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'Constantly rubbing dirt in our face': GOP senators complain Biden keeps passing bills without them
April 14, 2021
A handful of the Senate's more moderate Republicans thought they would be at the center of legislative negotiations with President Joe Biden, but instead find themselves on the sidelines as Democrats push ahead with a sweeping agenda.
Members of the so-called G-10 say they're eager to negotiate deals with the White House, after steering COVID-19 relief under former president Donald Trump, but they're instead largely irrelevant and unable to shake the GOP reputation as obstructionists, reported Politico.
"It's a f*cking nightmare," complained one G-10 staffer. "Biden is a horrible villain for us. There are deeply entrenched narratives that have some truth but are no longer totally true. Reporters believe them despite all evidence to the contrary."
Staffers complain that the White House is "constantly rubbing dirt in the face of Republicans" by inviting them to White House meetings as Senate Democrats push through legislation with their narrow majority through reconciliation.
"If you get an invitation to the White House, you go to the White House," said another G-10 staffer. "But regardless, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. When you go to the White House meeting you risk being used in a feigned attempt at bipartisanship. If you don't go then it's, 'Oh, Republicans won't even meet with me.' It all pivots on whether it's a genuine offer from the White House or just part of their messaging strategy."
The senators -- including Susan Collins (R-ME), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) -- may not like the situation, but they grudgingly concede that Biden's White House has firmly grabbed control of the narrative.
"Everything they support is defined as either COVID relief or infrastructure, and everything they oppose is like … Jim Crow voter suppression and evil," said a G-10 aide, "and you constantly just feel like you're in this gaslighting chamber of insanity. But it's working."
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Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday shot down Fox News host Tucker Carlson's insinuation that vaccines for the novel coronavirus may not actually work.
During a CNN appearance, Fauci was asked to comment on Carlson's remarks on Tuesday in which he suggested that maybe the COVID-19 vaccines "don't work" as the medical establishment has claimed.
Fauci quickly smacked down Carlson for being scientifically illiterate.
"That's just a typical crazy conspiracy theory," he said. "The data is overwhelming in the three vaccines used in an emergency use and emergency use authorization: The J&J, Pfizer, and Moderna, you had 30,000, 44,000, and 40,000 people in the clinical trial with an overwhelming signal of efficacy. So I don't have any idea what he's talking about."
Host John Berman then asked Fauci whether it was "dangerous" for a TV personality with such a large audience as Carlson to be spreading anti-vaxx talking points.
"It's certainly not helpful to the public health of this nation or globally," Fauci replied. "I don't want to get into arguments about Tucker Carlson, but to me it's counter to trying to protect the safety and health of the American public."
Watch the video below.
'Typical crazy': Dr. Fauci scorches Tucker Carlson for insinuating COVID vaccines don't really work www.youtube.com
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Former Trump White House senior adviser turned right-wing radio host Sebastian Gorka was permanently booted off of YouTube over the weekend after receiving his third strike on the platform in 90 days for touting unhinged election conspiracy theories.
Gorka's channel was suspended for misleading users on the platform by pushing the baseless claim that the 2020 election was plagued with widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Salon found the infamous Trump flack, formerly accused of wearing Hungarian pro-Nazi regalia, was pushing voter fraud claims as recently as last week in a video entitled: "Can We Stop the Next Steal?"
YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told Salon on Monday afternoon that Gorka's channel, where he has live-streamed his "America First" Salem radio show, was terminated over "repeated violations" to the company's "presidential election integrity policy":
In accordance with our long-standing strikes system, we terminated the channel America First with Sebastian Gorka for repeated violations of our presidential election integrity policy. As we've publicly shared, our presidential election integrity policy prohibits content uploaded after last year's safe harbor deadline that alleges widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Any channel that violates this policy will receive a strike, and channels that receive three strikes in the same 90-day period are permanently removed from YouTube, as in the case of America First with Sebastian Gorka.
Gorka didn't return numerous requests for comment from Salon. Salem Media Group, which syndicates Gorka's radio show, also did not return Salon's request for comment. This reporter, until now an avid viewer of Gorka's channel, can only imagine that the onetime White House aide is disappointed. Gorka would frequently brag to his producers whenever he noted a few hundred concurrent viewers watching via YouTube.
Fellow conservative radio host Dan Bongino leapt to Gorka's defense by promoting the latter's channel on Rumble (a conservative-oriented alternative to YouTube) on his daily podcast. "My friend Sebastian Gorka has been targeted by YouTube; they are trying to take his channel down, one of many conservatives under attack by YouTube," Bongino said on his Monday program. "Go check him out on Rumble. ... I feel like what they are doing to him is disgusting."
This isn't the first time Gorka has run into problems with YouTube. In 2019, he was temporarily suspended from the platform because he "refused to stop playing songs from pop-rock band Imagine Dragons on episodes of his radio show that were later uploaded to the site," according to The Daily Beast. The apparent copyright dispute was later resolved, and Gorka subsequently stopped playing music on his YouTube live streams.
But when not on Twitter blocking 16,000 "asshats" or hosting his radio show, the EcoBoost Mustang-driving onetime Trump adviser also hosts a new Sunday night Newsmax show called "The Gorka Reality Check," which recently received a less-than-flattering review in Politico:
Routinized Songs of Praise for President Donald Trump would be a good title for the Gorka TV hour-long show, which debuted on Sunday at 7 p.m. The program, shot cheaply on a no-budget set in front of a Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument screen, consumed its first quarter-hour extolling Trump and Trumpism in the grandest and blandest terms possible ...
There is at least one obvious downside to Gorka's YouTube ban from the platform: Viewers will be denied Canadian prankster Chris James' imaginative efforts to troll the self-professed terrorism expert, whose PhD has been described as "about as legitimate as if he had been awarded it by Trump University."
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