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October 29, 2022
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According to a leading conservative columnist, Donald Trump's decision to try and make heroes out of the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 is a massive mistake that will likely doom his political future.
As the former president kicked his 2024 presidential bid into high gear with a rally in Waco last week, he also took part in making a recording with rioters currently in custody, thereby aligning himself even more tightly with them which will become fodder for his opponents -- both Republicans and Democrats.
Writing for Politico, National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry admitted Trump's embrace of what the conservative called a "bloody riot" is an epic miscalculation.
"From the perspective of the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6 it was hard enough to believe that Donald Trump would survive the event, let alone make it a plank in a powerful comeback bid just a few years later," he wrote before adding, "For Trump, a master at appropriating the catch lines and attacks of the other side, reversing the meaning of Jan. 6 would be his most audacious move yet."
READ MORE: 'Crazy stuff': Morning Joe panelists burst out laughing at Trump's latest campaign riff
Adding, "This is a huge mistake in every way, most importantly on the merits, but also on the politics," Lowry wrote that it shouldn't be surprising the former President is making it a central theme of his political comeback and that should be of concern too.
"Making excuses for or valorizing Jan. 6 is deeply wrong," he explained. and then added, "... justifying or excusing political violence has a deranging influence on the republic. The more reason both sides have to physically fear each other, the easier it is to justify extreme measures in response, in a widening gyre of escalation."
To a lesser degree, he added that, from a political perspective, it is a massive unforced error.
"If the other side is desperate to portray you as in bed with fanatics and rioters, it’s best not to go out of your way to prove them right. It’s perverse for Republicans that just as the Jan. 6 Committee has been put out of business and is no longer in a position to constantly remind the public of Jan. 6, here comes Donald Trump to remind people of Jan. 6," he explained. "What Trump is doing flies in the face of the lessons of the midterms. Jan. 6 lent emotional power to the Democratic argument that democracy was under threat, and Stop the Steal candidates proved radioactive. Trump wants, in effect, to repeat November 2022’s failed political experiment on a larger scale in 2024."
You can read more here.
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A train carrying ethanol through Minnesota derailed and caught fire, forcing local residents to evacuate.
CNN reports that the derailment occurred at approximately 1 a.m. on Thursday morning in Raymond Minnesota.
Multiple cars on the train promptly caught on fire, and officials told people living in nearby homes to evacuate as a precautionary measure.
There have been no reported injuries as a result of the derailment.
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Train derailments have been in the national spotlight recently after a derailment in the town of East Palestine, Ohio led to an environmental catastrophe resulting from toxic chemicals being spilled into local water sources.
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Pope Francis, who is in hospital for treatment for a respiratory infection, admitted last year he needed to slow down faced with his age -- now 86 -- and increasing health issues.
Here are some of the medical problems the pontiff has had during his life, from an operation in his youth to remove part of a lung, to the knee issues that have forced him to use a wheelchair.
Lung operation
When he was 21, the then Jorge Bergoglio almost died after developing pleurisy, an inflammation of the tissues that surround the lung.
According to biographer Austen Ivereigh, surgeons removed three pulmonary cysts and a small part of his upper right lung in an operation followed by a long and painful recovery.
In an interview about his health with Argentinian journalist and doctor, Nelson Castro, he insisted however that he had made "a complete recovery... and never felt any limitation since then".
Sciatica and acupuncture
The pope has complained in the past of a "troublesome guest", sciatica, a chronic nerve condition that causes back, hip and leg pain that has occasionally forced him to cancel official events.
He has a distinctive limp -- he has described it as "walking like a broody chicken" -- but this is caused by a flat foot, Francis told Castro for his book "The Health of Popes".
As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was treated by a Chinese acupuncturist for his back pain, Ivereigh wrote in The Tablet Catholic weekly in 2021.
Around the end of 1979, early 1980, he also suffered "an almost fatal" infection of the gallbladder and had a "brief" issue with his heart in 2004 after a slight narrowing of an artery, the biographer said.
Problems with a "fatty liver" were overcome through changes to his diet.
Bach and therapy
Francis, who was head of the Jesuit order in the 1970s during Argentina's brutal military dictatorship, has also previously sought mental health support.
He spoke with "a great woman psychologist" once a week for six months during the dictatorship, he told Castro, to help him with anxiety.
Nowadays he deals with it by listening to Bach or sipping "mate", a popular Argentinean herbal drink.
The pontiff is reported to go to bed at 9pm and read for an hour before going to sleep for six hours and waking at 4am every day. Lunch is invariably followed by a 45-minute nap.
Colon operation
In July 2021, Francis spent 10 days in hospital after undergoing surgery to address symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon.
The condition causes potentially painful inflammation of the diverticulum, a pocket that can form on the colon walls and which tend to multiply with age.
Patients with diverticulitis may experience lower abdominal pain, fever or rectal bleeding.
Francis underwent a left hemicolectomy, in which the descending colon -- the part attached to the rectum -- is removed.
He said a year later that he was still feeling the effects of six hours spent under anaesthetic during the operation.
In an interview in January this year, he said the diverticulitis had returned.
He has also visibly put on weight over the past year.
Honesty
Francis has repeatedly said he would consider stepping down if his health required it.
His predecessor Benedict XVI shocked the world in 2013 by becoming the first pope since the Middle Ages to resign, citing his declining physical and mental health.
Ivereigh has noted "how freely and transparently Francis discusses his various conditions, physical and psychological".
"How far we are from the Vatican refusing to confirm the Parkinson's everyone could see in the face of John Paul II," he wrote in The Tablet.
In August 2022, the pope named Massimiliano Strappetti, a Vatican nurse, as his personal healthcare assistant.
© 2023 AFP
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