Friday, April 29, 2022

Trump Feared Being Killed By A Tomato Or Pineapple ("Very Violent, Dangerous Stuff")
His Security Was On Alert: "They Were Going To Do Fruit ... They Were Going To Hit Hard"

We were put on alert that they were going to do fruit.

In a deposition held on October 18, 2021, Donald Trump expressed a fear of being killed by "dangerous" fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes, pineapples, and bananas that might be thrown at him by protesters. (I'm curious about the oranges of this fear of fruit.)

The Daily Beast reports Trump was testifying under oath in a civil lawsuit brought by protesters alleging they were assaulted by his security guards outside his New York offices in 2015.


From the transcript (my emphasis):

[Attorney Benjamin Dictor:] Mr. President . . . [at a rally, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa] you said that "if you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them, would you". That was your statement?

[Trump:] Oh yeah. It was very dangerous.

Q. What was very dangerous?

A. We were threatened.

Q. With what?

A. They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened, we had a threat.

Q. How did you become aware that there was a threat that people were going to throw fruit?

A. We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. But we were told. And you get hit with fruit, it's – no, it's very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.

Q. A tomato is a fruit after all, I guess.

A. And you know what –

Q. Judicial notice. [The lawyers apparently held a brief side discussion on tomatoes.]

Trump Attorney Jeffrey Goldman: It has seeds.

A. It's worse than tomato. It's other things also. But tomato, when they start doing that stuff, it's very dangerous. There was an alert out that day.

Q. Who were you speaking to when you said –

A. The audience.

Q. So you were speaking to the audience when you said if they saw someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them, would you?

A. That was to the audience. It was said sort of in jest. But maybe, you know, a little truth to it. It's very dangerous stuff. You can get killed with those things.

Q. So you were trying to incentivize people to engage in violence?

Goldman: Objection.

A. No, I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit. And some fruit is a lot worse than – tomatoes are bad, by the way. But it's very dangerous. . . . I wanted them to watch. They were on alert. I remember that specific event because everybody was on alert. They were going to hit – they were going to hit hard.

Q. Do you have any knowledge as to whether or not anybody was found to have tomatoes in their possession on that date?

A. I don't know. But it didn't happen. It worked out that nothing happened. It was – the speech was good . . .

Q. You said you were talking to the audience. But is the same true of your security? Do you expect your security to knock the crap out of someone if they see them about –

A. I was talking to the audience –

Q. Mr. President, please let me finish the question so we can get the whole record very clear. Is it your expectation that if your security guards see someone about to throw a tomato that they should knock the crap out of them?

A. Well, a tomato, a pineapple, a lot of other things they throw . . . Yeah, if the security saw that, I would say you have to – and it's not just me, it's other people in the audience get badly hurt. Yeah, I think that they have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening. Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens.

Q. And getting aggressive includes the use of physical force?

A. To stop somebody from throwing pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, stuff like that, yeah, it's dangerous stuff.

* * *

This latest example of Trump's bottomless idiocy reminds me of his deranged comments during the summer of 2020 about protesters throwing "big bags of soup" at "our police":

Trump, July 31, 2020:

In cities across the nation, we've also seen police officers assaulted . . . they have cans of soup. Soup. And they throw the cans of soup. That's better than a brick because you can't throw a brick; it's too heavy. But a can of soup, you can really put some power into that, right? And then, when they get caught, they say, "No, this is soup for my family." They're so innocent. "This is soup for my family." It's incredible. And you have people coming over with bags of soup — big bags of soup. And they lay it on the ground, and the anarchists take it and they start throwing it at our cops, at our police. And if it hits you, that's worse than a brick because that's got force. It's the perfect size. It's, like, made perfect. And when they get caught, they say, "No, this is just soup for my family." And then the media says, "This is just soup. These people are very, very innocent. They're innocent people. These are just protesters. Isn't it wonderful to allow protesting?" No, there's — and, by the way, the media knows it better than we do. They know what's going on. I don't know what's wrong with them. They're doing our country a tremendous disservice — I'll say that. . . .
(Those bags of soup are unrelated to the gazpacho police, by the way.)

Roughly two months later, Trump reported the evil anarchists had added cans of tuna to their deadly arsenal:
"These are friendly protests." That's a lovely thing to say. As he's getting rocks and cans of tuna fish. They go out to buy tuna fish and soup. You know that, right? Goya. I hope Goya, he's great, isn't he? Good guy. They go out and buy Goya because they throw it. They throw it. It's the perfect weight, tuna fish, they could really rip it, right, and that hits you. No, it's true. Bumblebee brand tuna, and you can throw that sucker. You can put a curve on it, you can do whatever else you want. . . . But they're professionals, they're anarchists. They're paid for by outside stupid rich people that . . . They're stupid people. . . . But you know, they're very smart.

