Body was discovered unresponsive in Manhattan jail cell at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday…
Jeffrey Epstein / PHOTO: mugshot via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Word broke on Saturday morning that convicted child molester Jeffrey Epstein, 66, was dead.
Epstein was discovered around 7:30 a.m. Saturday after apparently hanging himself in his New York jail cell while facing new charges for allegedly sex-trafficking minors to the rich and powerful, according to The Daily Mail.
The news came a day after a major release of documents outed some of his famous clients according to one of the victims, who claimed she had been sent to visit former Gov. Bill Richardson, D-NM; former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine; and Great Britain’s Prince Andrew—once third in line for the throne.
The accuser also named Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, although the famous liberal lawyer pointed to an email among the court documents that seemed to be exculpatory.
The other prominent accused men also denied encounters with the victim and said they were unaware that Epstein, with whom they associated, might be involved in his illegal activity.
The two most noteworthy of Epstein’s associates—former President Bill Clinton and current President Donald Trump—were not among those implicated in the recent release.
However, the speculation over what Epstein himself might reveal in testimony led many to wonder, following a previous prison suicide attempt, if the billionaire investor might be the target of a hit.
The scandal-prone Clinton, who flew on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” airplane more than two dozen times—and is believed to have visited his Florida mansion and private island retreat—has been linked in the past to a number of suspicious deaths, with many online sites documenting the names.
In addition to Trump’s having been a personal acquaintance who attended some of Epstein’s parties, his former Labor secretary, Alex Acosta, became enmeshed in the Epstein scandal after attorneys in New York announced their federal charges and arrested the disgraced financier.
Acosta had been a U.S. attorney in Florida when the state brought charges against him in 2006. Fearing that the case might not result in jail time, Acosta offered a plea deal to Epstein that would assure a conviction and restitution for victims while agreeing not to bring federal charges.
Epstein ultimately was given just over a year in prison on those sex-trafficking charges, much of which he was allowed to serve from his home while conducting business.
Acosta resigned earlier this year as many in the media began to scrutinize and criticize his decision.
‘I don’t want to see him come in because somebody thinks it’s a good PR move…’
Eli Harold and Colin Kaepernick / IMAGE: NFL Network via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump weighed in on the prospects of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick returning to the NFL, saying the anthem-protesting player’s politics should not preclude him from playing.
However, he added, Kaepernick should not be allowed to play simply because of his politics either.
He should be given the opportunity only “if he’s good enough,” the president said, according to ESPN.
“I know [Patriots owner] Bob Kraft, I know so many of the owners, if he’s good enough, they’d sign him … in a heartbeat,” Trump said. “They will do anything they can to win games.”
The Patriots just added a two-year, $70 million contract extension to longtime quarterback Tom Brady, who turned 42 last week. After becoming the oldest quarterback ever to win a Super Bowl last year, he shows no signs of slowing down or moving aside for a replacement.
Kaepernick, 31, has not played in the NFL since opting out of his contract after the 2016 season, when he was benched due to his poor performance.
Several teams passed on him as a free agent, which led Kaepernick and fellow anthem-kneeler Eric Reid to sue the league, claiming discrimination. The NFL settled the suit for an undisclosed amount, with the Wall Street Journal reporting it to be less than $10 million.
Reid is now a safety for the Carolina Panthers and has said he plans to continue the kneeling protest this season.
In the meantime, Kaepernick has managed to cash in on his notoriety. A controversial marketing deal with Nike prompted widespread backlash and boycott threats from many conservatives, but ultimately boosted the apparel company’s sales among its target demographic.
The sway that the outspoken race-baiter has over the brand became evident again when, prior to the Independence Day holiday, Nike pulled a design that featured the original “Betsy Ross” flag of the 13 colonies, saying that Kaepernick had deemed it to be “racist” due to the connotations with slavery.
On Wednesday, Kaepernick posted a workout video to his social media accounts complaining that he had been “denied work” for 889 days and saying he was “still ready.
Trump, who has been openly critical of the kneeling, even encouraging an NFL boycott during the 2017 season, responded to a question from reporters about it during a meeting outside the White House.
