Targeting tens of millions of Americans who support mainstream policies while mainstreaming the views of dangerous street revolutionaries is only going to dangerously fragment our politics.
Joe Biden’s recent declaration that “MAGA Republicans” are motivated by an ideology of “semi-fascism” may come off as merely the sort of off-hand slander Biden is sometimes known to utter. But while assailing a random crowd member as a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” is merely offensive, Biden’s “semi-fascism” smear, aimed at the tens of millions of Americans who identified with former President Trump’s slogan of “Make America Great Again,” reveals a disturbing truth about the direction of both the Biden Administration and his perceived base. For one thing, his administration made absolutely no effort to walk the statement back, as it has done with many of Biden’s frequent outbursts. In fact, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre chose instead to emphasize the remarks:
I think he was pretty clear and he was very powerful last night. Look, what the president said last night was that when it comes to MAGA Republicans, when it comes to the extreme ultra wing of Republicans, they are attacking democracy. Right? They are attacking, taking away rights and freedoms.
It is not clear what rights and freedoms so-called MAGA Republicans have taken away, although the one example Jean-Pierre gave was “voting rights,” presumably referring to the passage of election integrity bills in nearly 20 state legislatures. Finding fault with legislatures passing laws on a topic 83 percent of Americans consider an important issue is a strange way to define “attacking democracy.”
In a follow up with Don Lemon on the “semi-fascism” claim, Jean-Pierre also asserted that “MAGA Republicans” were attempting to “put on the chopping blocks Medicare and Social Security” which sounded less like Mussolini reborn and more like the sort of perennial complaints that Democrats usually make about Republican policies going into a midterm election.
Biden’s remarks were clearly intended to drive a wedge between those he views as political opponents, and the rest of mainstream politics, making an explicit comparison between “MAGA Republicans” and notably anti-Trump Republicans such as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, in whose state Biden was speaking.
This portrayal of a large chunk of the American political electorate as “fascist” (“semi-” or otherwise) is motivated by the same logic that drives the street violence of Antifa; which seeks to affix the fascism label to mainstream opponents to the benefit of otherwise politically unpalatable anarcho-communists. This was the same strategy Antifa’s earliest incarnation used in the street battles of Weimar Germany, to disastrous effect.
A court filing submitted by former President Donald Trump’s lawyers said the Department of Justice (DOJ) never contacted his lawyers after FBI agents took documents during last month’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago.
“Never has an argument against ‘interference’ better underscored the need for judicial involvement,” the filing, submitted Wednesday, said. “All of this in the context of a unilateral filter team operation that to-date has never made any contact with counsel for the Movant, another historic first for DOJ.
“Left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no recourse for Movant but to somehow trust the self-restraint of currently unchecked investigators,” his lawyers further argued (pdf).
That filing came about a day after the DOJ asserted in court that a special master—or a neutral third-party—isn’t needed for the review of allegedly classified materials that were taken from Trump’s residence. The DOJ filter team, prosecutors said, already carried out a preliminary evaluation of the documents.
“The government’s investigative team has already reviewed all of the remaining materials, including any that are potentially subject to claims of executive privilege,” the DOJ wrote.
Arguing against appointing the special master, the government added said it would impede its “ongoing criminal investigation and—if the special master were tasked with reviewing classified documents—would impede the Intelligence Community from conducting its ongoing review of the national security risk that improper storage of these highly sensitive materials may have caused and from identifying measures to rectify or mitigate any damage that improper storage caused.”
Controversial Photo
In that same filing, the DOJ included a photo of the allegedly classified documents—some of which appeared to be marked “TOP SECRET”—that were scattered on the floor of a Mar-a-Lago room.
On social media, Trump suggested that the picture appears to be staged and accused the FBI and DOJ of deception.
“There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home,” the former president wrote on Truth Social. “Wrong! They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet, making it look like a big ‘find’ for them.”
Trump further asserted that his lawyers were denied access to view what the FBI agents were doing.
“They dropped them, not me – Very deceiving…And remember, we could have NO representative, including lawyers, present during the Raid. They were told to wait outside,” he added Wednesday.