Everything is perfect. Do you ever see where they drop the bricks along the thing in a bag? Then they drop, everyone picks them up, throws them at our great police. . . . There's like 30 cans of soup. They have like 25 cans of tuna. They get caught. "I'm bringing this home to my family. How dare you stop me?" No, no, no. They use it as ammunition. It's terrible. . . .

Over Labor Day. Left-wing radicals rampaged through Pittsburgh, harassing diners at restaurants. I saw that one. That was horrible. No, I saw that, right? I saw that. That one guy grabs a woman, a older woman, she's eating a steak. He grabbed the steak and started eating it, then he threw it back on the plate. An outdoor place, and her husband standing there like they're afraid for their lives. It was a terrible thing, and should never be allowed to happen. A thing like that should just be closed up before it ever gets started. That was terrible. Remember that? An older woman.
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Thursday, April 28, 2022

Florida Fascist Ron DeSantis Admits He's Never Heard Of Bugs Bunny

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Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Fired Up!!!


Five Days Earlier . . . Fired Up!!!
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Sunday, April 24, 2022

Trump Refers To His Failed Social Media Site As "Truth Central"
In Emails Begging For Money, His Team Calls It "Trump Social"

Actually, the orange buffoon called it Troth Senchal.
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In January 2018, Trump Was Tested For Possible Early Dementia;
Four Years Later, He's STILL Bragging In Public About "Acing" The Test


In July 2020, Donald Trump bragged about "acing" the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (a 10-minute test designed to detect the early onset of dementia) to Fox's Chris Wallace in a televised interview.

Wallace responded: "Well, it's not the hardest test. They have a picture and it says, 'What's that?' And it's an elephant." Trump got annoyed. "Yes, the first few questions are easy, but I'll bet you couldn't even answer the last five questions. . . . They get very hard, the last five questions."

For the record, the final five questions require identifying the current month, year, and day, where the person is at the moment, and what city he or she is currently in. These are the "very hard" questions Trump was referring to.

Although the fact that Trump took the test became infamous in 2020 (when he boasted to the world about his recall of five words ("person, woman, man, camera, TV"), the Washington Post reported that Trump was first given the test on January 12, 2018.

Trump has brought up this test repeatedly and I'm always dumbfounded each time he does. He has brought it up twice in the last week, more than four years after he identified a picture of a camel and tapped his hand every time the administrator, while reading a list of letters, said the letter A. This is the test.

Trump appears to believe his passing grade is proof of his superior intelligence (he says his doctors told him the test is difficult and very few people pass), but Ziad Nasreddine, the neurologist who created the test, says:
It's not meant to measure IQ or intellectual skill in anyway. If someone performs well, what it means is they can be ruled out for cognitive impairment that comes with diseases like Alzheimer's, stroke or multiple sclerosis. That's it. The reason most people take the test is they or others start noticing mental decline. They forgot where they parked the car, can't remember what groceries to buy by the time they get to the store. They keep forgetting to take their medication.
ALSO:

Mike Lindell: "The Single Greatest Buyer Of Ads In The History Of Our Country"
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Saturday, April 23, 2022

"Mass Propaganda Discovered That Its Audience . . . Did Not Particularly
Object To Being Deceived . . . They Would Take Refuge In Cynicism"

A mixture of gullibility and cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The mixture in itself was remarkable enough, because it spelled the end of the illusion that gullibility was a weakness of unsuspecting primitive souls and cynicism the vice of superior and refined minds. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Roger Berkowitz, Los Angeles Review of Books, March 18, 2017 (my emphasis)
Simone Weil wrote that "to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul." The modern condition of rootlessness is a foundational experience of totalitarianism; totalitarian movements succeed when they offer rootless people what they most crave: an ideologically consistent world aiming at grand narratives that give meaning to their lives. By consistently repeating a few key ideas, a manipulative leader provides a sense of rootedness grounded upon a coherent fiction that is "consistent, comprehensible, and predictable."

The reason fact-checking is ineffective today — at least in convincing those who are members of movements — is that the mobilized members of a movement are confounded by a world resistant to their wishes and prefer the promise of a consistent alternate world to reality. When Donald Trump says he's going to build a wall to protect our borders, he is not making a factual statement that an actual wall will actually protect our borders; he is signaling a politically incorrect willingness to put America first. When he says that there was massive voter fraud or boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd, he is not speaking about actual facts, but is insisting that his election was legitimate. "What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part."

Leaders of these mass totalitarian movements do not need to believe in the truth of their lies and ideological clichรฉs. The point of their fabrications is not to establish facts, but to create a coherent fictional reality. What a movement demands of its leaders is the articulation of a consistent narrative combined with the ability to abolish the capacity for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, between reality and fiction.

