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MAGA rioter arrested after his mom bragged about him storming the Capitol on Facebook: feds
August 04, 2021
The mother of an alleged MAGA rioter wound up inadvertently getting her son arrested after she boasted about him storming the Capitol on Facebook.
Via Huffington Post's Ryan J. Reilly, a newly filed criminal complaint alleges that 39-year-old Washington state resident Tyler Slaeker engaged in violent and disorderly conduct while illegally trespassing on restricted grounds during the infamous January 6th riots.
While Slaeker's participation in the riots wasn't very remarkable, the manner in which law enforcement officials discovered him was.
As the complaint explains, Slaeker's mother posted photos that he'd taken from the Capitol on her Facebook page and relayed his descriptions of what he said was going on during the deadly riots.
"They entered the Capitol building -- there is pepper spray going on -- police are shutting down the building now," she said in one post.
Slaeker's mother also tried to claim that the rioters storming the Capitol were largely peaceful, and she said that "[t]he pictures tyler sent of the crowds show normal, middle class, even older crowds" inside the building.
Two people who were friends with Slaeker's mother on Facebook took screen shots of the posts and shared them with law enforcement officials, who proceeded to arrest the alleged MAGA rioter shortly after.
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Jen Psaki owns Ron DeSantis after he complains about being 'singled out' -- and lays out his deadly record on COVID
August 04, 2021
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent the past several days playing the victim over criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis in his state.
Last month Florida accounted for 1 in 5 of every COVID cases in the United States, and this week the state shattered its own records for COVID cases and hospitalizations.
DeSantis snapped at a reporter who asked about the increase of hospitalizations in the state and the uptick of children getting the virus, even though school hasn't begun yet.
"You know, I'm just sick of this judge – I'm sick of the judgment, the judgmental stuff on some of this stuff, nobody's trying to, to, to get ill here, okay?" DeSantis complained to reporters.
DeSantis' latest complaint is that President Joe Biden is making his state the villain of the COVID crisis.
"Joe Biden has taken to himself to try to single out Florida over COVID," the governor said.
Press secretary Jen Paski responded with actual facts, explaining, "23 percent of new COVID hospitalizations in the U.S are in Florida, and their hospitals are being overwhelmed again. We are doing everything we can to help the people of Florida, and they're stepping up by getting vaccinated – we hope Gov. Ron DeSantis joins us in this fight."
DeSantis has banned mask mandates, vaccine passports and other tools businesses are using to keep down exposure to the virus.
See the tweet below:
23% of new COVID hospitalizations in the U.S are in Florida, and their hospitals are being overwhelmed again. We… https://t.co/v8vot4ViRy— Jen Psaki (@Jen Psaki) 1628108552.0
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While Osama bin Laden was escaping Afghanistan — Rumsfeld was in a meeting planning the Iraq war: book
August 04, 2021
The late former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is generally regarded to be one of the architects behind the war in Iraq even though Osama bin Laden, who was being given shelter in Afghanistan at the time, was the primary architect of the 9/11 attacks.
In a new biography by CNN reporter Peter Bergen about Osama bin Laden, it was revealed that Rumsfeld was ignoring what was happening on the ground in Afghanistan, allowing bin Laden to escape the country.
Bergen's new book The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, he described the meetings Rumsfeld was taking while bin Laden was creeping over the Pakistan border from Tora Bora.
"It's on the border of Pakistan, the very porous border. So, you know, the fact is it's not an easy place to kind of cordon off," Bergen described in an interview with Fresh Air on Wednesday. "But the United States never tried. And to me, it's surprising."
Bergen describes the months following the attack on the Twin Towers as the best possible time to have located and either arrested or killed bin Laden. Instead, George W. Bush's administration took their feet off the gas.
"In the months after 9/11 the best chance the United States had to kill bin Laden was in the mountains of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, where he and the core of al-Qaeda had retreated during mid-November," the book described. "He had been hiding there through most of the holy month of Ramadan."
"Bin Laden also knew that during the anti-Soviet jihad a relatively small group of Afghan holy warriors in Tora Bora had held off significant offensives involving thousands of Russian troops because its mountains and caves were easily defended," the book continues. "And he also understood that Tora Bora backed onto Pakistan's wild, ungoverned tribal regions, which was a perfect place for his followers to escape if this became necessary."
While some news reports claimed that bin Laden had stuffed the caves with weapons and ammunition, the reality is he had but one mortar and very little ammunition.
On Dec. 3, 2001 the bombing by the United States began.
"Not a second would pass without a fighter plane passing over our heads day and night," bin Laden recalled later, according to the book. "American forces were bombing us by smart bombs that weigh thousands of pounds and bombs that penetrate caves."
Bergen reported that between Dec. 4 and 7 the U.S. dropped 700,000 pounds of ordnance on Tora Bora where the notorious terrorist was hiding.
Speaking to NPR, Bergen described the World Trade Center pile of debris as "literally still smoking on December 12, 2001, which is the day that bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora." It was on that day that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was being briefed about the future plans for the Iraq War by the Pentagon.
"And to me, that sort of speaks for itself," said Bergen. "Here is the architect of 9/11 escaping. And Donald Rumsfeld is getting briefed on the Iraq war plans. So, that shows you where their head was at. And there was plenty of information, well-known, at the time that bin Laden was at Tora Bora, but no will to get him. There were more journalists at the battle of Tora Bora by my count than there were American soldiers. There were about 100 journalists covering the battle and about 70 American soldiers in total."
During a news conference at the White House on March 13, 2002, former President W. Bush told reporters capturing bin Laden wasn't his focus.
"We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is," Bush said. "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his Al Qaeda killers anymore."
That was Bush's rationale for not focusing on going after the terrorist. When former President Barack Obama came into office, the situation changed and by May 1, 2011, when intelligence had information of bin Laden's whereabouts, the U.S. acted. He was ultimately killed in the raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. People flocked to the White House chanting "USA! USA!" and celebrating the end of the U.S. foe as some semblance of justice for the thousands killed 10 years before.
Listen to the full interview with Peter Bergen below and his new book is on sale now.
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