You would perhaps anticipate that a former US president would have some grasp of US history, or at least access to somebody willing to check his statements, but apparently not.
Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder, and for that reason New York City issued a statement explaining that it was moving his statue out of its City Council Chamber. Trump decided to respond, labelling Jefferson as “a principal writer of the Constitution of the United States”. One tiny little flaw, as I’m sure you know, he did not write any of it. More than a few folks noticed …
Well it is Trump, so I guess facts don’t matter, especially historical ones such as who actually won in Nov 2020.
Moving on, I also have a small Mike Lindell update. Salon reports that Newsmax have pulled the plug on all of Mike’s ads. These are the folks that are so far to the right that they deem Fox News to be a liberal platform, yet even for them Mike Lindell is now too toxic.
So what else happened this past week?
Below you will find a selection of more bizarre claims being promoted in the last 7 days. So, with a hat-tip to my main source, Right-Wing watch, it is time to dive in.
The Big Lie
Josh Bernstein declares that any Republican who loses a close election anywhere ever must refuse to concede and demand a forensic audit since any GOP loss “was because of voter fraud. 100 percent.”
- Josh’s big thing is that he takes the concept of being an arsehole to new previously unexplored highs.
- To give you an idea of that, this past week he also declared that the Democrats “are not a legitimate party,” but are actually “a terrorist organization” that is no different than ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Nazis: “These people are purebred evil, satanic communists”.
- He also this past week declared that Dr. Anthony Fauci “deserves to be sodomized every single day in a prison cell for the rest of his life.”. For Josh, a guy who is deeply homophobic, it is fascinating that this is what he dreamed up.
- The small catch with Flynn’s claim is what is termed “due process”. Legally you can only arrest people who have actually committed a crime. For example, if you are caught trying to kidnap somebody, as Flynn was, then arrest is a viable move. Your best play then is perhaps to go for a plea bargain (as Flynn did), and then perhaps hope you get a presidential pardon in exchange for promoting a false election claim (as Flynn did on Nov 25, 2020), and so that is why he continues to make claims like this – it was all part of the deal that got him out of jail.
- The stench of corruption and abuse of power here from the Trump Swamp is rather blatant.
- As an aside, Flynn has also asserted just last May that the COVID-19 pandemic was fabricated to distract from the election. I’ve honestly no idea if his claim is that over 730,000 were murdered or that nobody actually died.
COVID-19
- His example of an “alternative” to vaccinations was the use of primitive form of vaccinations during the Revolutionary War. In other words he was literally praising the effectiveness of vaccinations during the Revolutionary War and using that as an argument as to why people today should not get vaccinated.
- He is literally one of the dumbest clowns in this circus.
MediaMatters (Oct 18): Dennis Prager announces he has COVID-19 while ranting against vaccines and declaring that he was trying to get infected
- The guy who has been doing his very best to get COVID and spread it, lacks so much self-awareness that he also said, “The number of deaths in this country owing to COVID is a scandal“.
David Lane fumes that “by en masse abandoning the public square, Christians have virtually authorized secularists to establish an idolatrous religion in America, making it America’s national church, all with its attendant priests—Big Tech, Big Media, Big Pharma, and Big Government—zealous fanatics happy to assault liberty and censor or ban free speech. In their willingness to deceive, distort, disguise, and doctor statistics [of Covid], thereby propagating epidemic hysteria, mass neurosis, and mandatory vaccination, their mind is set on the permanent achievement of coercive control.”
- If for him a body count of over 730,000 US citizens is “epidemic hysteria, mass neurosis“, then I’d really love to understand how many need to die before he takes it seriously?
Stella Immanuel, one of the right’s leading anti-vaccine “experts,” claims that the devil has filled the world with clones who are now trying to kill all those who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine, which is a precursor to the Mark of the Beast.
- The end-times “mark of the beast” claim has been doing the rounds since the very beginning. Many of the authors of various NT texts anticipated it would happen in their lifetime, so failed prophecies of a second coming is not just Trump and not new.
- The only thing actually killing the unvaccinated is their own foolish stupidity, no “clones” required.
Pastor Kent Christmas kicked off his Sunday sermon by literally cursing every business in the world that has implemented any sort of vaccine requirement: “I put a curse on your business that you start losing your money until you reverse this thing.”
- He might think that he is “pro-life” but the clear evidence here is that he is very strongly “pro-death”.
Rick Wiles claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain “an egg that hatches into a synthetic parasite and grows inside your body.”
- The word “clueless” is way too tame for this guy. He needs to reach out to whatever school he went to and claim his money back; the entire concept of education has completely failed him.
- Soldiers are sent out to kill others in the knowledge that they might in turn be killed. When compared to that, taking a rather robustly tested vaccine that has been successfully deployed to over 3.8 billion humans is really no big deal.
Lauren Witzke reports that she has contracted COVID-19: “This bio-weapon is demonic, I’ve lost all of my senses and struggle with constant indifference, brain fog, and I’ve lost my joy. I couldn’t imagine how the vaccinated feel, having this feeling permanently. Please pray for me, this illness is evil and A product of the Beast System. I hate the anti-Christ.”
