Opinion

Jim Jordan was deeply involved in Trump's attempted coup – and the evidence is appalling

The net is tightening around Jimbo. As more damning text messages, testimony and phone call records encircle the pint-sized pol from Urbana, Jim Jordan should be breaking out in a cold sweat. The 4th District U.S. congressman should be squirming in his shirt sleeves with each new revelation trickling out about his behind-the-scenes treachery leading up to and including Jan. 6.

After all, a sitting member of Congress publicly exposed as a central player in a nefarious plot to overturn a certified election should be toast, right? Someone who willfully chose loyalty to a megalomaniac over allegiance to country should be forced to slink into oblivion as a scorned turncoat, right? Jordan, we are fast learning, was deeply involved in the attempted coup to overthrow our government of the people. He conspired to cancel the 2020 votes cast by millions of his fellow Americans and reverse the outcome of a decided election for his Il Duce.

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A third of America is lost to hate: Is it time to move on?

It’s time to stop normalizing and accommodating the white supremacists among us. They may be a third of America, but they’re the lost third, longing for return to a time we will never revisit.

Instead of looking forward, they’re stuck to a past that will never be revived, no matter how many elections they rig or people they terrorize or kill.

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Watch: Jen Psaki deflates Peter Doocy’s outrage over Biden’s new Disinformation Governance Board

Conservatives are going all-in on attacking a Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) agency called the Disinformation Governance Board, falsely insisting President Joe Biden has created an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” that will censor everything online.

It’s their latest attack on actual truth, of course. For starters, the board’s focus is on combatting foreign disinformation, not domestic, and it would work to help protect national security. It’s also not a new endeavor, but a continuation of work done during the Trump administration, and conservatives had no issue with it then.

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Behind church doors: White evangelicals are quietly fueling Trump's Big Lie

"There's one thing that I know for sure," declared Gene Bailey, the pastor of Eagle Mountain Church International, before a crowd of thousands recently gathered at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma. "The raw truth was on Nov. 3, 2020, President Donald J. Trump won the election."

Later during the summit on the 2020 presidential election, which was broadcast live to a Facebook audience of over 300,000 followers, Hank Kunneman, the pastor of One Voice Ministries, proclaimed: "There is a payback coming!"

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Hillary Clinton keeps getting it right

Just as it’s a waste of time for Republicans to refight the results of the 2020 election, it certainly does no good for anti-MAGAs to refight what happened in the previous race. Nevertheless, I wince on occasion when I contemplate how our country would’ve been far better served if the popular vote winner in 2016 had ascended to the Oval Office.

Last Wednesday was one such occasion, truly wince-worthy.

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Trump is now undermining his greatest — and only — presidential achievement

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he was seen as a "populist" right-wing politician railing about free trade and immigration to push an isolationist worldview, all of which was out of step with what we knew as the modern conservative movement up to that moment. Sure there had been a rump group of paleoconservatives, like Pat Buchanan, who had staged a couple of fringe presidential campaigns in prior decades. The independent candidacy of millionaire Ross Perot had raised some of the same issues and appealed to many of the same voter concerns. But it was Trump whose TV celebrity and flamboyant personality managed to take those ideas straight into the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Trump's populism was (and is) extremely shallow, however.

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Global forecaster on 'another bad year for democracy': Is the world near a dire tipping point?

Global democracy is sick. In the United States, Donald Trump's supporters in the Republican Party continue to steamroll the Democrats and other pro-democracy forces. To say that the latter have for the most part been hapless, uncoordinated and paralyzed by denial is not overstating the case.

Political scientists and other experts have warned that in the wake of the Trump presidency and the coup attempt of January 2021, the country is now an "anocracy," hovering in limbo between naked authoritarianism and a slowly failing democracy.

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Medical debt is sickening -- and Dr. Oz doesn't seem to care

Never addressed in the 2020 primary was the extent of medical debt, despite a presidential race in the middle of a once-a-century pandemic hospitalizing people for days, weeks and months. The cost was astronomical. Medical debt has accrued exponentially since.

Every candidate had a plan to revamp our broken healthcare system during the 2020 Democratic primary. They ranged from Medicare for All (Bernie Sanders) to expanding the Affordable Care Act (Joe Biden).

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Trump's latest hate rally: A master class in cult mind control

Donald Trump's political circus and freak show is continuing its American tour. Everywhere it stops, Donald Trump unleashes a torrent of lies, hatred, ignorance, bigotry, racism, narcissism, authoritarianism, threats of violence and other antisocial and evil values.

Trump's political rallies resemble George Orwell's "two minutes of hate" from "1984," expanded to two hours or so.

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Is the U.S. in a proxy war with Russia?

With heavy weapons like first-line tanks, multiple rocket launchers, 155mm howitzers, attack helicopters and updated anti-aircraft systems flooding into Ukraine and beginning to reach the battlefield, the only thing missing from an all-out war between NATO and Russia are allied soldiers.

This article first appeared in Salon.

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Why Fox News is obsessed with Johnny Depp -- its 'Manliness Under Siege' mascot

In 2017, when Johnny Depp jokingly asked his British audience at that year's Glastonbury Festival, "When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?" then-Fox News host and eternal Donald Trump water bearer Eric Bolling lost his mind.

"Depp, you damn fool. You think you can say these things without repercussions?" he boomed in the monologue for his show "Fox News Specialists" which, if you blinked, you probably missed.

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The cult of Elon Musk: Why do some of us worship billionaires?

Less than 24 hours after agreeing to purchase Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have already broken the deal which allowed him to perform a hostile takeover of the social media company. Although one of the terms is that he may only tweet about the acquisition "so long as such tweets do not disparage the Company or any of its Representatives," he posted two tweets on Tuesday which parroted right-wing talking points that attacked specific employees.

Normally there would not be many individuals applauding a wealthy CEO who purchased a company and then immediately attacked vulnerable employees, almost certainly knowing that doing so would instigate mass harassment against said employees (which is exactly what happened). In normal contexts, such a person would be classified as nothing more than a bully. Then again, when you are a billionaire with a cult of personality, there will always be people who applaud your actions.

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Madison Cawthorn scandal exposes how the GOP depends on right-wing media to delude their base

In a world where so much news is just plain depressing, it's an unexpected delight to watch the Republican establishment pull out their bag of dirty tricks and rat-f**k one of their own. And boy, it couldn't be happening to a nicer guy: Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, part of the freshman class of Republicans who work more as full-time trolls than traditional lawmakers. Man, Republicans really hate this guy.

In just the past week, the efforts to destroy Cawthorn have included GOP-funded attack ads against him, a push to have his alleged financial crimes exposed, and, what's most fun of all, an "oppo dump" of embarrassing photographs. First, Politico published photos of Cawthorn at a party, drinking and wearing lingerie.

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