CHICAGO — How much do you really know about civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer? In these pandemic years, her story has been told on the Goodman Theatre stage and in Chicago parks by way of Chicago-born playwright Cheryl L. West and historian Keisha Blain, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, who authored the book “Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America.” Both writers share the story of Hamer, who died in 1977 and didn’t come to activism until her 40s, centering her voice on voting and women’s rights. The Mississippi sharecroppe...
A Fox News segment on Sunday examined reports that former President Donald Trump may have "illegally transferred" documents to foreign adversaries.
"Did former President Trump try to sell, share the highly classified material to the Russians or to the Saudis or others?" Fox News host Eric Shawn asked. "Or were the documents innocently mishandled and stored because he thought he had a legal right to have them?"
Shawn noted that Russian state media has claimed that Russian officials have seen the documents.
Former intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be in possession of documents that were stored at Mar-a-Lago.
"The real question, Eric, is what Russian President Putin has already done?" Koffler explained. "The truth is the United States is the top target for KGB operative Putin and his spy services. And Mar-a-Lago, former President Trump's estate, is a counterintelligence nightmare, meaning that spies from all over the world, Russia, China and beyond are always on the hunt to lay their hands on top secret information, especially something that is related to nuclear warfare doctrine."
Shawn concluded that the documents were not well secured if federal officials had to ask Trump's staff to put a lock on the storage room.
"We don't know where these documents were floating around," he said.
"The fact that those boxes were not secure is a really grave concern," Koffler remarked. "Apparently some of the documents that were lying around there also were top secret and code word. That is a huge concern. There are various ways that intelligence tradecraft could suck out all kinds of information."
Koffler, however, found it improbable that Trump would personally sell the documents.
"We see Russian media exploding today with this coverage of this issue and siding with President Trump," Koffler pointed out. "But that is because they want to divide our society. They understand that President Trump is a hot button for us. And by amplifying this type of issue, they know that they could rip our country apart."
"Eventually what they are hoping to do is heat up the situation so much to the point that social unrest would erupt in America," she concluded. "That is Putin's goal."
Appearing on MSNBC on Sunday afternoon, one of Donald Trump's biographers speculated that the former president might have thought he could cash in on some of the documents that he took from the White House that the FBI confiscated from Mar-a-Lago on Monday.
Speaking with host Alex Witt, Bloomberg editor Tim O'Brien speculated that Trump may have had a childlike fascination with some of the papers he took and thought he could sell them at some point.
"How plausible is it that he tried to hold onto letters from likes of Kim Jong-un and why would he do it?" Witt asked.
"Well I think that is the question at the heart of this, " he began. "Part of the motivation is what's in the documents and we don't fully know either of those things. We may never fully find out what's in the documents if the classification prevents them from going fully public."
"I think, in terms of his own motivation, I think of it in three baskets, " he continued. "One that is explainable is that Trump is a 7-year-old grown old and he wanted to keep things like schematics for Air Force One and things like that that I don't think are a threat to national security but they were classified and he wanted them for himself."
"I think the more important motivations are greed and reputational," he added. "That he'd think he could sell some of these things on the open market. We need to find out also if the documents contain things that would damage his reputation that he wanted to keep out of the public purview."
"We need courage responding to crazy town," Cruz told supporters. "Elizabeth Warren told reporters that a guy came up to her and said, 'I would have voted for you if only you had a penis.'"
Cruz argued that Warren's "story is a lie."
"In today's Democrat [sic] Party, how do we know she doesn't?" Cruz said to laughter. "How could you possibly know? 'My name is Elizabeth. Call me Bob.'"
Cruz went on to insist that transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is a "dude."
"He looks like Michael Phelps," the senator remarked.