The skill that President Trump excels at is his "ability to dissolve every statement of fact into a declaration of purpose," the very skill Arendt attributes to the elite within totalitarian movements. Trump possesses an incredible instinct for those words, phrases, and insinuations that give order and sense to the movement. He pokes at racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, and in doing so allows his supporters to construct coherent narratives about the America Trump will restore to its greatness. He appears as the truth-teller, the one who reveals those hidden truths that polite society and the elites refuse to utter. And because political elites are so careful to not offend anyone and have placed so many topics and truths off the table of common conversation, Trump looks like the only person in the country willing to tell the truth. . . .

What Arendt shows in Origins is that movements are so dangerous and can be central elements of totalitarianism because they provide the psychological conditions for "total loyalty," the kind of unquestioned loyalty Trump rightly understands himself to possess among his most faithful supporters. "Such loyalty," she writes, "can be expected only from the completely isolated human being who, without any other social ties to family, friends, comrades, or even mere acquaintances, derives his sense of having a place in the world only from his belonging to a movement."
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Friday, April 22, 2022

Extensive Amnesia — MTG's Evasions Show A Shocking "Inability To Remember
Anything That Happened In Her Own Life Over The Past Few Years"

Proving Marjorie Nazi Greene committed perjury dozens of times during her testimony on Friday in connection to bar her from running for any public office because her participation in the US Capitol insurrection violates the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, should be an open-court layup.

A summary:


And then . . .

* * *
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Thursday, April 21, 2022

Marjorie Nazi Greene Faces Questions About Her Involvement In Seditious January 6 Attack: Friday Morning, Under Oath, Live On TV!

Free Speech for People, a nonpartisan organization that works to defend the Constitution, states that Rep. Marjorie Nazi Greene should be barred from running for reelection in Georgia's 14th Congressional District this fall because her involvement in the seditious attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, violates the "insurrection disqualification clause" of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

The 14th Amendment, Section 3, states (emphasis added):
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

A federal judge ruled this week that Greene must testify before an administrative law judge in Atlanta.

Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People:

It's rare for any conspirator, let alone a Member of Congress, to publicly admit that the goals of their actions are preventing a peaceful transfer of power and the death of the president-elect and Speaker of the House, but that's exactly what Marjorie Taylor Greene did. The Constitution disqualifies from public office any elected officials who aided the insurrection, and we look forward to asking Representative Greene about her involvement under oath.
(Free Speech for People has also filed similar lawsuits on behalf of voters in North Carolina and Arizona to prevent Reps. Madison Cawthorn ("If our election systems continue to be rigged, it's going to lead to one place, and it's bloodshed"), Paul Gosar, and Andy Biggs from running for reelection.)

In her public comments, Greene appears either indignant that she has to answer to anyone for her actions or she is scared shitless. ("They're going to allow the press in the courtroom. They're going to allow the whole thing to be videoed live!") She's right to panic, because she is far too stupid to lie consistently, and may not possess the firmest grip on reality to begin with.

There is significant evidence in the public record that she was involved in the planning of the January 6 attack (in addition to whatever has been revealed to the House Committee investigating the insurrection). On October 26, 2021, Greene said the purpose of January 6 was "to overthrow tyrants". She boasted she "was proud of [the riot] and would do [it] again" and anyone who disapproves should "just get over it". 

She has called for the execution of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi (who was one of the main targets of the January 6 mob, which had set up a scaffold outside the Capitol). Also: "The only way you get your freedoms back is it's earned with the price of blood." This should be a lose-lose situation for Greene (who, in addition to an endless list of idiotic statements, has paid nearly $100,000 in fines because she refuses to follow mask guidelines).

Because of this clear evidence of insurrection, there would have been cause under the 14th Amendment for Greene (and numerous other seditionists) to have not been sworn in as representatives on January 20. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi worries about US democracy being destroyed if the far-right wins big in the mid-terms, yet she flatly refused to follow the clear guidelines of the Constitution and bar every one of the insurrectionists from serving back in January. She's a perfect Democrat: a lot of grand talk and absolutely no substantive action.)

Basically:

If Greene tells the truth about her role in the insurrection – she's fucked.

If Greene lies, she has committed perjury – she's fucked.

If Greene invokes the Fifth Amendment, her refusal to answer implies guilt – she's fucked. 

That's an interesting point by Anne Lockwood: in the days before the insurrection, Greene was still a private citizen (though a representative-elect). How and why was she such a big part of the December  2020 coup planning sessions? There is a similar question surrounding Lauren Boebert: How did she rate a seat almost in the front-row for Trump's riot-inciting speech on the morning of January 6?

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Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Trump, Angry, Deluded, Sweaty & Excessively Orange, Throws A Temper Tantrum,
Storms Off During Interview When Directly Confronted With Facts Of 2020 Loss

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Monday, April 18, 2022

How To Use The Dial Telephone (Brooklyn, 1935)

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Saturday, April 09, 2022

Cult 45: A Gathering Of The Insane In South Carolina
Trump: "I’m The Most Honest Human Being Perhaps That God Ever Created"

(h/t)

The 694th Consecutive Mike Pillow Prediction That Will Not Come True
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