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Dark Cloud Of Trump Victory Had Rainbow-Colored Linings

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LGBT Candidates Made History Nov. 8

There is no sugarcoating the fact that the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States on Nov. 8 was a disaster, both for the LGBT movement and for the country as a whole.

The potential danger of a Trump presidency is augmented by the fact that Republicans maintained control of both houses of Congress, though Democrats did cut slightly the majorities held by the GOP in each.

Yet in many ways, the election was less a “change election,” as Trump partisans claim, than it was a status quo election. After all, the large majority of incumbents running for House and Senate were re-elected.

Trump not only did not receive a mandate to erode LGBT rights (or for any other policy position), but he also failed to receive even a plurality of the popular vote, much less a majority. When all the votes are counted, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is expected to have received more than 2,000,000 votes than Trump.

The new Republican mantra echoed this week by Sen. Ted Cruz, among others, that Trump won “overwhelmingly” is a lie that must be denounced every time it is uttered.

Moreover, it is useful to remember that this election brought, in addition to heartbreaking losses, some significant successes as well.

Not only were the anti-gay North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (apparently) and the seven-term anti-gay New Jersey Congressman Scott Garrett (definitely) defeated by LGBT allies, but a number of the newly elected senators, such as Kamala Harris of California, Chris van Hollen of Maryland, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire are strong allies who put LGBT rights at the very center of their campaigns.

In addition, although we did not add any new members to the openly LGBT Congressional caucus, many LGBT candidates for other offices won. The Victory Fund, an organization devoted to electing openly LGBT candidates at local, state, and federal levels, reports that 87 of the 135 candidates the organization endorsed won their races.

Victory Fund President Aisha C. Moodie-Mills expressed her disappointment with the presidential election, remarking that “The devastating results hit the LGBT community particularly hard because we are unique in spanning all the demographic groups targeted by the president-elect throughout the campaign.” Still, she observed, the election also provided some “rays of light.”

For example, the 2016 election saw the first openly LGBT person elected governor and all six openly LGBT members of the House handily re-elected.

Kate Brown, who had previously served as Majority Leader of the Oregon State Senate and as Secretary of State, became governor of Oregon in February 2015, when she succeeded John Kitzhaber, who resigned in the midst of a corruption scandal. On Nov. 8, she was elected governor in her own right. Her victory makes her the first openly LGBT person elected governor of a U.S. state.

Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado crushed his Republican opponent to win re-election to the seat he won in 2008, when he became the first openly gay man elected to Congress as a freshman. (When he and his partner Marlon Reis announced the birth of their son in 2011, Polis became the first openly gay father to serve in Congress.)

Amassing 64% of the vote, Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island easily won re-election to the seat he first won in 2010.

Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin coasted to victory with almost 70 percent of the vote to retain the seat he won in 2012, when he succeeded Tammy Baldwin in the seat she vacated to run for the U.S. Senate.

Upstate New York Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, running in a competitive district, defeated his Republican challenger 51 percent to 41 percent to retain the seat he won in 2012.

Rep. Mark Takano, who became the first openly LGBT person of color to serve in Congress when he won California’s newly created 41st Congressional District in 2012, easily retained his seat.

In Arizona, bisexual Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who won her seat in 2012 in a bitter, nail-biter of a race, coasted to re-election in 2016.

Among other highlights of the 2016 election include some notable triumphs by newly elected LGBT candidates.

In Gwinnett County, Georgia, a 31-year-old political newcomer, Sam Park, upset a well-funded three-term Republican state representative to become the first openly gay man elected to the state Legislature. He will join three lesbian lawmakers in the Legislature.

In Denver, Leslie Herod won her race for the Colorado House of Representatives to become Colorado’s first African-American LGBT elected official. She explained her victory as a result of having built “a coalition of folks of all races, class, gender and sexual orientation.”

“They all came together to support me,” she said.

In Arizona, Daniel Hernandez won a seat in the state House of Representatives. Hernandez, who serves on the Sunnyside Unified District School Board, is credited with helping save the life of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords during the Jan. 8, 2011 shootings in Tucson. At the time he was a congressional intern accompanying Giffords at a constituent event when a gunman shot her and 18 other people. His medical training, quick thinking, and bravery on that day has earned him plaudits as an American hero.

In Florida, Carlos Guillermo Smith was elected to the state House, becoming the state’s first openly gay Latino legislator. He will represent the district that includes the University of Central Florida and the Pulse nightclub. Smith, a former legislative aide and a lobbyist for Equality Florida, defeated his opponent by a margin of 69 percent to 31 percent.

