‘Look, I probably get 40 or 50 threats every week, OK, and some of them are real…’
Michael Bloomberg / IMAGE: CNN via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg admitted that even though he supports gun control, he believes he has the right to enjoy the security of armed guards.
Bloomberg was confronted during a Fox News town-hall meeting by a voter who asked, “How do you justify pushing for more gun control when you have an armed security detail that is likely equipped with the same firearms and magazines that you seek to ban the common citizen from owning? Does your life matter more than mine, or my family’s, or these people’s?”
Bloomberg responded by claiming his scenario is different than the average citizen’s because he was the mayor of New York City, he is still a prominent billionaire, and he is now running for president.
Question: “How do you justify pushing for more gun control when you have an armed security detail that’s likely equipped with the same firearms and magazines that you seek to ban the common citizen from owning?”
“Look, I probably get 40 or 50 threats every week, OK, and some of them are real,” Bloomberg told the audience.
“That just happens when you’re the mayor of New York City or you’re very wealthy and if you’re campaigning for president of the United States. You get lots of threats,” he continued. “So, I have a security detail, I pay for it all myself, and … they’re all retired police officers who are very well trained in firearms.”
Bloomberg went on to say that citizens do have the right to bear arms under the Constitution, before adding that certain restrictions on that right are reasonable.
“The only restrictions which I am in favor of is to prevent us from selling guns to people with psychiatric problems, criminals or people that are minors, OK?” Bloomberg concluded.
Bloomberg has attempted to make his platform appear more moderate than the other Democratic candidates’, but his gun-control plan is just as extreme as the others’.
His comprehensive plan would require “every gun buyer to get a permit before making a purchase”; it advocates for the passage of a “federal red flag law”; and it would reinstate a “federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” according to his campaign’s website.
‘I want to make something clear: I’m going to guarantee you this is not the last you’re seeing of this guy…’
Robert Francis O’Rourke (“Beto”)/Photo by Anthony Crider (CC)
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) After accepting former Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke’s endorsement Monday night, presidential candidate Joe Biden announced O’Rourke will help him “take care of the gun problem.”
O’Rourke’s failed presidential campaign was heavily focused on gun control, and his polices were more radical than any other Democratic candidates’. He advocated for a mandatory buyback of so-called “assault-style” rifles and admitted he would allow law enforcement to go door-to-door to confiscate the weapons.
Biden, however, seemed unconcerned that O’Rourke’s agenda doesn’t fit into his purportedly moderate platform.
“I want to make something clear: I’m going to guarantee you this is not the last you’re seeing of this guy,” Biden said to a crowd in Dallas.
“You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me,” he continued. “You’re going to be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on you. We need you badly, the state needs you, the country needs you, you’re the best.”
O’Rouke similarly praised Biden as “somebody who can reestablish the moral authority of the United States.”
Beto O’Rourke: “We need somebody who can reestablish the moral authority of the United States. We need somebody who will fight for democracy here and abroad, because democracy is under attack here and abroad. We need Joe Biden.” https://t.co/JEMJiQn1lnpic.twitter.com/SikNRST8pc
O’Rourke’s policies would undoubtedly be aggressive. In September, he told voters “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
And despite describing himself as a moderate, Biden doesn’t seem opposed to this.
“A guy has 12 assault weapons with bump stocks, which means you can fire it faster. You can pull the trigger faster,” Biden said during a Nevada CNN townhall, referencing the Las Vegas shooting.
“Why in God’s name should anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone be able to own that?” he added. “It’s just wrong, and we’ve got to—and I promise you, as president, I am going to get these guys.”
“It does depend on how big a lead that Sanders takes out of California is,” McDaniel said, The Daily Beast reported.
“If he picks up a huge proportion of delegates,” she continued. “I don’t see anybody getting out soon. It is leading towards a brokered convention, which will be rigged against Bernie if those super-delegates have their way on that second vote.”
Brazile helped rig the 2016 Democratic primary by providing then-candidate Hillary Clinton with debate questions
Her predecessor, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced to resign prior to the 2016 convention after it was revealed in leaked emails that the DNC was giving an unfair advantage to Clinton over Sanders.
Brazile, herself, later acknowledged the collusion in a tell-all book. But she responded to McDaniel’s recent criticism by saying Republicans should “stay the hell out of our race” and that she’s “sick and tired” of being lectured about the Democratic primary by Republicans.
“First of all, they [Republicans] don’t have a process,” Brazile said.
