Tag: FOX NEWS

WATCH: San Juan Mayor Attacks Trump: ‘Heartless,’ ‘Vengeful,’ ‘Willing To Let People Starve, To Let People Die’

By HANK BERRIEN

On Tuesday, San Juan, Puerto Rico Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who has been harshly critical of President Trump’s rhetoric and actions vis-à-vis Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, hurled out her vitriol again as she spoke on MSNBC with host Nicole Wallace, calling Trump the “Faker-in-Chief,” intimating that he racially discriminates, and snapping that he “is heartless … vengeful …” and “willing to let people starve, to let people die.”

Wallace commented: “You had paper towels tossed in the faces of your citizens and your constituents. Does anything shock you any more from this president?”

Cruz: “It still continues to shock me.”

Wallace, laughing, “Me too!”

Cruz continued:

It still continues to shock the people of Puerto Rico. Just when you think he has gone the lowest he could go, he still goes lower than that … he’s become a fake news cartoon … Mr. President, 3,000 Puerto Ricans died on your watch. They died because your government was inefficient, ineffective, unable to do its job … his vanity is much higher than his humanity is … he continues to embarrass himself; he continues to embarrass the office of the presidency … with all the lies he has put together he has become the “Faker-in-Chief.”

Wallace asked: “You are trying to put together an island; you are trying to keep people together. You’ve described a very dire circumstance, with suicide rates going up, you’ve described 3,000 people who’ve lost their lives. What do you need from the federal government today?

Cruz then launched into her rant:

We need the President to be able to put his ego aside and do his job. We need the President to not hold aid as a weapon and weaponize it, which is something he criticizes from other countries. We need the Congress of the United States to hear the call of the people not only of Puerto Rico but of other places that have been really dealing with very difficult situations coming from disasters that are a result of climate change.

But most of all, we need the President to develop a heart. This man is heartless. This man is vengeful. This man racially discriminates against people that are not like him, and he is willing to let people starve, to let people die. So we need the American people to get on the phone, call your senators, call your Congresspeople, and let them know that the situation in Puerto Rico is not as it was before, thank God, but we still need a lot of help to stand up and move forward and we need the American people to understand that there’s a difference between the money that we needed to pick up debris and to deal with the immediate aftermath, and the money, the Community Development Block Grant DR, the Disaster and Relief Fund. $1.5 billion would still have not hit the cities of San Juan or any other of the 77 additional municipalities. But mostly we need the President to stop lying, to stand up, to assume responsibility, and to have the courage to say, look, I haven’t done right by Puerto Rico. I’m going to start today.

In June 2018, Cruz accused the Trump administration of looking away “from its legal imperative and violating the human rights of the people of Puerto Ricco,” saying on MSNBC:

There’s a moral imperative and a legal imperative. It is clear the Trump administration has looked away from its legal imperative. But where the government has failed, the American people have risen to the occasion. We have continued to have volunteers come in … Look, President Trump tweets about the crack of dawn and he hasn’t even tweeted one time to say look, I mourn with the people of Puerto Rico. So this total neglect has to be called upon. The United Nations says that when people are denied their right to access to basic human services—like electric power, like water, like food, like appropriate medical care—that it is a violation of human rights.”

In October 2017, as Mediate reported, after President Trump tweeted that Puerto Rico wouldn’t receive federal aid “forever” and that the island was a “disaster” before Hurricane Maria hit, Cruz appeared on CNN with host Don Lemon and stated that Trump had a “big mouth.” She said, “We have paid our dues, and there are American citizens here in Puerto Rico. This is a nation. There’s a big disconnect between the big heart of the volunteers and the people that are here working on the ground and, frankly, the big mouth of the President of the United States. It continues to add insult to injury.”

Also in October 2017, Cruz accused Trump of genocide, saying in a statement, “I ask every American that has love, and not hate in their hearts, to stand with Puerto Rico and let this President know we WILL NOT BE LEFT TO DIE. I ask the United Nations, UNICEF and the world to stand with the people of Puerto Rico and stop the genocide that will result from the lack of appropriate action of a President that just does not get it because he has been incapable of looking in our eyes and seeing the pride that burns fiercely in our hearts and souls.”