In Minnesota, activist Erin Maye Quade upset a favored Republican to win a seat in the state House of Representatives. The race turned ugly when remarks by Maye Quade’s opponent that disparaged “identity politics” were perceived as homophobic.

In Washington, Nicole Macri easily won Seattle’s “legacy seat“ in the state House of Representatives. The seat, which includes Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, has been held by an openly LGBT person for the last 29 years.

In a surprise victory in Houston, Democrat Kim Ogg decisively ousted the incumbent district attorney of Harris County.

But perhaps the most reassuring news we have received is the pledge from Sen. Charles Schumer, who will become the Senate minority leader in the new Congress.

In a letter published in The Advocate, Schumer reassured the LGBT community. “I will do all in my power to prevent any backsliding on hard-won rights and to push back against a national discourse that allows for anything less than a full measure of respect for all Americans and would-be Americans.”

He said: “I will not forget what happened at Stonewall or what happened at Pulse — or any of the countless physical assaults, emotional taunts, and bullying endured by homosexual fellow citizens over the generations. I will not forget North Carolina’s passage of House Bill 2 or the trickle-down of hateful rhetoric inspired by these laws that causes children to take their own lives rather than continue to face the torment of bullies at school. I will not forget the 24 transgender Americans murdered this year alone.”Â

He added: “I also won’t forget when West Point opened the doors of its historic chapel for its first same-sex wedding after President Obama repealed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I won’t forget Edie Windsor’s boundless joy when the Supreme Court handed down its decision to make marriage equality the law of the land. And I won’t forget my family, my friends, my colleagues, or the New Yorkers who depend on me to protect their constitutional rights.”

This resolve from the leader of a united Democratic caucus will make it far more difficult for those who would like to erode LGBT rights to succeed in the first two years of the Trump presidency.
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Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won

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May 2, 2024

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Falsely claiming he won the state of Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump is now refusing to commit to accepting the 2024 results for the Badger State this November.

In an interview with Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Trump appeared to dance around the issue, declaring he would only accept the official results “if everything’s honest.”

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump told the paper’s Alison Dirr and Molly Beck in an interview Wednesday. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

“But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be — a lot of changes have been made over the last few years — but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results,” he said.

The Journal Sentinel reports Trump “offered similar conditions when asked the same question by news outlets in 2016 and 2020.”

READ MORE: ‘No Place for Antisemitism’: Biden Denounces Violent Campus Protests, Hate Speech and Racism

“I’d be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise,” he said.

In that interview Trump once again falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020, a state President Joe Biden actually won by more than 20,000 votes.

“If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the newspaper. “It also showed I won the election in other locations.”

Trump’s “Big Lie,” that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, along with his support for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, have been central to his 2024 campaign.

“Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the last presidential election in Wisconsin and his new comments placing conditions on when he would accept the results of the next election come as Republicans are seeking to persuade GOP voters to restore their trust in the state’s system of elections and embrace absentee voting,” the Journal Sentinel reported. “There’s no evidence to support that Wisconsin’s election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.”

READ MORE: Noem Insists 14 Month Old Dog She Shot Was ‘Not a Puppy’ Sparking New Backlash

In October of 2016, weeks before Election Day, during the final presidential debate, Trump was asked if he would make the commitment “that you will absolutely accept the results of this election?”

“I will look at it at the time,” Trump replied. “I’m not looking at anything now, I’ll look at it at the time.”

He then went on to sow doubt about the credibility of the election.

Trump’s refusal to accept election results stretches back more than a decade, even before he ran for president.

After he refused to accept his loss in 2020, ABC News reported “Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results.”

“On election night in 2012, when President Barack Obama was reelected, Trump said that the election was a ‘total sham’ and a ‘travesty,’ while also making the claim that the United States is ‘not a democracy’ after Obama secured his victory.

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” Trump wrote on Twitter

One month later, in December of 2012, Trump tweeted, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” Ironically, four years later he became president after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but winning the Electoral College.

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim

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‘No Place for Antisemitism’: Biden Denounces Violent Campus Protests, Hate Speech and Racism

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May 2, 2024

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President Joe Biden made rare, unscheduled remarks from the White House Thursday morning, denouncing the recent violent protests on college campuses, and telling Americans there is “no place” for antisemitism anywhere across the nation. He also denounced “hate speech” and “racism,” while declaring his support for the right to peacefully protest.

“There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students,” President Biden declared. “There is no place for hate speech, or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.”

