I’ll tell you I’ve seen some lowdown dirty tactics in the dozen years I’ve written here about public policy and events but yesterday when Kompromat-Elect Donald J. Drumpf esq. decided to spew out his type pie-hole yet another ignorant bigoted steaming pile directed at Civil Rights and American hero John Lewis — I just about lost it.
And I was far from alone.
Fans of Congressman Lewis, Atlantans, and notably the areas largest newspaper the Journal-Constition are outraged.
“A stunned Atlanta, along with admirers of John Lewis from across the country, took to social media to harshly criticize the remarks,” said the Journal. “They characterized Trump as clueless about everything from Atlanta’s thriving intown neighborhoods to the beating Lewis took years ago as he marched in Alabama for voting rights. Brushing off the accomplishments of Lewis, who is widely revered by many Americans well beyond Georgia, went too far, they said.”
Atlanta’s Mayor Kasim Reed tweeted, “John Lewis is an American hero & a national treasure. Period. Full stop.”
Contrary to Trumps bigoted presumption Lewis congressional district is far from “impoverished.”
The Journal described Lewis’ district as having “pockets of poverty,” but pointed out that it also includes Emory University, Coca-Cola’s global headquarters, Spelman College and Georgia Tech University.
Trump “clearly doesn’t know anything about the 5th District or Atlanta,” said Jason Carter, grandson of Pres. Jimmy Carter and former Democratic candidate for Georgia governor.
“It exemplifies what’s great about this country,” Carter said in an interview. “The center of business, the center of innovation and the cradle of the civil rights movement and it’s incredibly successful right now.”
Let’s take moment to consider what seems to be Trump’s “reasoning” here. A black congressman criticizes the legitimacy of the election results after the intel community provides a classified briefing to congress on the Russian hacking and disinformation campaign targeting our elections — which he has every right to express as protected by a citizens ability redress grievances with their government — and Trump in his usually bully boy fashion attempts to counter-attact by going after what he assumes and fabricates MUST BE Lewis’ vulnerabilities.
- Since he’s a black guy, he has to be from the inner-city that is “falling apart”, his constituents have to be poor, the area has to be riddled with crime.
- As a Democrat he must have “talked a lot” but ultimately done nothing substantive to help improve that situation after decades in congress.
Let me be blunt, that’s totally fucked up.
I mean very seriously, fuck that guy.
But we shouldn’t be surprised, this isn’t any different from his false attacks on Mexicans and “Rapists” and “Criminals”, his accusation that “thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated” the fall of the twin towers, that Gold Star father Khazir Khan was affiliated with the Muslim brotherhood after his criticized Trump at the Democratic National Convention and Federal Judge Curial couldn’t possibly rule fairly in his Trump U case because of his “Mexican heritage.”
This is exactly true to form for Trump to lash out when his tissue-paper thin skin gets mildly dented. But it’s still totally fucked. And what’s worse now is the parade of GOPers who now have to rationalize, normalize, justify and even gloat about this. Starting with incoming Chief of Staff Reince Preibus who contrary to history facts and basic logic puts all the blame on Lewis claiming the GOP never questioned President Barack Obama’s legitimacy.
In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Priebus responded to Rep. John Lewis' (D-GA) comment that Trump is not "a legitimate president" by denying that Republicans ever questioned the legitimacy of Obama's election victory.
...
"We just had Senator Sanders on the program. He did not question the legitimacy of the President-elect," Stephanopoulos said. "But he did say that it was right to bring up questions like this because of Donald Trump's past and questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama with those years and years of questions about where he was born.
"Donald Trump's made it clear certainly over the last few years that President Obama was born in Hawaii," Priebus claimed.
"Not until the end of the campaign!" Stephanopoulos replied.
"But hang on a second, George, we're not questioning the legitimacy of the outcome of the election," Priebus said. "You didn't have Republicans questioning whether or not Obama legitimately beat John McCain in 2008."