“They are canceling primaries. They have winner-take-all. They don’t have the kind of democracy that we see on the Democratic side,” she continued. “For people to use Russian talking points to sow division among Americans is stupid. So Ronna, go to hell! This is not about—go to Hell! I’m tired of it.”
Host Ed Henry and Smith exclaimed, “Whoa,” after her tirade.
Brazile was not deterred. She called McDaniel’s comment “stupid.”
After Henry said that Fox News should have Brazile and McDaniel on Fox News to discuss the Super Tuesday primary elections, Brazile moderated her tone.
“I’m all about reconciliation,” Brazile concluded. “It is Lent. I’m trying to keep my karma. But stop lying about the Democratic process.”
McDaniel responded to Brazile’s rant on Twitter.
I’d be having a bad day too if my party was still hopelessly divided.
Talk of a brokered convention and the DNC trying to stop Bernie obviously hit a little close to home.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) March 3, 2020
‘The American people have a right to know … whether any apparent or actual conflict of interest unduly influenced U.S. policy…’
Ron Johnson/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said he planned to subpoena the head of a lobbying organization that acted as a liaison between the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and the U.S. State Department during the Obama administration.
The company came into public spotlight due to its hiring of Hunter Biden, the son of current presidential candidate Joe Biden, who acted as the point-man on U.S.–Ukraine policy while serving as vice president.
“The American people have a right to know how their government officials conducted official business, whether certain parties received special treatment, and whether any apparent or actual conflict of interest unduly influenced U.S. policy,” Johnson wrote Sunday in a letter to committee members, according to CBS News.
President Donald Trump’s efforts to re-open the Ukrainian government’s investigations into Burisma—which Biden had successfully pressured the previous Ukrainian administration to drop—became the principal subject of partisan House Democrats’ recent impeachment efforts against the Republican president.
After the former Ukrainian prosecutor–general Viktor Shokin raided several sites associated with Burisma in early 2016, the company dispatched Blue Star, described as a U.S.-based government affairs firm, to advocate on its behalf.
It also tapped Hunter Biden and his business partner Devin Archer, both of whom received a million dollars a year for “consulting” services as Burisma board members, to meet with then-Secretary of State John Kerry and others.
Not long afterward, Joe Biden threatened the Petro Poroshenko administration that he would withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if Shokin were not fired.
In the wake of Trump’s recent acquittal by the Senate, Johnson noted that his committee alread “has been investigating matters related to Burisma for nearly a year.”
His subpoena was intended for Andrii Telizhenko, a former consultant with Blue Star who led the Burisma lobbying efforts.
However, despite Telizhenko’s having “expressed his willingness to ‘cooperate fully,'” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the ranking minority member of the committee, adamantly opposed the subpoena, noted CBS News.
“Our intelligence community, national security officials and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report have all confirmed that it was the Russian government—and not Ukraine—that interfered in our 2016 election,” Peters claimed in a December statement expressing his opposition. “This isn’t about rehashing the 2016 election or partisan politics—it is a matter of national security.”
Johnson and other GOP committee members sought records of the correspondence between Telizhenko and members of the State Department, as well as other Obama officials.
They also requested records of his exchanges with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian activist and Democratic National Committee staffer who coordinated with the Ukrainian embassy to spread misinformation alleging Trump’s collusion with the Russian government during the 2016 election.
Peters continued to deflect on the question of whether Ukraine may have engaged in a coordinated disinformation campaign to hurt Trump by pointing to Russia, which was proven to have engaged in interference efforts independent of the Trump campaign.
“Russia, a foreign adversary, struck at the very heart of our democracy, and we know they are already trying to interfere in the 2020 election,” Peters said in his statement.
“Obscuring this key fact only further enables Russian efforts and undermines our ability to safeguard our democracy,” he continued. “Members of both parties must come together to pass legislation strengthening election security and ensure no foreign adversary can meddle in our elections again.”
Barbra Streisand/Photo by JCT(Loves)Streisand* (CC)
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Left-wing Hollywood star Barbra Streisand claimed America “could be extinguished” if President Donald Trump wins reelection in November.
“Every morning I wake up, holding my breath while I turn on my phone to see the latest news,” she wrote. “I think to myself, ‘It can’t be worse than yesterday.’ But when the news loads, I think, ‘Ohhhhh, yes, it is worse.”
Streisand blasted Trump’s handling of the coronavirus and claimed Trump falsely took credit for an economy he “inherited” from former President Barack Obama.
“Since 2016, we’ve been dragged down into the mud of Trump’s swamp,” she wrote. “We can’t go on like this. It’s too dangerous.”