“Frankly, I’d love to see Kaepernick come in, if he’s good enough. But I don’t want to see him come in because somebody thinks it’s a good PR move. If he’s good enough, he will be in.”
‘He did confirm he is anti-gun, and that he is trying to further this platform…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A left-wing activist with ties to the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign created a stir Thursday in a Florida Walmart by asking a clerk for “anything that would kill 200 people.”
CBSMiami reported that Phil Attey claimed he was simply trying to speak his mind.
“I’m in a Walmart a few days after El Paso and I’m seeing a white nationalist looking guy purchase a gun and I got mad,” Attey said.
WPTV News also was able to interview Attey on camera Thursday.
Attey was not charged for creating the public panic since it was deemed not to be a danger.
“They have made contact with him at his residence, they have determined him not to be a credible threat to anybody,” Port St. Lucie Assistant Police Chief Richard Del Toro said a press conference, according to CBS12.
“He did confirm he is anti-gun, and that he is trying to further this platform,” Del Toro said.
Shockingly, several national media sources including Good Morning America and the Huffington Post used misleading headlines and buried the fact that Attey was an anti-gun activist deep in their reporting.
Some later used stealth editing to amend the pieces once word got out on the fake news.
Since the two mass shootings last weekend in El Paso and Dayton, anti-gun activists—with the help of complicit left-wing media—are now using any means necessary to distort the gun-control narrative, including creating a public panic.
On Wednesday, a Walmart in Washington state went into lockdown from an apparent gun threat with what was later proven to be a BB gun.
After store officials threatened to call police, the man reportedly said “Go ahead,” according to KOMO News.
During the evacuation of the store, however, the suspect disappeared, and police have yet to locate him.
Several other Walmart stores have seen a spate of fake reports, including a bomb threat in Roanoke, Texas, and another false alarm in Gibsonton, Florida, where the perpetrator said he was “intrigued” by the earlier shootings.
Meanwhile, few mainstream news outlets have acknowledged that the Dayton killer expressed far-left views on his since-removed Twitter account that included endorsements of Satanism and the presidential campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Many continue to report that the motives were “unclear” for the deceased 24-year-old gunman with a history of mental derangement.
A spokesperson for Warren’s campaign said that the reporting on his leftist political views was simply a distraction.
However, previous tweets indicated that he also held anti-gun views, thus suggesting that in the wake of the El Paso shooting he may have seen himself as a martyr to the cause.
Media who initially claimed that the mass shooters at California’s Gilroy Garlic Festival and the El Paso Walmart were members of the far-right also have continued to suppress the fact that those assailants endorsed left-wing causes as well.
And the press largely ignored the fact that an assailant in a mass-stabbing rampage in Orange County, California, was a gang member and possibly an illegal immigrant.
While neglecting to disclose all the facts in these episodes, the media have helped propel the left’s agenda, dutifully reporting on pressure campaigns such as a planned Walmart employee walkout and an online petition to force the big-box store to discontinue its sales of firearms.
‘Defendants responded to plaintiff’s two decades of unblemished and non-partisan public service with a politically motivated and retaliatory demotion…’
Andrew McCabe/Photo by U.S. Embassy New Delhi (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe—one of the chief architects of the discredited Russia collusion investigation—has filed suit saying he was unfairly fired last year.
McCabe oversaw FBI efforts to spy on the campaign of President Donald Trump and throw the election for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. He was ultimately dismissed in March 2018 for inappropriately leaking classified information to the media.
McCabe sued the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr, claiming his termination last year—for failing to disclose conversations with a reporter about pending investigations—was illegal, reported Bloomberg News.
Also named in the suit were the FBI and its director, Christopher Wray.
A day prior, former FBI counterintelligence head Peter Strzok filed a separate lawsuit for the same reasons, although he and McCabe are not represented by the same law firms, Bloomberg reported.
Both men are believed to be prime subjects in two ongoing investigations being led by the Justice Department—one by Inspector General Michael Horowitz and another by special prosecutor John Durham.
Former FBI Director James Comey is also believed to be facing severe scrutiny from the probes for his role in the alleged partisan collusion.
Jeff Sessions, Barr’s predecessor as attorney general, fired McCabe on the eve of his retirement at the behest of President Donald Trump, who issued multiple tweets criticizing McCabe—who became acting director after Comey’s firing 10 months prior.
