Paraphrasing:
Model the right behavior, and then tell the jury, "Let's be grownups about this."
Sep 20, 2023
Sep 19, 2023
Why Am I Not Surprised?
Propaganda works. Advertising works. And if you couple the saturation ad blitz with food products that are engineered to be addictive substances rather than actual food - well you can guess what happens. People can't get enough of the artificial shit you're peddling, and the shareholders can't get enough of those oh-so-very sweet quarterly dividends.
A new study suggests that tobacco companies, who were skilled at marketing cigarettes, used similar strategies to hook people on processed foods.
For decades, tobacco companies hooked people on cigarettes by making their products more addictive. Now, a new study suggests that tobacco companies may have used a similar strategy to hook people on processed foods.
In the 1980s, tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds acquired the major food companies Kraft, General Foods and Nabisco, allowing tobacco firms to dominate America’s food supply and reap billions in sales from popular brands such as Oreo cookies, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Lunchables.
By the 2000s, the tobacco giants spun off their food companies and largely exited the food industry — but not before leaving a lasting legacy on the foods that we eat.
The new research, published in the journal Addiction, focuses on the rise of “hyper-palatable” foods, which contain potent combinations of fat, sodium, sugar and other additives that can drive people to crave and overeat them. The Addiction study found that in the decades when the tobacco giants owned the world’s leading food companies, the foods that they sold were far more likely to be hyper-palatable than similar foods not owned by tobacco companies.
In the past 30 years, hyper-palatable foods have spread rapidly into the food supply, coinciding with a surge in obesity and diet-related diseases. In America, the steepest increase in the prevalence of hyper-palatable foods occurred between 1988 and 2001 — the era when Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds owned the world’s leading food companies.
Even though the tobacco companies no longer own these food brands, researchers say the findings matter because many of the ultra-processed foods that we eat today were engineered by an industry that wrote the playbook on products that are highly-palatable, addictive and appealing to children.
“We found that tobacco companies selectively disseminated hyper-palatable foods into the food supply,” said Tera Fazzino, the lead author of the new study and an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Kansas. “It’s important for people to understand where these foods came from and who was responsible for putting them into our food system in a way that saturates the environment.”
How cigarette makers sold food
For their study, Fazzino and her colleagues pored over documents contained in the University of California at San Francisco’s Industry Documents Library, which contains millions of internal tobacco industry documents that shed light on how the companies designed their products to be addictive and the strategies they used to market them.
Fazzino and her colleagues identified 105 foods that were among the best-selling products for brands owned by either Philip Morris or R.J. Reynolds between 1988 and 2001. At the time, R.J. Reynolds owned Nabisco, whose popular brands included Oreo cookies, Teddy Grahams, Ritz crackers and SnackWell’s fat-free Devils Food cookies.
Philip Morris once owned the world’s largest food company, Kraft-General Foods, which sold popular brands like Kraft Mac & Cheese, Jello-O, Kool-Aid and Oscar Mayer hot dogs.
The researchers compared the nutritional makeup of these foods to 587 similar products sold by competing brands that were not owned by tobacco companies.
They found that tobacco-owned foods were 80 percent more likely to contain potent combinations of carbs and sodium that made them hyper-palatable. Tobacco-owned brands were also 29 percent more likely to contain similarly potent combinations of fat and sodium.
Foods that find your ‘bliss’ point
Fazzino and her colleagues identified 105 foods that were among the best-selling products for brands owned by either Philip Morris or R.J. Reynolds between 1988 and 2001. At the time, R.J. Reynolds owned Nabisco, whose popular brands included Oreo cookies, Teddy Grahams, Ritz crackers and SnackWell’s fat-free Devils Food cookies.
Philip Morris once owned the world’s largest food company, Kraft-General Foods, which sold popular brands like Kraft Mac & Cheese, Jello-O, Kool-Aid and Oscar Mayer hot dogs.
The researchers compared the nutritional makeup of these foods to 587 similar products sold by competing brands that were not owned by tobacco companies.
They found that tobacco-owned foods were 80 percent more likely to contain potent combinations of carbs and sodium that made them hyper-palatable. Tobacco-owned brands were also 29 percent more likely to contain similarly potent combinations of fat and sodium.
Foods that find your ‘bliss’ point
The findings suggest that tobacco companies engineered processed foods to hit what is known as our “bliss” point and elicit cravings, said Ashley Gearhardt, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan who studies food addiction.