Streisand, a longtime Democratic donor, has previously praised Hillary Clinton for demonstrating that “strength and kindness can exist in equal measure.”
“Needless to say, three years ago, I was truly hoping to sing at your inauguration,” she said to Clinton at a rare performance last year.
In one song, she urged voters to “bring back dignity and grace” when they cast their ballots.
And in another, she said, “We need a new America — without pollution, without obscenities, without insults, without revenge.”
“I was very driven by this president’s lies,” Streisand said of her album. “And that’s why this first song is ‘Don’t Lie to Me.'”
Unless Democratic voters get rid of Trump, Streisand wrote in her op-ed, America’s “beacon of hope” will cease to exist.
“Every day, he takes another swipe at the pillars of our democracy, but we cannot allow him to irrevocably change this country,” Streisand wrote. “The ‘beacon of hope’ that is America could be extinguished if he’s given another four years.”
‘The only reason I felt comfortable with Pence as vice president was I was aware of his track record in Indiana in handling these serious problems…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Dr. David Drew Pinsky, a well-known addiction-medicine specialist known as “Dr. Drew” on television, defended the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
Specifically, he backed President Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Vice President Mike Pence head of the Coronavirus Task Force.
During an interview with the Daily Blast Live, Pinsky was asked about Pence’s experience with epidemics and whether he believed Pence is up to the task now.
The reporter claimed Pence had “mishandled the HIV epidemic in 2015” when he was governor of Indiana, and even cited a report that argued Pence’s role “contributed to more deaths” in the state.
Pinsky quickly shut the outlet down: “I don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said.
“We used to point at the way Indiana responded to the opiate of the HIV epidemic as the model for the country,” he continued. “The only reason I felt comfortable with Pence as vice president was I was aware of his track record in Indiana in handling these serious problems, and they handled them better than most states did, almost any other states. So, I don’t know what the hell people are talking about. That is fake news.”
Pinsky, who recently considered running against House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff in California, also said he is “furious” with the mainstream media for spreading panic about the coronavirus.
“The press needs to shut up because you’re more likely to die of influenza right now,” he explained.
The Trump administration is “responding appropriately and very diligently,” to this virus, Pinsky argued. “We’re gonna contain this thing,” he said. “We’ve already got a vaccine in study right now in human subjects. So, this thing is well in hand. President Trump is absolutely correct. He allocated $2.5 billion dollars for this.”
Pinsky also blasted the Democratic politicians who argued Trump’s coronavirus spending isn’t enough.
“Chuck Schumer asked for $8 billion. My response is, ‘Hey man, we’ve got a homeless problem in southern California and in Denver. Would you please give us some of that $8 billion and forget about the coronavirus?’” Pinsky said. “We’ve got that taken care of.'”
‘If ICE is complaining, then they should do their job better…’
Lori Lightfoot/IMAGE: YouTube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot continued to defend the city’s sanctuary policies, which prohibit law enforcement from working with federal immigration officials, even after an illegal immigrant previously deported was convicted of assaulting a 3-year-old girl.
The illegal immigrant, 34-year-old Christopher Puente, was being held in custody by Chicago police for a theft committed last summer.
A few months later, Puente was arrested, once again, for luring a 3-year-old girl into his restroom stall at a Chicago’s McDonald’s and assaulting her.
Puente admitted to the crime and described it as “wrong” and “a very bad thing,” according to assistant state attorney James Murphy. But ICE said in a statement that Puente’s horrible crime could have been prevented had Chicago law enforcement officials handed him over to immigration officials.
Instead of acknowledging her department’s failure, Lightfoot lashed out at ICE and claimed the federal agency wasn’t properly doing its job.
“If ICE is complaining, then they should do their job better,” she said, according to WLS-TV.
“They’re critical because we have said very clearly we are a welcoming city, a sanctuary city,” she continued. “Chicago Police Department will not cooperate with ICE on any immigration-related business.”
Lightfoot acknowledged that the lack of cooperation had impacted ICE’s ability to do its job. “But that’s exactly our intention,” she said. “We have to make sure our police department is seen as a legitimate force in all our communities.”
The Chicago Police Department also said in a statement that its “pledge to restrict ICE’s access to our information systems and our refusal to cooperate with ICE immigration enforcement measures has not changed.”
President Donald Trump addresses the crowd at a rally in Charlotte, NC, before Super Tuesday. / PHOTO: Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines
(Ben Sellers) Jeffrey A. Hoffman of Mint Hill, N.C., said he was the very last person admitted into President Donald Trump’s rally Monday in Charlotte.
