Trump’s employees conducted ‘dress rehearsal’ for concealing sensitive documents: report
May 25, 2023, 2:32 PM ET
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'Indictment sure to come' in Mar-a-Lago case -- and voters 'are exhausted' by his lies: Morning Joe
June 01, 2023
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough believes Donald Trump is sure to be indicted in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and he doesn't see how that will help him get re-elected.
The ex-president can be heard on a July 2021 recording admitting that he kept a classified document after leaving the White House and suggesting that he wanted to share the material, but knew he could not lawfully do so, and the "Morning Joe" host said that could be fatal to his bid to return to the White House.
"There's some hardcore supporters who will say it doesn't matter that Donald Trump is a liar, it doesn't matter that he stole classified documents, it doesn't matter that he obstructed justice, it doesn't matter that he broke the law," Scarborough said. "It doesn't matter that he kept lying and that he moved documents the day before they were coming down to get the documents, it doesn't matter that he got caught on tape lying. They'll say that, but when you go a little below the surface with them, they go, 'I'm so exhausted by this guy,' right?"
"When they aren't having to admit that they voted for him twice and that they keep defending him, you scratch below the surface -- I hear it time and time again, we both do -- they're so exhausted by him," Scarborough said.
READ MORE: 'That's going to be his undoing': Legal expert tells CNN that Trump has cornered himself
Trump's hardcore base might stick with him, Scarborough said, and that might be enough to win the Republican Party nomination, but he said an indictment on possible espionage charges would be fatal in a general election.
"I think the indictment that's sure to come now from the Justice Department is really going to hurt Donald Trump in the suburbs of Atlanta, Philly, Detroit, Milwaukee -- you name it, Maricopa County, where all of these swing voters are that decide elections," he said. "Again, Trump people say, it's fine, it's fine. They won't come out and say it, but they like that he's a liar. They like that he lies to the FBI, they like that he lies to the DOJ, they like that he lies to everybody because they think, somehow, in some perverse, twisted logic, they think, somehow, that's sticking it to the libs, by being a liar constantly -- living your entire life being a lie in public service. That's what they think."
"The problem is, and we're going to get to the debt ceiling in a minute, I don't think that's where most of America is," he added. "I think most of America actually, you know, I think there are a lot of voters who decide elections who are going to hear this and it is going to push them even further away from Donald Trump."
Watch the video below or at this link.
06 01 2023 06 13 42 youtu.be
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Roger Stone explains in a new documentary how he manipulates Donald Trump by planting lies in his head.
The Republican dirty trickster and longtime Trump adviser is shown in the documentary, A Storm Foretold, by filmmakers Christoffer Guldbrandsen and Frederik Marbell, talking on a hot mic about how he has manipulated the former president for decades, even while he served in the White House, reported The Daily Beast.
“I have a 40-year record of being able to convince the big man to do what’s in his best interest -- he’s not easy to deal with," Stone says in the film. "It’s complicated. He resents any implication that he is handled or managed or directed.”
Stone says he plants ideas in Trump's head by making him think they're his own, with a dollop of flatter.
IN OTHER NEWS: 'That's going to be his undoing': Legal expert tells CNN that Trump has cornered himself
“You have to say, ‘Remember that night when we were in Buffalo and you gave that speech, and God, it had to be 10,000 people, the biggest crowd they’d ever seen, and you said XYZ, and the place went crazy, remember that?'" Stone says. "I don’t know where you came up with that line, but it’s one of the best things.’”
Stone then says Trump often might say he'll use that line again, and adds that he's used that tactic almost as long as he's been advising the ex-president.
“Doesn’t f*cking matter that he never said it — doesn’t matter,” Stone says. “It’s time-consuming, but it works. I did it for 30 years.”
Guldbrandsen, whose film focuses on the period before and after the 2020 election, told The Daily Beast that he believes Stone had forgotten he was wearing a microphone during that conversation.
“Those are kind of mishaps,” Guldbrandsen said. “I think he had forgotten that he was wearing a mic. I know he had forgotten, because the next morning, he was really, really anxious about what I had recorded.”