Trump celebrated McCabe’s firing—and the denial of his retirement pension—in a March 17 tweet.
Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!
However, in his complaint filed Thursday, McCabe asked a federal judge to declare that he retired as an agent in good standing, making him eligible for his pension and benefits.
McCabe highlighted his 21 years of service in the 48-page filing.
That service was undercut by the decision—which some, including Trump, have called a seditious coup—to initiate a probe of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—including the now debunked allegations that he coordinated with the Kremlin.
Much of that information was revealed to have come directly from the Hillary Clinton campaign and its contractor Fusion GPS, who used the husband–wife duo of Bruce and Nellie Ohr to funnel the contents of the now-debunked Steele Dossier directly into McCabe’s hands.
Despite being aware of the concerns surrounding the source, British spy Christopher Steele, and his ties to the Kremlin, McCabe and others nonetheless used the phony allegations as the basis for FISA warrant applications to spy on members of the Trump campaign.
Further complicating matters was the fact that, in her bid for the Virginia state Senate, McCabe’s wife, Jill, had accepted nearly half a million dollars in contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe—a former Clinton campaign bundler and business partner of Hillary Clinton’s brother—even as Andrew McCabe was supposed to be overseeing an investigation into Clinton.
In claiming he was entitled to his pension and benefits, McCabe (who subsequently published a book attacking Trump) continued to deny any wrongdoing on his part.
“Defendants responded to plaintiff’s two decades of unblemished and non-partisan public service with a politically motivated and retaliatory demotion in January 2018 and public firing in March 2018—on the very night of plaintiff’s long-planned retirement from the FBI,” said the court filing.
Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec declined to comment to Bloomberg on the case.
‘The results were almost totally predictable based on the political and demographic characteristics of those states…’
PHOTO: Ben Sellers/Liberty Headlines
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A newly released analysis from the University of Virginia‘s Center for Politics revealed that—contrary to what failed candidate Hillary Clinton and many others have claimed—any alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election did not have a significant impact.
The study’s author, Alan I. Abramowitz, a senior columnist for Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball election prognosticator project, used a series of regression analyses to compare President Donald Trump’s support with that of GOP candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.
Abramowitz found a close correlation in the two races based on factors including each state’s political tendencies, the number of rallies the candidates held, voter demographics and economic conditions.
“I find no evidence that Russian attempts to target voters in key swing states had any effect on the election results in those states. Instead, the results were almost totally predictable based on the political and demographic characteristics of those states,” said Abramowitz, who is also a political science professor at Emory University.
“Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Russians weren’t trying to influence the results or that they might not succeed in the future,” he added.
Regardless, the findings further erode one of the key precepts on which the two-year Mueller investigation, the FBI investigation that preceded it and the ongoing probes by partisan House Democrats were based.
Many on the Right have observed that, in fact, there appears to have been considerable collusion by the Obama administration’s intelligence apparatus, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to use the canard of Russian election interference—first to spy on the Trump campaign, and later to erode confidence in the election and undermine Trump’s presidency.
Reps. Al Green and Rashida Tlaib lead a rally in support of impeaching President Trump. / IMAGE: NBC News via Youtube
Some have questioned whether special counsel Robert Mueller was aware of the lack of collusion prior to the 2018 midterm election in which Democrats used his investigation under false pretenses as a political bludgeon to retake the House of Representatives.
Still, other aspersions have arisen as to the scope and severity of Russian interference, which appears to have been based around using bots to spread misinformation on social media and hacking into some of the Democrats’ many unsecured email servers.
Not content to let the data speak for itself, Abramowitz—who, along with his wife, Ann, has given considerable amounts to Democratic candidates and causes over the years—found a way of spinning the lack of Russian influence on the election into a pitch for the far-left national popular vote movement.
“Indeed, the Electoral College system used to choose the president almost invites efforts to interfere in the election,” Abramowitz opined.
“Whereas trying to affect the national popular vote results would probably be prohibitively expensive, efforts to target a few key swing states could be much more cost-effective and harder to detect,” he added.