She said that hyper-palatable foods have a lot in common with addictive substances. They contain ingredients from naturally occurring plants and foods that have been purified, concentrated and transformed into products that are quickly absorbed into our bloodstreams, which amplifies their ability to light up reward centers in our brains.
“Every addictive substance is something that we take from nature and we alter it, process it and refine it in a way that makes it more rewarding — and that is very clearly what happened with these hyper-palatable food substances,” said Gearhardt, who was not involved in the new study. “We treat these foods like they come from nature. Instead, they’re foods that come from big tobacco.”
Philip Morris, which changed its name to Altria, declined to comment. R.J. Reynolds, Kraft and Mondelez, which owns Nabisco, did not respond to requests for comment.
Experts in the flavor business
Tobacco companies got into the food business 60 years ago to diversify their product portfolios. These firms had extensive libraries of colors, flavors and additives that they developed for cigarettes, and executives realized they could use these ingredients to make a variety of processed foods.
In the 1960s, R.J. Reynolds launched a project to develop sugary drinks, which involved market research on children. In an internal memo that year, the company’s manager of biochemical research wrote to an RJR executive that the firm was not “merely” a tobacco company: “In a broader and much less restricting sense,” he wrote, “R.J. Reynolds is in the flavor business.”
The research manager noted that many of the flavors the company had developed for cigarettes “would be useful in food, beverage and other products,” leading to “large financial returns.”
Turning Hawaiian Punch into a kids’ drink
The following year, RJR bought the maker of Hawaiian Punch, which at the time was a cocktail mixer that was available in only two flavors. After conducting dozens of market research studies in children and housewives, RJR expanded Hawaiian Punch to at least 16 flavors, including many preferred by kids. The company was among the first to introduce a nationally distributed “juice box,” which became an instant hit.
“They took something that was an adult cocktail mixer and a year later they had turned it into a children’s beverage,” said Laura Schmidt, a professor of health policy at the UCSF School of Medicine who has published studies examining the tobacco industry’s involvement in food companies.
RJR used a cartoon mascot, Punchy, to market Hawaiian Punch to children. For decades, Punchy appeared in TV commercials, Sunday comics, schoolbook covers, toys and magazines, helping to generate tens of millions of dollars in sales and becoming what RJR called “The best salesman the beverage has ever had.”
The rise of Teddy Grahams
Its success with Hawaiian Punch led RJR to expand into other foods, including puddings and maple syrup. Then in 1985 the tobacco giant acquired Nabisco, which catapulted the company into a dominant player in the food industry. The conglomerate went on to launch many successful new processed foods, including Teddy Grahams, a bite-sized children’s snack that soon became the third best-selling cookie behind only Chips Ahoy and Oreo, both also produced by Nabisco.
RJR Nabisco marketed Teddy Grahams as “a delicious yet wholesome snack because they’re made with graham flour and other wholesome ingredients.” Yet critics pointed out that the product was predominantly made from white flour and contained just two grams of graham flour in a one-ounce serving. The snack was so popular that Nabisco created an adult version of it, Honey Maid Honeycomb Graham Snacks. “Nabisco reasoned that the sweet taste and relatively healthful image could also hook adults,” according to a 1990 New York Times article about the launch of the new snack.
A couple years later, as the low-fat craze was underway, Nabisco introduced its wildly popular SnackWell’s cookies, which sold out in stores across the country, reaching sales of almost a half-billion dollars in only three years. SnackWell’s low-fat and fat-free cookies appealed to weight-conscious consumers. But the snacks contained plenty of sugar and calories, and critics pointed out that people would often binge on them because they believed they weren’t fattening — a phenomenon known as the SnackWell effect.
Marketing Kool-Aid and Lunchables
Nabisco was bought in 2000 by Philip Morris, which was already a dominant player in the food industry thanks to its acquisitions of Kraft and General Foods in the 1980s. Schmidt at UCSF said that when Philip Morris bought General Foods in 1985, it installed tobacco executives at the food company and launched initiatives to market sugary drinks and processed foods to children and minorities.
To broaden the reach of its cigarettes, Philip Morris used a marketing strategy called “line extensions”: Marlboro cigarettes were marketed to men, Virginia Slims targeted women and menthol cigarettes were heavily advertised to Black consumers.
The company applied the same tactic to processed foods, Schmidt said. It added new flavors and formulas to many of its existing products, giving consumers an endless variety of hyper-palatable foods to buy.
Between 1986 and 2004, Philip Morris developed a dozen new products of liquid and frozen Kool-Aid and introduced around 36 child-tested flavors, including Kickin’ Kiwi Lime and Great Bluedini, which had its own cartoon mascot.