Joe Biden’s Antifa Politics
Targeting tens of millions of Americans who support mainstream policies while mainstreaming the views of dangerous street revolutionaries is only going to dangerously fragment our politics.
Joe Biden’s recent declaration that “MAGA Republicans” are motivated by an ideology of “semi-fascism” may come off as merely the sort of off-hand slander Biden is sometimes known to utter. But while assailing a random crowd member as a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” is merely offensive, Biden’s “semi-fascism” smear, aimed at the tens of millions of Americans who identified with former President Trump’s slogan of “Make America Great Again,” reveals a disturbing truth about the direction of both the Biden Administration and his perceived base. For one thing, his administration made absolutely no effort to walk the statement back, as it has done with many of Biden’s frequent outbursts. In fact, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre chose instead to emphasize the remarks:
I think he was pretty clear and he was very powerful last night. Look, what the president said last night was that when it comes to MAGA Republicans, when it comes to the extreme ultra wing of Republicans, they are attacking democracy. Right? They are attacking, taking away rights and freedoms.
It is not clear what rights and freedoms so-called MAGA Republicans have taken away, although the one example Jean-Pierre gave was “voting rights,” presumably referring to the passage of election integrity bills in nearly 20 state legislatures. Finding fault with legislatures passing laws on a topic 83 percent of Americans consider an important issue is a strange way to define “attacking democracy.”
In a follow up with Don Lemon on the “semi-fascism” claim, Jean-Pierre also asserted that “MAGA Republicans” were attempting to “put on the chopping blocks Medicare and Social Security” which sounded less like Mussolini reborn and more like the sort of perennial complaints that Democrats usually make about Republican policies going into a midterm election.
Biden’s remarks were clearly intended to drive a wedge between those he views as political opponents, and the rest of mainstream politics, making an explicit comparison between “MAGA Republicans” and notably anti-Trump Republicans such as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, in whose state Biden was speaking.
This portrayal of a large chunk of the American political electorate as “fascist” (“semi-” or otherwise) is motivated by the same logic that drives the street violence of Antifa; which seeks to affix the fascism label to mainstream opponents to the benefit of otherwise politically unpalatable anarcho-communists. This was the same strategy Antifa’s earliest incarnation used in the street battles of Weimar Germany, to disastrous effect.
A court filing submitted by former President Donald Trump’s lawyers said the Department of Justice (DOJ) never contacted his lawyers after FBI agents took documents during last month’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago.
“Never has an argument against ‘interference’ better underscored the need for judicial involvement,” the filing, submitted Wednesday, said. “All of this in the context of a unilateral filter team operation that to-date has never made any contact with counsel for the Movant, another historic first for DOJ.
“Left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no recourse for Movant but to somehow trust the self-restraint of currently unchecked investigators,” his lawyers further argued (pdf).
That filing came about a day after the DOJ asserted in court that a special master—or a neutral third-party—isn’t needed for the review of allegedly classified materials that were taken from Trump’s residence. The DOJ filter team, prosecutors said, already carried out a preliminary evaluation of the documents.
“The government’s investigative team has already reviewed all of the remaining materials, including any that are potentially subject to claims of executive privilege,” the DOJ wrote.
Arguing against appointing the special master, the government added said it would impede its “ongoing criminal investigation and—if the special master were tasked with reviewing classified documents—would impede the Intelligence Community from conducting its ongoing review of the national security risk that improper storage of these highly sensitive materials may have caused and from identifying measures to rectify or mitigate any damage that improper storage caused.”
Controversial Photo
In that same filing, the DOJ included a photo of the allegedly classified documents—some of which appeared to be marked “TOP SECRET”—that were scattered on the floor of a Mar-a-Lago room.
On social media, Trump suggested that the picture appears to be staged and accused the FBI and DOJ of deception.
“There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home,” the former president wrote on Truth Social. “Wrong! They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet, making it look like a big ‘find’ for them.”
Trump further asserted that his lawyers were denied access to view what the FBI agents were doing.
“They dropped them, not me – Very deceiving…And remember, we could have NO representative, including lawyers, present during the Raid. They were told to wait outside,” he added Wednesday.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-doj-never-contacted-his-team-after-mar-a-lago-raid_4704090.htm
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