Abramowitz’s claim neglected to mention that the prime argument against such an effort is that it would enable heavily populated blue states like California, with lax election laws and enforcement procedures that leave the door wide open for potential fraud by non-citizens, to then sway the outcome of other states with tighter ballot-box security, forcibly disfranchising their voters.
Tipping his hand yet again to snipe at President Donald Trump, Abramowitz declared, this time with no supporting evidence, “[T]here is little doubt that these efforts will continue in 2020 and beyond, especially if we have a president who seems to be inviting them.”
‘Whether by design or lucky accident, he has given himself a singular armor, a special inoculation, which is that no one expects more from him…’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi celebrates as Trump recognizes the women in Congress. / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In spite of the incessant attacks from the Left calling President Donald Trump a “racist” and claiming he is the direct cause of “carnage” due to a spate of public attacks, his approval continues to climb.
Now, media figures who felt certain their biased barrage could undo the president have begun second-guessing their ability to sway the public.
In a column published Thursday, New York Times number-cruncher Nate Cohn examined recent public opinion polls “of the highest-quality” and noted the trend, which his ivory-tower cohorts referred to as “scary” and “outrageous.”
“Donald J. Trump doesn’t always seem like a candidate focused on expanding his base of support. He may have done so anyway,” wrote Cohn begrudgingly.
Rather than reflect on how their elitist groupthink may have left them out of touch with ordinary American citizens, the pundits went on to grasp for every possible explanation that might still validate their worldview.
Cohn, himself, underscored that the number is by no means an indicator of future election success for Trump, whose job and personal approval numbers have only rarely crossed the 50-percent threshold.
However, he said, it does mean that the hubris-prone opposition party cannot take success for granted either—particularly considering the inherent biases in polling that were revealed following the 2016 election.
Flawed Opposition
Many on the Left have proceeded under the assumption that “Democrats fell just short of victory,” Cohn said, because Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate—itself a rare acknowledgement in the mainstream media.
Thus, they contend, they need only a slight improvement to put them over the top.
But in ignoring their party’s race to the socialist fringe, most remain unwilling to acknowledge the underlying problems with the Democratic platform or the possibility that their 2020 candidate may be even worse.
Hillary Clinton/IMAGE: Bloomberg News via Youtube
Although Clinton’s lack of popularity was unprecedented at the time among Democrats, “an analysis that freezes the president’s standing in 2016 but assumes an improvement for the Democratic nominee would be misleading,” Cohn wrote.
Meanwhile, Trump’s opponents have assumed that ratcheting up their rhetoric against the president using the most extreme forms of polemic exaggeration would alienate his supporters—much as it did during the George W. Bush era—but, instead, it has done the opposite.
“Millions of Americans who did not like the president in 2016 now say they do,” Cohn wrote. “Over all, his personal favorability rating has increased by about 10 percentage points among registered voters since Election Day 2016.”
Cohn’s Times colleague Frank Bruni recognized that a bungling Democratic candidate could prove to be Trump’s biggest advantage of all.
Naturally, his reaction was to deflect the concern by blaming Trump, saying the Left’s blunders were “picayune” when compared with the president’s.
“The truth is that any week—maybe even any day—of Trump’s presidency contains enough gaffes, crassness and fiction to sink any one of the Democratic candidates for president,” Bruni said. “And those candidates suffer for their worst moments in a way that he doesn’t for much worse ones.”
Bruni continued to whine that “Teflon Don” had shielded himself against criticism from his adversaries by simply refusing to succumb to it.
“Whether by design or lucky accident, he has given himself a singular armor, a special inoculation, which is that no one expects more from him,” Bruni said. “After all, he never managed or earnestly promised to be any better. There’s no shock factor.”
In a sense, Trump benefited from the low expectations he started with as a known public figure whose sole mission was to disrupt the politics-as-usual paradigm—which he has done in droves while presiding over a robust economy, restoring balance within the courts and undoing many of the Obama-era policies that voters found unpalatable.
Shy No More
Trump supporters prepare for his rally in Orlando on Tuesday, June 18, 2019 to kick off his re-election campaign. IMAGE: WKMG News 6 ClickOrlando
Cohn said conservatives who initially disapproved of the president may actually have changed their opinions for the better—or else resolved, when faced with a far-left alternative, to hold their nose and vote for the incumbent.