“I tried to talk my friends and family into coming, but no luck,” he said.
It just so happened that being on his own was a lucky stroke when a security guard announced one more person was allowed in and turned away the couple just ahead of him.
Hoffman, who said he arrived around 4:45 p.m. for the 7 p.m. rally, estimated that there were around six rows left in line with about 400 people per row as he made his way in.
Some of those in attendance, such as Sharon Anderson, had been standing in line for four days.
That dedication got her an invitation onstage from President Trump’s son Eric, one of several opening speakers, along with his wife, Lara.
He called Anderson “an amazing person who had camped out on Thursday because that’s how passionate she is.”
Interestingly, Anderson, who lives in Tennessee near the Smoky Mountains, said she had never become involved with politics before Trump.
“If [only] more people would say Donald Trump is their president … because that man is working for me,” she said.
Others had similar stories of being inspired by the larger-than-life chief-executive.
Justin Santiago, 18, and Je’Sean Barkley, 19, said they had come from Chapel Hill for their first-ever rally.
Both will be first-time voters in Tuesday’s primary, although Trump faces little competition on the Republican side.
Santiago, who moved from New York with his parents to escape the high taxes and the filth of the Big Apple, said that what turned him into a Trump supporter was the president’s willingness to speak the truth rather than play political games.
“We hate the lies,” he said. “… And there’s a lot of people like us.”
The two also had been put off by the Left’s hard swerve toward socialism.
First-time voters Justin Santiago, left, and Je’sean Barkley attend the Charlotte rally. / PHOTO: Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines
“Basically, we love freedom,” said Barkley.
Natalie DiDonato, a Realtor in Columbia, S.C., said she had always regarded herself as conservative but had previously considered Bill Clinton “the last good president” due to his working with a Republican Congress to balance the budget.
She, too, appreciated the blunt and refreshing candor of Trump’s leadership.
“I am from the North and I like his attitude,” she said of the former Manhattan hotel mogul.
She and her husband criticized the “fake news” for its role in fomenting the current hyper-partisan political climate. However, she noted that Trump had even helped to lift up his biggest adversaries.
“They want him in office,” she said. “They need him.”
The crowd that filled the Bojangles Coliseum (which lists its official capacity at just under 10,000) bucked the latest media feeding-frenzy by shrugging off the attempts at creating a panic over the coronavirus. Many have suggested will lead to a drop in public activities for fear of contagion.
Mike Oaks, an antiques dealer from just west of Charlotte, noted that some of the very media covering the rally were likely among those responsible for the mass epidemic anxieties.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the same people here blowing it out of proportion,” he said. “The liberal press is gonna make it out to be worse than it is, anything that will hurt Trump.”
During the president’s speech, which came as a record day in the stock market dispelled a parallel panic over the possible onset of a recession, Trump urged cooler heads to prevail. He also outlined some of the ways his administration was getting in front of the health crisis.
Trump said he had met with some of the heads of major pharmaceutical companies earlier that day. “They’re gonna have vaccines, I think, relatively soon. … We will bring these therapies to the market as rapidly as possible.”
He said he was also looking into ways to prevent infected people from entering the U.S., although his previous efforts to close the border out of safety concerns had been thwarted by left-wing activists.
“There are fringe globalists who would rather keep our borders open than keep the infection [out],” he said.
He criticized opponents who had sought to exploit the health crisis for political leverage.
“The political attacks—some of the Democrats really must stop,” he said. “We’ve gotta all work together on this one to save our people.”
Nonetheless, the president’s own bipartisan spirit went only as far as preventing a deadly outbreak. When it came to the upcoming election, he freely admitted that he was “trolling” his few remaining opponents by upstaging them in key battleground states.
“Crazy Bernie,” “Mini-Mike,” “Sleepy Joe” and “Pocahontas” all got skewered in turn as Trump touched on a gamut of hot topics ranging from his recent impeachment to his efforts win African–American voters (several of the night’s opening speakers were black, including popular YouTube stars Diamond and Silk).
While “Super Tuesday” was likely to bring into even greater focus the general election race, the recent South Carolina primary already had ended the campaigns of at least three Democratic contenders: Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer.
Trump noted that the former two candidates had quickly thrown their endorsements to Biden, and he questioned whether establishment Democrats might be colluding to, once again, freeze out socialist Bernie Sanders.
“They both supported ‘Sleepy Joe,'” Trump said of Buttigieg and Klobuchar. “They made a deal. You know why? Quid pro quo, that’s why,” he said, lightheartedly mocking of the accusations House Democrats made during their impeachment efforts.