Video of Cruz with Wallace below:

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(NO, IT’S NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE.) – Facebook plans to curate ‘high quality’ news for its users from ‘trusted outlets’

Screen Shot 2019-04-02 at 10.40.40 AM

Mark Zuckerberg is considering hiring human “editors” to hand-pick “high-quality news” to show Facebook users in an effort to combat fake news — and no, it’s not an April Fool’s joke.

In his ongoing quest to satisfy the political censorship demands of Western governments, Zuckerberg told German publishing house Axel Springer that he is considering the introduction of a dedicated news section for the social media platform, which would potentially use humans to curate the news from “broadly trusted” outlets. Zuckerberg said Facebook might also start paying news publishers to include their articles in this dedicated news section in an effort to reward “high-quality, trustworthy content.”

With social media censorship already at worryingly high levels, who will decide which outlets are “broadly trusted” and which are untrustworthy? What qualifies one outlet as more “trusted” than another? Will Zuckerberg make the criteria public?

Collective punishment? Zuckerberg’s call for internet regulation is aimed at competitors – analyst

Fresh from the anti-climactic Russiagate saga and long-awaited Mueller report, will Facebook penalize all the outlets that incessantly pushed the Trump/Russia “collusion” narrative and hyped fake “bombshells” for more than two years sans evidence, or will the likes of MSNBC and Rachel Maddow automatically earn “trusted” status? The answer to that question is blindingly obvious.

Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news are reminiscent of other recent efforts from apps like NewsGuard, the US government-linked app which “rates” news websites according to their “trustworthiness” and, unsurprisingly, targets alternative media sites which do not strictly adhere to establishment narratives. If recent history is any indicator, Facebook’s own efforts to rate news will also fall directly in line with US government objectives.

The social media giant has been rightly accused of blatant censorship on multiple occasions in recent memory — and there doesn’t seem a way that a group of Facebook-hired editors could be trusted to curate the news for anyone, unless it took some serious steps to address its various biases. In fact, even if it did that, isn’t hiring human editors with their own political biases and preferences to sift through all the available news and select the stories deemed fit for public consumption just an Orwellian idea in the first place?

Facebook should probably already be aware of the pitfalls when it comes to hiring human editors for such purposes. During the 2016 US presidential election, the company’s solution to political bias in its trending news section was to fire the human editors responsible for it. Maybe Zuckerberg thinks this time it will be different? Or maybe, and more likely, this is just another PR effort to placate the pro-censorship crowd on Capitol Hill.

There is no shortage of examples of Facebook censorship at this point. Last year, the platform inexplicably took down the English-language page belonging to left-leaning, Venezuela-based news network Telesur — and deleted the page belonging to Venezuela Analysis, another left-leaning outlet offering commentary critical of Washington’s foreign policy in Latin America. The pages were later restored, but Facebook was not forthcoming with an explanation.

Changes made to Facebook algorithms to combat “fake news” in 2017, saw traffic to multiple socialist and government accountability websites plummeting — including Police the Police (a page exposing US police brutality) and the Free Thought Project (which promotes government transparency). Alternative news websites like Truth-out.org, Democracy Now and Alternet also suffered as a result of those algorithm changes.

More recently, Facebook suspended popular pages run by Maffick Media, which is 51 percent owned by RT’s video agency Ruptly. Coincidentally, the content on those pages is also highly critical of the US government. Funnily enough, Facebook isn’t often caught censoring popular pages whose content is Washington-friendly. The Maffick pages were later restored, but Facebook forced them to include more explicit information about their funding, which in itself is no big deal, but it is a requirement curiously not demanded of US government-funded or linked pages.

ALSO ON RT.COMZuckerberg asks governments for more internet regulation in self-flagellation exercise

Not only has Facebook been accused of censorship, however, it has also been found to be working at the behest of certain governments — but again, only Washington-friendly ones, of course.

The Intercept reported last year that Facebook met with Israeli government officials and complied with orders to delete the accounts belonging to certain Palestinian activists. Facebook quickly bowed to Israel’s demands after threats that it would be forced into complying with the deletion orders by law if it failed to do so voluntarily.