He noted that Trump’s stability in online polls was long presumed to account for the “shy” Trump voter, who would be less likely to acknowledge support to a live person.
While the online figures have not changed drastically, the president’s success in phone polling, therefore, indicates that people are becoming more open and outspoken in their support.
“It’s true that the president’s job approval rating has been unusually stable when compared with other presidents,” Cohn wrote. “But the possibility that he has lifted his ratings, however fleetingly, to match the highest levels of his presidency is a reminder that the ceiling on his support is higher than some may think.”
Many analysts on the Left—including Cohn and Bruni—are now expressing hope that an impending economic collapse, further bloodshed from political violence or other factors might drive down Trump’s approval rating among those still wavering.
But already they have begun testing other excuses for a Trump 2020 victory, citing such things as the unfair Electoral College and Russian interference, yet again.
Either way, they are determined to continue attacking the president—even if doing so feeds into his success.
“That’s not because we in the media have stopped scrutinizing him and chronicling his errors and outrages,” Bruni wrote. “It’s because there are so many that they blur. It’s because they’re baked into the Trump brand. They’re part of the deal that his supporters have made. This is the Trump they bought. This is the Trump they’ll keep.”
‘You can’t have a non profit with this mission statement then open your doors to Trump…’
Miami Dolphins’ Kenny Stills and Albert Wilson take a knee during the playing of the national anthem/IMAGE: YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Ranked the 61st overall wide receiver by NFL.com, Miami Dolphins starter Kenny Stills is known more for his sideline antics these days than his on-field exploits.
Evidently, his team’s willingness to tolerate Stills’s public protest of his anti-American political views was not enough for the diva receiver, though—he also insists that those be the only ones the team tolerates, according to Sports Illustrated.
Stills pitched a fit on Wednesday over the fact that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross planned to host a fundraiser for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.
The fundraiser, planned for Friday in the Hamptons, New York, will charge $100,000 for a photo with the president and $250,000 to participate in a round-table discussion, The Washington Post reported.
Stills attacked Ross over the fact that he also manages a nonprofit called the Ross Initiative for Sports and Equality—which, according to its mission statement, “educates and empowers the sports community to eliminate racial discrimination, champion social justice and improve race relations.”
Stills’s Twitter regularly intersperses political commentary and activism with sports updates and personal musings. He has continued to show his solidarity with Kaepernick during the NFL preseason.
Though the protests are widely believed to have contributed to a plummet in league viewership over the past three years, ratings saw a minor uptick last year over the previous season—during which Trump had encouraged patriotic NFL fans to boycott the league.
Backlash led the NFL to establish a policy in May 2018 requiring all players on the field to stand for the national anthem, but resistance from the players’ union prompted the league to announce in July, before the season started, that they would not enforce it.
The league currently leaves the decision to the players, though the kneeling is not often broadcast by networks and has been actively discouraged by some teams.
‘This is an attempt to distract from the fact that Trump’s rhetoric is inciting violence…’
Elizabeth Warren / IMAGE: The Late Late Show with James Corden via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The only 2020 candidate known to have been endorsed by one of the three recent mass shooters downplayed the notion that their extreme political rhetoric was tied to the killer’s deranged motives.
On Tuesday, Warren’s campaign called the reports covering the Dayton killer’s fanatical tweets a distraction—while also claiming, contrary to evidence, a “direct line” between Trump and the anti-immigrant El Paso, Texas shooter.
“Leaders have a responsibility to speak out and to not incite violence,” said Warren spokesperson Kristen Orthman as prelude to her 180-degree deflection, according to The Hill.
“But let’s be clear—there is a direct line between the president’s rhetoric and the stated motivations of the El Paso shooter,” Orthman said. “This is an attempt to distract from the fact that Trump’s rhetoric is inciting violence as extremist-related murders have spiked 35 percent from 2017 to 2018.”
A recent analysis of statistical data related to mass-shooting incidents showed that former President Barack Obama’s average was, in fact, higher in his last two years of office than the average number of mass-shooting occurrences and casualties in Trump’s first two years.
