.”

“I warned you,” Fuentes said. “I told you, this is what was gonna happen.”

“My message in ’26, you could take it or leave it. Don’t vote. Don’t vote, do not vote in the midterms. The Republicans have to lose. They have to lose. They have to crash and burn. A cleansing fire is the only thing that will save us. It cannot be fixed.”

“F — — Trump, f — — MAGA, f — —  all this stuff. It can’t be fixed. If it could have been fixed, it would have been fixed in 2025, but it wasn’t.”

“They made every mistake. Liberation Day: disaster. DOGE: disaster. Big, beautiful bill: disaster. Epstein files: disaster. Iran: disaster.

“The personnel — Mike Waltz: disaster. Ratcliffe: disaster, Rubio: disaster. Pam Bondi: disaster — all self-inflicted. Trump personnel, Trump policy, Trump strategy, Trump playbook — we tried it your way, it didn’t work.”

“Now we don’t vote. That’s the message. Seriously. Can’t blame anybody else. Bad advice, bad advisors, Biden’s economy. Enough already. It didn’t work. We’re not voting. I’m staying home, and you know what? I hope the Democrats impeach him. I hope the Democrats impeach all of them. I hope they indict everybody. I hope they depose and compel the release of documents, and I hope they find all the criminal behavior, and I hope it destroys the GOP. I hope it creates a crisis for the GOP so severe that they never recover.”

READ MORE: Trump Mocked for ‘Unhinged Tantrum’ as ‘Trump Station’ Story Shifts Again

Fuentes predicted that “in two years, this is gonna be the most unpopular administration in history. It’s gonna be a repeat of 2020. That’s what we’re looking at here.”

“Think about where Trump is — lowest approval rating of any modern president. Trump’s approval is lower at this point in his presidency, lower than Biden at this point, lower than Trump was at this point. Lowest that it’s been in the second term.”

He also lamented the lack of results he and his “America First” followers wanted.

“He’s completely underwater with the under 40 crowd, and it’s only gonna get worse, especially because Trump is not delivering on these things. No mass deportations, economy’s not getting better. Housing prices have literally never been more unaffordable. The wars are escalating, actually, as opposed to getting better. And now, we seriously have to contend with the possibility that in 2028, we get Democrats on steroids. We get Democrats with a vengeance.”

Fuentes has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist,” an “admirer of fascists,” and someone who “frequently relies on antisemitic tropes.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, “Fuentes has used his platforms to make numerous antisemitic, racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments,” and spreads “white supremacist propaganda.”

READ MORE: How Trump Used Jesse Jackson’s Death to Argue He’s Not a Racist

 

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