- Well gosh, if only she had been able to have access to some way of preventing this, such as a safe and effective vaccine, she could have then avoided all of this.
Truly Bizarre
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson says that those who have criticized the bigoted statements he has made are really attacking God.
- This is the guy who got himself on the radar for saying some truly weird stuff (Guns are a gift from God, Gay people are “filth”, etc…). I guess it should be no surprise to discover that he is currently on a roll.
- Quote: “I’m not the one being attacked, it is his word that is being attacked“. Er no Mark, it really is all just you.
Rick Green is urging the listeners of the “WallBuilders Live” radio program to use upcoming family gatherings to push the right-wing agenda: “That old thing about don’t talk about politics and religion at Thanksgiving or Christmas with the family—no, no, no. That’s exactly what we need to be talking about, every single one of us engaging in these conversations.”
- Google, show me a way to ensure that nobody ever invites me for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Bill Mitchell announced that he is leaving Gab, a right-wing social media platform popular with activists who have been kicked off the mainstream platforms, after realizing that it is a cesspool of bigotry and antisemitism.
- Gab is where folks like Bill go after being booted off twitter. Finally the penny has dropped that there is a reason they all got booted off mainstream social media.
- His dad, David Barton, has a well-established track record of making historical claims that are simply not factual. He literally made up fictitious quotes that he then falsely attributed to founding fathers. His book was so dishonest that his Christian publisher had to withdraw the book from publication. His reputation for honesty and integrity is more or less zero.
- Here now is his son, following in his dad’s pseudo-history steps by making stuff up, and so he is maintaining the family tradition.
The False Profit$
God Took ‘Prophetess’ Kat Kerr ‘Into the Near Future’ and Showed Her Trump Back in the White House
- This is the same lady who claimed in 2018 that she had been taken up to Heaven and personally told by God that former President Donald Trump would win reelection in 2020
- Leading up to the 2020 election, Kerr repeatedly insisted that Trump had been chosen by God and would be returned to the White House because 1,000 “special ops angels” had been dispatched to Earth to ensure his reelection. I can only wonder if those 1,000 “special ops angels” have been fired for failing.
- She usually pops up most weeks with some variation of this. The above is just more of the same.
- This stuff all comes out via YouTube. The real motivation is rather clear, generate stuff that gets clicks and so $$$$
Pastor Shane Vaughn declares that Colin Powell “was, in fact, killed by the very government that he served”: “The truth is, if he had not taken the vaccine, he would be alive today.”
- This is Classic Clickbait 101; pick any notable event and claim it was a conspiracy by “them”, then sit back and reap the rewards of $$$ via YouTube.
- Fact Check: Powell was 84 and had a cancer that seriously compromised his immune system. He also had Parkinson’s disease.
- Powell was a traditional mainstream Republican from the Reagan era, so Trump did his thing by using the occasion of Powell’s passing to issue a statement disparaging him. It told us nothing about Powell and a great deal about Trump, but to be honest we all knew that already about the 2020 loser.
Pastor Hank Kunneman is outraged that people are honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day
- His real objection is that he can’t pronounce the word “indigenous.”, it’s just too big a word for him.
- I’m not kidding, he really can’t pronounce it.
Pastor Johnny Enlow is confident that former President Donald Trump will be returned to the White House because he had a vision of Trump playing chess while God was also playing chess, claiming that “God has him on his chess board, and so Trump and his whole board were on [God’s] board.”
- Johnny is one more of the many self-appointed prophets that declared that Trump would win last Nov.
- You would perhaps expect prophets to demonstrate their credentials by sometimes getting something right, but these days apparently not, being wrong again and again, over and over, does not apparently disqualify you at all.
- Despite attempting a self-fulfilling prophecy by having almost all the evangelicals vote for Mr Two Corinthians, they still could not muster enough votes because they are a rapidly shrinking demographic.
Robin Bullock calls on former President Donald Trump to “listen to the prophets” and “rise up,” for the time has come for him to assume his rightful position as president and save this nation.
- I’ve honestly no idea what Robin’s “rise up” actually involves. There is no legal, ethical, or procedural mechanism for it to actually happen.
- Given that Robin’s surname is “Bullock” then it is not exactly a huge leap to make an observation regarding what Robin is actually dropping here. When it comes to the topic of leaving a trail of bovine deposits, Robin is indeed truly a subject matter expert.
Are some really this stupid?
Yes, I finished with this question last week and also made a “prophecy” that this week would be more of the same. Unlike the false prophets of the cult of Trump, I’m actually right each and every time I make this prediction. Unlike them, I don’t claim any supernatural abilities.
The one thing that is perhaps certain is the long game. The real challenges of today include Climate change, Covid, and Social inequality. In the centuries ahead we will be measured by how we stepped up and responded to those. As for the rhetoric I’ve spotlighted, well that’s just entertainment, it is nothing but fodder for us to mock and laugh at, because that really is all it truly merits.