Moreover, the efforts to link the El Paso shooter to Trump explicitly contradict the shooter’s own manifesto, which stated that his views pre-dated Trump and in which he pre-emptively asserted that the media efforts to blame Trump were false.
That shooter survived and was taken into custody, meaning any underlying motives not outlined in his manifesto are yet discoverable.
Nonetheless, both left-wing politicians and media outlets have duplicitously sought to tie Trump’s politics to one shooting while claiming with the other that there is ‘no evidence’ of a political motivation.
Likewise, media sources reflexively attempted to link the shooter at the Gilroy Garlic Festival to right-wing politics based on a tweet recommending what they called a “white supremacist” text—until authorities revealed that the killer had far-left screeds in his collection.
That forced liberal “experts” in the study of extremism to finally acknowledge that anarchist and pro-socialist factions like Antifa might, at least, be contributing to some of the political violence.
“We see that in the far right, but we also see it in anarchists,” confessed Brian Levin, director of California State University, San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Levin later qualified those remarks by claiming violent extremism was its own political philosophy.
“Violence is not just a means to promote an ideology,” he said. “It’s become an ideology itself.”
True to leftist form, Warren shills responded to the charges of hypocrisy by levying more ad-hominem attacks against Trump.
I’d blame Senator Warren if she had been using violent rhetoric and trying to score political points and raise money stoking fears about an invasion. She’s not. You know the difference. Why carry water for Donald Trump, a man you know is an idiot? https://t.co/elki1plJNX
The Warren campaign also sought to exploit the mass shootings as a fundraiser, with an appeal emailed to her supporters requesting donations to a Senate victory fund.
“It’s clear Republicans don’t have the courage to do something about this crisis,” Warren wrote. “We can’t wait for them to act—because they won’t. If we’re going to address the gun violence epidemic in our country, we need to take back the Senate in 2020.”
Warren’s tone-deaf deflection of the Dayton killer’s views is not the first time she has turned tragedy into political opportunism.
When the culprit in last year’s high-profile murder of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts was revealed to be an illegal immigrant, Warren immediately went on the offensive (in every sense of the word) by saying America needed to redirect its attention to the “real problems” related to immigration.
“I’m so sorry for the family here … but one of the things we have to remember here is we need an immigration system that is effective—that focuses on where real problems are,” she said, before diverting to an obsolete talking point about Trump’s short-lived child-separation policy.
‘If I act unilaterally, or what’s perceived as unilaterally and leave my community behind, then it looks like a power grab…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As news broke last week that more than half of House Democrats now support impeaching President Donald Trump—despite lacking the cause to do so—at least one swing-district party member was less than thrilled.
Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., said that her colleagues calling for Trump’s removal were contributing to a “super toxic” political landscape leading into the 2020 election season, according to Vox.
“We need to move forward in a way that brings the community with us, because if I act unilaterally, or what’s perceived as unilaterally and leave my community behind, then it looks like a power grab,” Underwood said on the podcast Recode Decode With Kara Swisher.
Underwood, who lives in Naperville, Ill., and represents what she described as a half-suburban, half-rural community just west of Chicago, said that many of her constituents tended to “shut down” at mention of the word Russia.
“[Y]ou can’t even get to investigation or impeachment because it’s just noise to them,” she said. “It’s been like this endless bickering. They don’t really know who’s at fault; [they don’t] care because it’s not addressing the core issues affecting their family.”
Underwood was one of the many freshman Democrats in the House who helped usher in the current majority last election by defeating incumbent Republicans.
But she warned that the creep of socialism and extremist positions into her party—including those advocated by many of the current Democratic primary candidates—could result in yet another seat-flip in the 2020 election, this time against them.
With Trump still popular in her district, she said she—and many other vulnerable Democrats, cannot afford to wait until next year and hope the eventual candidate pivots toward the center.
“If I’m forced to run the 2020 presidential in the Illinois 14th, we will lose,” she said. “And I will lose along with many other Democrats in swing seats, and we will lose the House.”
Underwood, who was previously a nurse, encouraged her fellow party members to stay on message by hammering healthcare—which she said is what drew her into the political sphere in the first place.
Lauren Underwood / IMAGE: Chicago Sun Times
“We won really for, I’d say, three reasons. No. 1, health care was the No. 1 issue throughout the whole campaign,” she said.
