After the 2012 election, Buzzfeed put together a series of electoral maps that showed what the results would have looked like if we didn’t have universal suffrage. A couple of them went viral, including this one, which depicts the election results…
["Stock Photo: A Man Who Voted Holds Up His Voting Badge Lapel Pin" on Shutterstock]
At the tail end of an long interview with CNN's Dana Bash, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blistered former president Donald Trump over his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin who she bluntly described as a "thug."
"Well, I'm very proud of the fact that the president [Joe Biden] is in Europe saying we're back," the Democratic leader told the "State of the Union" host. "We're back for climate. We're back for an open society.
Asked about President Biden's plans to meet with Putin, Pelosi said it was a good idea beforeshe launched into a review of Trump's relationship with the Russian strongman.
"Now let's just make a contrast," she began. "The president -- former president of the United States, for whatever reason, whether the Russians had personal, political or financial leverage over him, kowtowed, catered to Putin in a way that was humiliating to the United States of America. And when, when Putin hears about some of the violations of the rights of his own people, he laughs."
"This is a thug. This is a thug," she repeated. "But he is head of an important state in terms of the issues you raise. The president should meet with him, and I think he's going to meet a very different president than one who was at the mercy of Putin."
Watch below:
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Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday pressed former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about what the Trump administration had done to force China to provide evidence that the COVID-19 virus came from a lab.
Pompeo, who is now a Fox News contributor, faced questions from Wallace while appearing on Fox News Sunday.
"You also criticized President [Joe] Biden for not pushing hard enough on China to look for the origins of the coronavirus," Wallace noted. "But I want to again go back to your administration and the record there."
Wallace continued: "President Trump and his team, including you, had almost a year after the COVID-19 first came on the scene to really press Beijing on what the origins were when the evidence was much fresher... What did President Trump and his administration, including the secretary of state, do to press China harder to get the evidence on where the COVID-19 virus came from because we still don't know?"
But Pompeo refused to answer the question.
"Chris, the predicate of your question is all wrong," he insisted. "We have a really good idea what happened here. There is an enormous amount of evidence that there was a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There's a pile of evidence 100 feet high. I have high confidence that that's the case."
"We pressed the Chinese communist party really hard," Pompeo said. "We withdrew from the WHO, which had become politicized. This administration chose to get back into that. I don't know what tools they think they're going to use. But we were serious in this endeavor. We made it clear that there would be real consequences for the Chinese Communist Party."
The former secretary of state added: "We got very close to being able to make a laydown case for what actually happened and how this virus came to kill millions of people around the world and destroy billions of dollars in wealth. We know enough now. The coverup continues and it's time for accountability."
"Do you that the virus came from a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute?" Wallace asked.
"I do," Pompeo replied.
Watch the video below from Fox News.
In interviews with Business Insider, former classmates of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R -FL) when he was attending William & Mary Law School, expressed dismay at continuing reports of his sex scandals and want him to resign immediately.
Along the way, they recalled his hard-partying ways when they were in school with him, with one adding of his recent exploits that have him under federal investigation, "Am I surprised he's partying with people or doing that kind of stuff? No."
According to the report, "In interviews, many of Gaetz's former friends and acquaintances from William & Mary Law School's class of 2007 said they were embarrassed by the constant headlines about the GOP congressman's scandals. Insider spoke with 14 of Gaetz's former classmates. Most of them spoke on condition of anonymity to protect personal and professional relationships," with Insider adding, "One former law-school classmate regularly trolls Gaetz on Twitter by welcoming the congressman's critics to the 'Matt Haetz Society.'"
Insider reports that "Of the more than 500 William & Mary Law School alumni who signed a petition urging Gaetz to resign, 34 of them were members of Gaetz's own class of 2007, of which there were about 200 people overall."
One former classmate admitted that they dread each report on the lawmaker.
"Every time The Daily Beast breaks another story on a Friday, it's like, 'Oh boy, go check Twitter,'" they stated.
During the interviews, emails from Gaetz's college days were shared with one being an invitation to a Super Bowl party that also promised gambling and strippers -- which one associate of the now-Florida lawmaker said was a joke.
"His invitation included specific requests: chips, one-dollar bills, and strippers," Insider reports while quoting Gaetz writing, "I may ask you to bring some incidentals (napkins, cups, chips, strippers, ext.).P.S - After entering all of your email addresses it is painfully obvious that I don't know enough girls - so bring some."
According to the schoolmate who said they weren't surprised by the lawmaker's current partying, they admitted they were stunned that he might have had sex with underaged women, telling insider Gaetz "... has a very high sense of self-preservation. I'm surprised he wouldn't check their references."
"Gaetz's law-school reputation — attention-seeking with a frat-boy vibe — is similar to how he comes across as a congressman, said a former classmate, 'except he's more over-the-top now,'" the report notes. "As a law student, Gaetz lived in a large multi-bedroom house near campus, more luxurious digs than the cramped apartments where some of his classmates lived. He often hosted friends there to play cards or drink from a keg in the basement."
"There are a handful of students that stood out as being particularly intelligent, others as particularly aggressive — we call them 'gunners,'" explained a former classmate before adding Gaetz "wasn't either of those. He's always been kind of a frat boy."
With one former classmate calling Gaetz "embarrassing to the institution," another said of his attempt to throw out the election results that led to Donald Trump's loss, "In doing that he's undermining our system of government and the rule of law. Obviously, it's not great to have Matt be among our alumni. It's not really the person you want to point to as a role model."
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