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For years, a band of science-loving "troll hunters" hounded climate change deniers off Twitter -- but Elon Musk's takeover has upended their efforts, with many ousted accounts back, pushing fresh disinformation.
Despite the threat climate change poses to the planet, disinformation about it has gone largely unsanctioned on Twitter. But a secretive global community of about 25 scientists and activists, calling themselves Team Ninja Trollhunters (TNT), found a roundabout way to tackle it.
Since its founding in 2019, TNT claims to have secured the suspension of some 600 accounts of climate change denialists by reporting them for other infringements, including hate speech, that are officially recognized by the platform as valid grounds for termination.
"If they're saying something racist or offensive or misogynist, we can get them kicked off," one Germany-based TNT member, a 45-year-old scientist who asked to be identified as Tom, told AFP in a Zoom interview.
Like other TNT members interviewed by AFP, he requested that his real identity be withheld to avoid online harassment.
TNT members showed AFP archives documenting their campaigns, including a spreadsheet logging thousands of Twitter accounts they reported on grounds ranging from spam and harassment to hate speech and threats. They also shared screenshots confirming numerous suspensions.
"We make sure that we're as under the radar as possible... to get (climate) deniers and 'skeptics' and just generally nasty people reported on Twitter," a Canada-based member named Peter told AFP.
"We're more effective if we're very quiet about it. These deniers are quite often very violent in their responses to climate misinformation being corrected. Intimidation and abuse are very common."
'Opened the floodgates'
That approach appeared to work -– before Musk's turbulent $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last October. Research by monitoring groups indicates a spike in misinformation on the platform as moderation was gutted and a paid verification system boosted conspiracy theorists.
Adding to the turmoil, self-proclaimed free speech absolutist Musk has restored what researchers estimate are tens of thousands of accounts once suspended for violations, including incitement to violence, harassment and misinformation.
Twitter's press office and members of its sustainability team who were laid off after the takeover declined to comment.
In one example, TNT reported a Canada-based climate change denier for repeated threatening and offensive behavior. An online archive of the Twitter account shows it branded climate change a scam and ridiculed activists and scientists to thousands of followers.
"You can call it trolling, I call it having fun with idiot climate alarmists," he wrote in one exchange.
The account was suspended but the same user appeared to have returned with a different handle, posting "I'm back" in October 2022, and resumed retweeting material denying the causes of climate change.
"We got some fairly big accounts removed" but many came back "when Elon Musk kind of opened the floodgates again," said Tom.
"We've had to change tactics" -- less reporting of abusive accounts and more debunking of science claims, he added. "It's a real struggle to keep up."
Among other accounts targeted by TNT, a prominent US climate change denier was suspended in 2021 for "spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19", according to a screenshot posted by one of his followers.
Spreading false information about Covid-19 "is fairly common for science-denial accounts: there's a lot of overlap due to conspiracy-thinking tendencies for the fact-adverse," Peter said.
The user returned with a new handle before the takeover and now has a "verified" checkmark, available for sale under Musk. He has posted regularly using the popular denialist hashtag ClimateScam, peddling misleading claims on topics such as arctic ice, temperatures and droughts.
'Hateful conduct'
But the TNT's fight continues.
Despite the reported rise in hate speech on Musk's Twitter, they scored a rare success this year, successfully booting off a prolific Australia-based tweeter of climate misinformation -- on the grounds of "hateful conduct", according to a screenshot published by a TNT member.
His tweets included claims that the Earth is cooling and that carbon dioxide does not cause warming. The member who reported the account told AFP the tweet for which it was suspended was about "immigration into the UK".
The group has been prompted to defend its tactics as some TNT members are themselves confrontational, aiming to provoke their targets into stepping over the line.
In one exchange, a TNT member told a prominent climate change denier he sounded like "a lobotomized cackling moron".
"We're going after accounts that are doing things that are reportable," Peter insisted. "We're not trolling people."
© 2023 AFP
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