But things don’t look to be getting any better on the Facebook censorship front since then. A journalist for Israeli news outlet +972 Magazine tweeted on Monday that Facebook was now punishing news sites (in the form of lower views) for publishing content that “could be a negative experience” for users — whatever that means. The content in question was an article by the magazine about Gaza’s Great Return march and the casualties inflicted on protesters by the Israeli army.

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With such a terrible track record when it comes to political bias and willingness to censor news and information, don’t be surprised if Facebook’s planned “dedicated news section” of “high-quality” information turns out to be a failure.

Danielle Ryan

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Democrats Agree: One Sexual Harassment Allegation Against Joe Biden Isn’t Disqualifying

By EMILY ZANOTTI

CAP

Democrats have a solid party line on the sexual harassment allegations being leveled at former Vice President Joe Biden: you get the first one free.

Both Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and progressive presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rushed to Biden’s defense over the weekend, claiming that a single sexual harassment allegation — even if credible — shouldn’t immediately and irreparably derail a blossoming presidential campaign.

The Washington Free Beacon reports that Durbin told NBC that a single, unproven sexual harassment allegation — like the one leveled at Biden by a former Nevada gubernatorial candidate last week — shouldn’t mean Biden should pack up his campaign offices before his bid for the presidency even gets off the ground.

“I can tell you that Joe Biden is a friend and a seasoned veteran when it comes to political campaigns. I know nothing about the allegations that I also read this morning, as well. I think all of us should take such allegations seriously and with respect,” Durbin said. “I took Joe Biden’s statement to say just that, exactly.”

“Yes, I think he’s ready if that’s his decision to move forward in this presidential campaign,” he added.

When asked whether the claim “disqualified” Biden, Durbin replied enthusiastically.

“Certainly one allegation is not disqualifying, but it should be taken seriously,” he said.

See the source image

Bernie Sanders, who is Biden’s major threat in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, was also oddly deferential to Obama’s former Vice President, telling CBS’s Face the Nation that, while he believes Lucy Flores, the woman who accused Biden of touching her inappropriately at a campaign stop in 2014, he also believes Joe Biden should get a second chance.

“I think that’s a decision for the vice president to make,” said Sanders, when asked whether Biden should continue to seek the nation’s highest office. “I’m not sure that one incident alone disqualifies anybody.”

Instead Sanders, who has faced sexual harassment problems of his own recently when several female former staffers revealed that they were treated poorly on Sanders’ campaign, and that Sanders and his top aides did nothing to address their concerns, said Biden’s issues are simply the result of a world that continues to embrace patriarchy and oppress women.

“I think what this speaks to is the need to fundamentally change the culture of this country and to create environments where women feel comfortable and feel safe,” Sanders said.

See the source image

Of course neither lawmaker was as deferential during, say, now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh‘s confirmation hearings when the judge was accused of a single incident of sexual assault which took place several decades before when he and his alleged victim were both in high school, even though no evidence was presented to verify Kavanaugh’s accuser’s claim.

Biden, for his part, says he does not view his encounter with Ms. Flores as problematic.

“In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort,” Biden said in a statement over the weekend. “And not once – never – did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.”

Unfortunately, it appears more women may come forward with stories. A breaking news alert late Monday indicates that at least one other woman, a female campaign staffer, believes she was treated inappropriately by the former vice president. There may also be others; the sudden wave of concern over Biden’s past behavior — which went ignored while Biden and President Barack Obama were in office — seems to be conveniently timed to derail an early April announcement, and could be the work of another campaign.

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Democrat Gutierrez: There Should be Welcoming Centers in Every Major City for Illegal Caravan Migrants

by Jim Hoft April 1, 2019

CAP

He’s the conscience of the party.

Former lawmaker Democrat Luis Gutierrez wants welcome centers in every major US city for illegal caravan migrants.

CAP

This is a party that seeks a national suicide.

Gutierrez was on CNN this weekend when he made the comments.

Via Breitbart:

Former Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) over the weekend called on mayors of major U.S. cities to open “welcoming centers” for caravan migrants.

Appearing on CNN, Gutierrez, who is now a senior policy adviser for the National Partnership of New Americans (NPNA), urged Democrats leading major U.S. cities like Chicago and Los Angeles to “invite” caravan migrants to stay in their cities, saying he hoped his party “stands up for its principles.”

