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‘Un-American’: GOP Senator Blasted for ‘Racist’ Speech Declaring America Belongs ‘Only’ to Us

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U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) is under fire after telling the National Conservatism Conference that America “belongs to us, and only us,” drawing accusations of racism and historical ignorance.

Senator Schmitt, a freshman dubbed a “key White House ally” by Fox News, told attendees that the Pilgrims and George Washington’s Continental Army, “believed they were fighting for a nation, a homeland for themselves and their descendants,” and not “for a proposition.”

“They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us,” he declared. “They built this country for us. America, in all its glory is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, it’s our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all.”

He denounced what he called “a new people” who “believe they can build a new America” by “changing the stories we tell about ourselves.”

READ MORE: ‘Monsters’: The Five Trump Cabinet Secretaries a Top Political Scientist Wants Impeached

“But America doesn’t belong to them,” he alleged. “It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It’s a way of life that is ours and only ours. If we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.”

Schmitt’s full remarks were published at the right-wing Daily Signal. In them, he declares, “it should be clear that the fact that something is sanctioned by our government does not mean it’s good for our country. That much is obvious with various forms of legal immigration today.”

Schmitt also said:

“We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith. Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God.”

In an opinion piece in Missouri’s Kansas City Star, David Mastio calls out Schmitt for giving “a speech about American history in which the only brown person mentioned was George Floyd, a Black man murdered when a police officer kneeled on his neck for nine minutes over a $20 counterfeit bill.”

Mastio wrote: “Imagine American history without Italians and Irish and Jews. Imagine America without Frank Sinatra. Imagine invading the beaches of Normandy with just the pilgrims’ kids.”

“Imagine American history without Blacks,” Mastio continued. “Imagine fighting the battles of America’s Cold War triumph from Korea and Vietnam and on with just the pilgrims’ kids. Imagine America without Rosa Parks. Imagine our culture with just the pilgrims’ kids.”

READ MORE: ‘Nakedly Political’: Trump Accused of Axing Intel Meeting to Appease Conspiracy Theorist

“Imagine American history without Asians,” he added. “Imagine America’s economy today without the silicone-inspired contributions of the tech immigrants. Imagine America without Jensen Huang, the founder of the most valuable company in our history. Imagine tackling the future with just the pilgrims’ kids.”

Other critics slammed Schmitt as well.

“This is ignorant. This is also textbook white nationalism. . . And by the way, fun fact, [your] ancestors weren’t the only ones who built this country so f– off,” wrote pollster Cornell Belcher, an MSNBC/NBC News political analyst.

This is 100% RACIST. No shock that a member of the @SenateGOP would say this. And not one mainstream network will call this trash out,” declared journalist Roland Martin.

“Who’s ‘us’ Senator?” asked Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett. “Does it include my ancestors, who were still in Polish shtetls in the late 19th c? Does it include people who came here chained to the floor of slave ships? The Chinese who helped build the railroads? I’m guessing that’s a no on all three.”

Tennessee Democratic state Senator Jeff Yarbro called Schmitt’s remarks “Legitimately one of the most unpatriotic, most un-American speeches ever given by a United States senator.”

“By his own account,” wrote Freethink editor-at-large Robert Chapman-Smith, “Schmitt’s ancestors arrived in America from Germany in the 1840s. They arrived in an America steeped in the question of who is American. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln spoke about the ‘electric cord’ of liberty that rebukes this idea of blood and soil nationalism.”

Michigan Democratic state Representative Phil Skaggs added, “What makes America great, why we are a shining city on a hill, is because, at our best, we are a beacon for those in search of freedom and opportunity. We’re not some old European ethno-state. Republicans are veering quickly to a dark Aryan Master Race place. It’s un-American.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Public Health Disaster’: Florida Ripped for Move to Scrap All School Vaccine Mandates

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia and a CC license

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Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation

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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.

Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”

“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”

In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”

He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”

“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”

“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”

“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.

“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”

Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”

Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.

Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.

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Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs

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President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.

“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”

The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”

Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”

TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”

Critics blasted Trump.

“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.

One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”

Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”

The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”

 

Image via Reuters 

 

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One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won

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President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.

According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.

Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”

“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”

Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”

Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.

Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.

The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.

“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.

The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.

“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”

 

Image via Reuters

 

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