He hinted that even if Biden secured the nomination by pretending to be the “moderate” alternative, the flub-prone former vice president might not wind up running his own administration.
“They’re gonna put him into a home, and other people will be running it,” Trump joked.
Rep. Mark Meadows and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Thom Tillis were among the political VIPs in attendance at the Super Tuesday rally. / PHOTO: Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines
An array of conservative luminaries were in attendance at the rally, including two of Trump’s closest GOP supporters: Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Trump also gave prominent placement to Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, who faces a tough re-election battle.
He noted that he and Tillis had not started off on the best of terms (due to Tillis’s past support for the Mueller investigation and other measures that went against the president’s agenda).
However, they have since become strong allies on issues such as the fight against illegal immigration. North Carolina’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has supported open-border policies by vetoing a bill that would have required local law-enforcement in places like Charlotte to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
“While your super-liberal governor is putting families at risk, your Republican Sen. Thom Tillis has introduced a bill allowing American citizens to sue sanctuary cities,” Trump said.
‘The Dems are working hard to take the prized nomination away from Bernie. Backroom politics, which Bernie is not very good at…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump predicted this weekend that former mayor Pete Buttigieg’s surprising exit from the 2020 race is a sign that establishment Democrats are gearing up to take down Bernie Sanders.
Pete Buttigieg is OUT. All of his SuperTuesday votes will go to Sleepy Joe Biden. Great timing. This is the REAL beginning of the Dems taking Bernie out of play – NO NOMINATION, AGAIN!
Buttigieg is reportedly considering endorsing Joe Biden, who won South Carolina’s primary and is polling well in other key southern states, such as Florida. Buttigieg spoke on the phone with Biden immediately after dropping out, according to Axios.
Two sources close to Buttigieg confirmed that an endorsement of Biden is likely, but it’s still unclear whether Buttigieg will make the announcement before or after Super Tuesday.
Biden has already said that he will contest the Democratic Party’s nomination if Sanders wins with only a plurality. “The rules have been set,” Biden told CNN. “You don’t change the rules in the middle of the game.”
Trump has frequently blasted the Democratic Party for trying to undermine Sanders’s campaign. “The Dems are working hard to take the prized nomination away from Bernie. Backroom politics, which Bernie is not very good at. His people will not let it happen again!” Trump wrote on Twitter last week.
Sanders’s campaign manager Faiz Shakir fired back at Trump, telling him to focus on “the job of being president.”
Thanks for your concern. Are you even thinking about coronavirus, the tanking markets, or just generally the job of being president? https://t.co/S3mEn4pgdJ
Buttigieg also reportedly spoke with former President Barack Obama, who has not yet endorsed a candidate, and discussed how Buttigieg could use his endorsement as political leverage, according to CNN.
‘[We] reject these banal attempts to abuse the legal process and shut down grassroots-driven political speech your firm disagrees with…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) A pro-Trump super-PAC rejected former President Barack Obama’s demand that it remove an ad featuring past comments he made criticizing the “plantation politics” of insincere politicians like former Vice President Joe Biden.
The ad, called “Enough Empty Promises,” is a “lawful expression of political speech,” the Committee to Defend the President wrote in a letter responding to Obama.
Obama had sent a cease-and-desist letter to the super PAC through his law firm, Perkins Coie, alleging that the ad misconstrues his words to negatively portray Biden’s candidacy.
The ad features excerpts from Obama’s 1995 memoir and makes it seem as though Obama is criticizing Biden. Obama’s attorneys warned the group that the ad was an “unauthorized use” of Obama’s “name, image, likeness, voice and book passage.”
The Republican super PAC, however, said the “use of Obama’s recording clearly critiques and comments on the issues surrounding Democratic politics in relation to the African–American community.”
“[We] reject these banal attempts to abuse the legal process and shut down grassroots-driven political speech your firm disagrees with, as doing so is wholly un-American. Our commitment to free political speech is absolute,” the group said.
“Thus, in response to your outrageous attempt to disrupt the sharing of political ideas you disagree with to African American voters, CDP will not only refuse to take ‘Enough Empty Promises’ down but will distribute this advertisement to an additional 50,000 South Carolina Democratic primary voters.”
Katie Hill, an Obama spokeswoman, said last week that the group’s “despicable” ad is “straight out of the Republican disinformation playbook,” according to CNN.
She clarified that Obama has no plans to endorse Biden or any of the other Democratic candidates just yet, but said Obama will oppose any effort to “suppress turnout among minority voters in South Carolina.”