He said America is the “richest, most powerful nation in the world,” and it “should also be the nation with the biggest heart and a nation that has a great tradition of receiving refugees.”

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MSNBC’s Maddow keeps spinning Russian collusion hysteria, even as her OWN NETWORK corrects her

CAP

The post-Mueller comedown has been hard for many MSM journalists, but none more so than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. The prime-time host continued to spin collusion hysteria, even as her own network corrected her live on air.

With Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report clearing President Trump of colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election, the focus among anti-Trump types in the media and in Washington has now shifted to pushing for access to the full contents of the report, including its underlying evidence. Surely, they argue, there must be a speck of collusion in there somewhere.

Attorney General William Barr, who released a summary of its findings last Monday, has promised to turn over as much of the report as possible, “consistent with applicable law, regulations, and Departmental policies.”

According to Maddow, “it’s hard to believe” that Mueller would allow Barr – a Trump appointee – to pick through the report himself, deciding what passages need redaction. “They wouldn’t leave that to Barr,” she said on Sunday night. But Barr, she continued, is doing that “all by himself.”

Except he’s not. In a letter sent to Congress on Friday, Barr explicitly stated that Mueller is “assisting us” in making these redactions. Even Maddow’s own producers flashed this newsline across TV screens, as Maddow argued the opposite.

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In the two years Mueller has been investigating Trump, Maddow has stood out as one of the mainstream media’s most fervent Russiagate conspiracy theorists, starring in her very own detective thriller every night on live TV. Trump, she said, was “curiously well versed” in “specific Russian talking points.” The Kremlin, meanwhile, was running a “continuing operation” to steer the US government from within, and could “flip the switch” at any time if discovered, shutting down the entire US power grid.

As Maddow saw ‘Reds under the bed,’ MSNBC covered Mueller more than any other cable network, mentioning the investigator-turned-savior of democracy almost every day last year.

Could it be that the network’s producers are finally tiring of Maddow’s tinfoil-hat proclamations? If so, it’s about time.

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LEFT DEFENDS CREEPY JOE BIDEN’S GROPING AMID #METOO SCANDAL

Left Defends Creepy Joe Biden's Groping Amid #MeToo Scandal

‘He is extremely affectionate, extremely flirtatious in a completely safe way,’ claims Mika Brzezinski

 | Infowars.com – APRIL 1, 2019

The Left is defending former Vice President Joe Biden’s habit of touching and groping women, claiming it’s just a harmless personality trait rather than inappropriate behavior.

The View’s Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, and the wife of Obama’s former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter defended Biden’s intent behind his groping, and even the groping itself.

“We all know Joe Biden…He’s so friendly. He’s a close talker…He touches you. That’s what he’s like,” Behar gushed on Monday.

https://www.mrctv.org/embed/538453

Co-host Sunny Hostin added, “I don’t know if we’ll see anymore smelling of hair,” which triggered Goldberg.

“That pisses me off. I don’t want Joe to stop doing that!” Goldberg exclaimed.

Brzezinski told her audience that Biden is “extremely flirtatious” but in a “completely safe way.”

“There’s a lot of things I know about Joe Biden — I’ve known him for a long time — he is extremely affectionate, extremely flirtatious in a completely safe way,” she said on Monday.

“I am sure that somebody can misconstrue something he’s done. But as much as I can know what’s in anyone’s heart, I don’t think there is bad intent on his part at all.”

Carter’s wife didn’t deny Biden’s behavior, but said in her case, a “misleadingly extracted” photograph mischaracterized her as appearing uncomfortable.

Biden’s well-known proclivities gained attention on Friday after former Democratic nominee for Nevada’s lieutenant governor Lucy Flores wrote a scathing op-ed detailing how during a 2014 campaign event Biden had approached her from behind, smelled her hair, and planted a slow kiss on the back of her head.

In early March, Biden even referred to himself as a “tactile politician” during a speech in Delaware.

“I always have been, and that gets me in trouble as well, because I think I can feel and taste what is going on,” he told the crowd.

Biden in a statement acknowledged his tendency to touch women, but insisted he didn’t think he was “acting inappropriately.”

“In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once — never — did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention,” he said in a statement.

 

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