You also didn’t have foreign nation hacking into John McCain private campaign apparatus and then leaking negative reports on him through Wiki-leaks and their own propaganda arms which were then used repeatedly by the Obama campaign to knock down support for McCain.
And just as point of fact, going beyond Trump’s birtherism, there were members of Congress like Rep Bob Ingles who denied Obama was legitimately eligible to be President.
Rep. Bob Inglis gave the answer during a tongue-in-cheek “interview” on the satirical Colbert Nation show.
Inglis, who is facing a runoff in the coming week with Spartanburg prosecutor Trey Gowdy, was being grilled about whether he was a conservative.
“Are you conservative enough for the 4th District?” Stephen Colbert asked.
“I sure hope so,” Inglis responded.
Inglis noted he had been endorsed by the National Rifle Association and the Christian Coalition.
Then Colbert said, “Complete this sentence. ‘Barack Obama was born in …'”
“Oh,” said Inglis, “Not Hawaii.”
And Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Co).
At a May 12 fundraiser at the Elbert County Fairgrounds, Coffman wrapped up a 12-minute speech to donors with an unprompted discussion of President Obama’s citizenship and national identification.
“I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that,” Coffman said. “But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.”
And of course, Rep. Steve King (R-IA).
KING: We went down into the Library of Congress and we found a microfiche there of two newspapers in Hawaii each of which had published the birth of Barack Obama. It would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii and get that into our public libraries and that microfiche they keep of all the newspapers published. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some other explanations on how they might’ve announced that by telegram from Kenya. The list goes on. But drilling into that now, even if we could get a definitive answer and even if it turned out that Barack Obama was conclusively not born in America, I don’t think we could get that case sold between now and November.
Oh, and they did question whether he was legitimately elected claiming that ACORN falsified the vote and stole the election for Barack Obama in 2008.
As his hopes of winning the congressional election in New York's 23rd district fade, conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is clearly getting desperate. Today he's blaming his loss on "ACORN, the unions, and the Democratic party" who he alleges, without a shred of evidence, tampered with votes to rig the election against him. Never mind that ACORN told David Weigel that they didn't have volunteers in the area, or that it largely operates in poor urban communities, which NY-23 is not. For conservatives, ACORN is shorthand for the evils of the left.
On the heels of that news, Public Policy Polling released this shocking nugget on its blog: "a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately." Say what? More than half of Republican respondents believe the president was elected fraudulently! That's a stunningly high number. It's disturbing, not only as a demonstrable lack of faith in America's democracy but as an expression of wanton ignorance. Worse, it illustrates the effectiveness of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al., alongside a well-funded "Stop ACORN" campaign, in creating an atmosphere where unquestioned lies become received wisdom.
So Preibus is in fact, full of shit. And so of course, is Katrina Pierson.
“He attacked Donald Trump!” Pierson told Fox News host Clayton Morris on Sunday. “And Donald Trump also has a First Amendment right to defend himself. So this criticism is not fair. And it’s never supposed to be fair for Republicans because Republicans are supposed to sit down, shut up and be publicly humiliated and never defend themselves.”
“And all that changed with Donald Trump entered the arena,” she continued. “And he said several times, ‘If you attack me, I will hit you back.’ That’s exactly what happened here. This is what Democrats do. They pick a fight and they play the victim.”
With an election that was ultimately decided by just about 80,000 votes among three states the question of whether votes for Hillary Clinton were strategically suppressed and dampened -— by the constant bleat over her emails and supposed corruption supplied and directed by Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, while the FBI deliberately dragged it’s feet on investigating links and collusion between Russia and Trump — is a fully legitimate question. John Lewis has every right to express how he feels about it, but Trump on the other hand making a set of factually wrong, and clearly bigoted, claims about Lewis and his district has in fact, committed defamation and LIBEL.
Libel: A published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation.
I think the best response, would be for Rep. Lewis and the citizens of Atlanta to file a class-action defamation suit against Trump. It’s about time he paid for his loose lips. Preferably in cash.
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