“Violent protest is not protected,” Biden said strongly. “Peaceful protest is.”

Stressing “the right to free speech,” and the people’s right “to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard,” President Biden also declared the importance of “the rule of law.”

READ MORE: Noem Insists 14 Month Old Dog She Shot Was ‘Not a Puppy’ Sparking New Backlash

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” the President also said, praising the ideal of peaceful protests, which he said are in the “best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues.”

“But,” he added, “neither are we a lawless country. We are a civil society and order must prevail.”

America is a “big, diverse, free thinking and freedom-loving nation,” Biden said, denouncing those “who rush in to score political points.”

“This isn’t a moment for politics, it’s a moment for clarity.”

“It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest,” he warned. “Threatening people, intimidating people. instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish a semester and their college education.”

READ MORE: ‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim

“Look. It’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”

“I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions in America. We respect the right and protect the right for them to express that. But it doesn’t mean anything goes. It needs to be done without violence. Without destruction, without hate, and within the law. And I’ll make no mistake. As President, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong standing up for the rule of law. That’s my responsibility to you the American people. My obligation to the Constitution.”

The President also responded to reporters’ questions, including saying he saw no need to call up the National Guard.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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Noem Insists 14 Month Old Dog She Shot Was ‘Not a Puppy’ Sparking New Backlash

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May 2, 2024

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Embattled South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem, under fire the past week after an excerpt from her new book revealed her boasting about shooting to death her 14-month old puppy she “hated,” has repeatedly defended her actions as proof she can do hard things that need to be done.

Governor Noem, who has been considered a leading contender to become Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, appeared on Fox News Wednesday night and blamed the “fake news” for publishing excerpts from her book, which she has not claimed were inaccurate.

She also insisted the 14-month old wirehaired pointer named Cricket was “not a puppy,” appearing to suggest that made the killing justified, as she again promoted her book so Americans can “find out the truth.”

“Well, Sean, you know how the fake news works,” Noem told Hannity (video below). “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story. They put the worst spin on it, and that’s what’s happened in this case. I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of this story, because the truth of this story is that this was a working dog, and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous. It had come to us from a family who found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance and she was, the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were a part of our neighbors, she attacked me and it was a hard decision.”

READ MORE: ‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim

“The reason it’s in the book is because this book is filled with tough, challenging decisions that I’ve had to make throughout my life,” she added.

Noem’s dog shooting, which she recently said took place 20 years ago, has been strongly criticized by the left and right.

Earlier this week two people close to Donald Trump, his former Senior White House Counselor Steve Bannon, and his son, Donald Trump Jr., “questioned Noem’s judgement Monday on Donald Trump Jr.’s show ‘Triggered,'” USA Today reported, noting also that “both men laughed” about it.

“Bannon called Noem ‘a little too based,’ using a slang term popular on the right to describe someone who, among other qualities, speaks and acts without fear of being politically correct, and Trump Jr. said shooting the dog ‘was not ideal.'”

The Guardian, which broke the news of Noem’s dog shooting last week, reported Tuesday “apparently even [ex-president Donald] Trump sees the bad optics in having a ‘puppy killer’ as a running mate.”

RELATED: ‘Let’s Get a Warrant for Her Backyard’: Noem ‘Done Politically’ Right Wing Pundits Say

Meanwhile, criticism, which had been subsiding over the past few days, returned after Noem’s remarks on Fox News.

“She honestly think boasting about killing a dog who was too happy makes her tough,” observed former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman. “I have served with women in combat. They endured horrible conditions. Got blown up. They were tough. Her two examples of tough are killing animals and keeping her state open as hundreds of thousands died. That’s not tough. That’s psycho.”

Calling Noem “broken,” former Republican and former U.S. Congressman Denver Riggleman said: “She wrote the book. She allowed those words to be published. Her ghost writer seems to have despised her. Exposed her. And Kristi liked it… thought it was ‘cool’.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr., responding to video of Noem on Fox News, commented: “Here’s donald trump’s leading contender to be vice president defending her butchering a puppy and hawking her crummy book on rightwing propaganda tv. This is the republican party.”

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold offered this criticism:

Jared Ryan Sears, who writes “The Pragmatic Humanist” at Substack, said, “Yes, the issue is the debate on whether or not a 14 month old dog should be called a puppy and not the fact that you murdered it because you refused to train it and could not think of any other possible solution than shooting a young dog in a gravel pit.”

“Keep hawking that book,” he added.

Watch Noem’s remarks below or at this link.

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

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