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Trump furious his Twitter ban is keeping him from firing back as Fauci exposes him: report
January 25, 2021
According to a report from the Daily Beast, Donald Trump has been busy in Mar-a-Lago watching clips of Dr. Anthony Fauci talk about the failings of the Trump-era White House task force that worked on the coronavirus pandemic, with the ex-president frustrated he can't fire back.
Since Trump was relieved of the power -- and the bully pulpit -- of the presidency last week as President Joe Biden moved into the Oval Office, Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx have been regulars on television talking about the roadblocks they faced as they led the battle against COVID-19.
<p>The Beast reports that the president has been "griping" about Fauci and claiming he should have fired the doctor when he had the chance.</p><p>"As Biden's predecessor watched on—albeit from hundreds of miles away from where he last week sat at the height of executive power—he reacted in a fit of grievance, self-obsession, TV hate-watching that largely defined his presidency and now-defunct policy-making operations," The Beasts Asawin Suebsaeng wrote before adding, "Fauci's re-emergence on prime-time television during the Biden era infuriated the exiled Trump, who began whining about how "incompetent" the doctor was, and how he probably should have fired Fauci when he had the chance."</p><p>Equally infuriating to the ex-president is the fact that he is still banned from Twitter, leaving him with no platform he is comfortable with to launch a counter-attack at those he believes are trashing his "legacy."</p><p>"He's lost his primary emotional release valve, thanks to his post-Capitol riot <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/after-inciting-capitol-riot-trump-whines-to-advisers-why-cant-i-tweet" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">banning from Twitter</a>, just as his enemies—real and perceived—keep dancing atop his administration's freshly dug grave," the report states. "And it's not just Fauci. Trump has also griped this weekend about not being able to tweet about the Biden team telling journalists that Trump and ex-officials had left them with a gigantic COVID mess to mop up, according to a person with direct knowledge of his recent ramblings."</p><p>You can <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-fumes-in-his-first-weekend-out-of-office-as-fauci-clowns-on-him?ref=home" target="_blank">read more here</a>.</p>
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'You're out of order': Interview with Trump campaign official breaks down over insurrection excuses
January 24, 2021
MSNBC's Ari Melber did a Sunday evening special on the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. His final interview was with the former president's campaign staffer Boris Epshteyn who revealed the only excuse that Republicans will have to justify Trump's innocence.
Melber spent the hour outlining the case against Trump, citing the funds the $2.7 million in campaign spent to hold the rally in Washington and the statements from those arrested that they followed what the president told them.
<p>The excuse Epshteyn used is that Trump told his supporters to be "stay peaceful." It's a comment that comes after months of telling his supporters to act and to fight for their votes. </p><p>The argument many have made is that <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/trump-failure-to-act-prosecution.html" target="_blank">using incendiary rhetoric for months</a>, urging a crowd to "fight," a "trial by combat," and "walk to the Capitol."</p><p>"Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy," he said. "And after this, we're going to walk down — and I'll be there with you — we're going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. We're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength.</p><p>"We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for [the] integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period."</p><p>Epshteyn's argument is that nothing else that Trump said matters, only the word "peacefully." </p><p>Melber's guests including a slate of former prosecutors described Trump's excuses as like <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/09/seth-meyers-trump-defense-woodward-tapes" target="_blank">yelling "fire"</a> in a crowded theater. In an earlier interview, <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/impeachment-officer-details-case/" target="_blank">Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-NY) described Trump</a> as doing more than just yelling "fire" in the theater. She described the ex-president as bringing the matches and the gasoline, paying for the arsonists to meet at the Capitol, and telling them to burn it down with a brief comment that fire is bad. </p><p>Epshteyn argued against Melber that he should "fire" the person who put together his clips reel because it didn't include Trump's comment about "peacefully and patriotically" attacking the capitol. </p><p>"We're not here for your advice to do what we do," Melber said. "You're out of order."</p><p><br/></p>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">You're out of order</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBejkUin3IA&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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Monday night, House impeachment officers will officially walk the Articles of Impeachment to the U.S. Senate and the process will officially begin as President Donald Trump is tried for a second time before the body.
Speaking to MSNBCs Ari Melber on an impeachment special Sunday evening, a solemn Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-NY) explained that this is not something the House members do lightly.
<p>"And then we'll begin the trial of our president, of former President Donald Trump in the Senate, for what we believe to be one of the most heinous crimes against our country in its existence," she said. "Something that the founders anticipated and put in guardrails against. That being a despot, drunk with power, trying to keep his grip on power and using the people of this country to try and stage an insurrection."</p><p>She didn't intend to reveal the strategy for impeachment but explained that the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 wasn't the beginning of Trump's efforts to incite violence against the legislature. </p><p>"President Trump has engaged in a prolonged effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and spent months spreading disinformation and the results falsely claiming that he had won by a landslide," she explained. "He stated it would be illegitimate to accept those results, and then he brought individuals to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. Make no mistake that that was an extremely important date in his mind and in our Constitution's time, because there was a time where the entire body of Congress along with the vice president would be present at the Capitol to fulfill our duties, that being to certificate five the election. And with that, he knew who the individuals were, who would be coming, what they would do and what hold he had over them."</p><p>She described what happened as "foreseeable," in fact, Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling warned that what Trump was doing would "get people killed." Indeed, five people were killed as a result of what happened on Jan. 6. </p><p> "It's bad enough that we have a president who wanted to obstruct justice, who wanted to obstruct a free and fair election, who did not want the fulfillment of Constitution, but the worst part that he did it through the attack, assault, mayhem, vandalism, the attempted assassination of the vice president and the speaker of the House, potential attempt to kidnap members of congress and the fulfillment of felony murder as well. All for his own self-aggrandizement. Absolutely shameful," Plaskett said. </p><p>See the full interview below: </p><p><br/></p>
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<span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e8a58082ada93098099b36d7c9eff7de" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" type="lazy-iframe" scrolling="no" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fm2Jg4ovieA?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Presenting the articles of impeachment...... again</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm2Jg4ovieA&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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