However, Underwood said the second and third reasons were all about connecting with her community and proving to them that she was willing to work hard.
In a district that had long been represented by disgraced former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert, voters who felt a sense of “deep betrayal” at having been taken for granted were eager to send a message, she said.
“[A] lot of the moderate Republicans and independent voters … were not happy with that level of nonresponsiveness, inaccessibility and nontransparency,” she added.
Still, many of them supported Trump and the Republican candidate for governor while voting for Underwood in the down-ballot race. She worried that voters’ trust in her could be destroyed by Democrats at the top making the same mistakes as her GOP predecessors.
“[W]e knew that, in our community, we would not be successful if our race was about partisanship,” she said. ” … The Democratic Party in our state is run by a machine. The machine ends up being pretty toxic, you know, doesn’t have a lot of fans out our way.”
‘I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding…’
Police confront and ‘neutralize’ an active shooter in Dayton, Ohio who killed 9, including his sister. / IMAGE: The Sun via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The effort by the Left to blame right-wing extremism as the cause of Saturday’s Walmart shooting in El Paso, Texas, is quickly dissipating as details unfold about the Dayton, Ohio, shooting that followed shortly after.
The site Heavy.com reported that the Ohio gunman was an avowed leftist who offered his presidential endorsement to Sen. Elizabeth Warren and tweeted “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”
His Twitter page has since been removed, but on it, the gunman—who murdered nine people, including his own sister, and injured at least 27 others in a popular Dayton nightspot—also included his preferred gender pronouns, expressed a devotion to Satan and liked tweets related to the El Paso shooting.
His biographical profile on Twitter contained the following: “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.”
Although his religious views seem to have been confused—he referred to himself both as a Satanist and as an atheist (one who believes in/worships no higher power)—the shooter’s passion for progressive politics was more certain.
Even when it came to centrist Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who became a liberal darling after his death last year, the shooter’s animosity prompted him to tweet “F*ck John McCain.” And prior to the 2018 midterm election he wrote, “Vote blue for gods sake.”
In response to a tweet suggesting that Warren and Sen. Kamala Harris could be co-presidents, he wrote, “Nahh, but only cuz Harris is a cop—Warren I’d happily vote for.”
Chillingly, some of his tweets seemed to weigh in on previous gun-violence episodes, including the 2017 school shooting in Parkland, Florida—after which he wrote, presumably in response to a pro-gun-rights statement from Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio: “@robportman hey rob. How much did they pay you to look the other way? 17 kids are dead. If not now, when?”
Media reports on Monday continued to say that the killer’s motive was unclear, but the revelations about his leftist political views may have helped them rule out one possibility: racism.
Although six of the victims were black, the Dayton Daily News said that, contrary to preliminary reports, “at this time there isn’t any evidence that race played a role in the shooting.”
The assailant himself, despite wearing body armor and a mask, was successfully neutralized by police after 30 seconds, leaving only his online footprint to piece together answers.
Meanwhile, the El Paso shooter was taken alive into custody even though his own manifesto declared capture to be a fate “far worse than dying.”
El Paso Walmart / IMAGE: Today via Youtube
That killer expressed his solidarity with an earlier assailant in Christchurch, New Zealand, saying he shared the same anti-immigrant positions outlined in the earlier shooter’s manifesto and was hoping to kill as many Mexicans as possible.
While most in the media interpreted his statements to mean he was a supporter of President Donald Trump, the reality seemed to be more complicated.
Among the ideas he espoused were environmentalism and support for a universal basic income—although he pinned his advocacy for both issues on the negative impacts of immigrants.
“[T]he Republican Party is also terrible,” he wrote in his manifesto. “Many factions within the Republican Party are pro-corporation. Pro-
corporation = pro-immigration.”
The El Paso killer also made a point of saying that his views pre-dated Trump, and he preemptively dismissed the idea that the president’s rhetoric was to blame.
“I putting this here because some people will blame the President or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case,” he wrote.
“I know that the media will probably call me a white supremacist anyway and blame Trump’s rhetoric,” he said. “The media is infamous for fake news. Their reaction to this attack will likely just confirm that.”