One of its best-selling products, Lunchables, was introduced in 1988 by Oscar Mayer. Designed to look like a TV dinner and marketed to busy moms and their children, the iconic, prepackaged meal of bologna, crackers and processed cheese contained so much sodium and saturated fat that some doctors called it a “blood pressure bomb.” One Philip Morris executive joked about references that the healthiest item in a package of Lunchables was the napkin.
According to “Salt Sugar Fat,” the best-selling book by investigative journalist Michael Moss, Lunchables had sales of $218 million in its first 12 months on the market. This prompted Oscar Mayer to introduce line extensions such as Lunchables with Snickers bars, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Kool-Aid and Capri Sun.
By the early 2000s, Philip Morris was mired in tobacco lawsuits. Moss said the company’s leadership warned its food-side executives that they could face a similar risk of litigation over the health effects of processed foods. One senior Kraft executive named Michael Mudd, Moss said, reviewed the company’s records and products and told a Philip Morris lawyer he was worried that some of its cookies and processed foods could drive people to eat compulsively.
The tobacco companies are no longer in the food business — but the impact they had on the food supply was substantial.
Fazzino’s new study found that by 2018, the differences in previously tobacco-owned foods and other foods had mostly disappeared. It’s not that foods got healthier, Fazzino said, but that other companies saw what worked and many products likely were reformulated to make them just as hyper-palatable as those sold by their competitors.
And not all that frou-frou organic shit is great for you either.
Cherry Pits
The hard stone in the center of cherries is full of prussic acid, also known as cyanide, which is poisonous. But there’s no need to freak out if you accidentally swallow one -- intact pits just pass through your system and out the other end. Avoid crunching or crushing pits as you nosh on your cherries.
Apple Seeds
Apple seeds also have cyanide, so throwing back a handful as a snack isn’t smart. Luckily, apple seeds have a protective coating that keeps the cyanide from entering your system if you accidentally eat them. But it’s good to be cautious. Even in small doses, cyanide can cause rapid breathing, seizures, and possibly death.
Elderberries
You may take elderberry as a syrup or supplement to boost your immune system and treat cold or flu symptoms or constipation. But eating unripe berries, bark, or leaves of elderberry may leave you feeling worse instead of better. They have both lectin and cyanide, two chemicals that can cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Nutmeg
Nutmeg adds a nice, nutty flavor when you add it in small amounts to baked goods. But eaten by the spoonful, it can cause big problems to your system. Even as little as 2 teaspoons can be toxic to your body because of myristicin, an oil that can cause hallucinations, drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, and seizures.
Green Potatoes
The leaves, sprouts, and underground stems (tubers) of potatoes contain a toxic substance called glycoalkaloid. Glycoalkaloids make a potato look green when it’s exposed to light, gets damaged, or ages. Eating potatoes with a high glycoalkaloid content can cause nausea, diarrhea, confusion, headaches, and death.
Raw Kidney Beans
Of all the bean varieties, raw red kidney beans have the highest concentration of lectins. Lectins are a toxin that can give you a bad stomachache, make you vomit, or give you diarrhea. It only takes 4-5 raw kidney beans to cause these side effects, which is why it’s best to boil your beans before eating.
Rhubarb Leaves
Eating the stalk is OK, but leave out the leaf. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid, which binds to calcium and makes it harder for your body to absorb it. In turn, your bones can’t grow the way they should, and you’re at risk for kidney stones, blood clotting problems, vomiting, diarrhea, and coma.
Bitter Almonds
Both types of almonds -- bitter and sweet -- have amygdalin, a chemical compound that can turn into cyanide, but bitter almonds have the highest levels by far. Sweet almonds are safe to snack on, but eating untreated bitter almonds can cause cramps, nausea, and diarrhea.
Star Fruit
If you have kidney disease, it’s best to leave star fruit out of your diet. Normal kidneys can filter out the toxins in this sweet fruit, but for a system that can’t, the toxin sticks around and can cause mental confusion, seizures, and death.
Mushrooms
They may be great on pizza, but beware of certain mushrooms in the wild. Two types are particularly harmful -- the death cap (Amanita phalloides), and the destroying angel (Amanita virosa). Eating these wild mushrooms can cause abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting, dehydration, intense thirst, liver failure, coma, and death.
Raw Cashews
The cashews you get in stores with a raw label aren’t exactly that. Before they hit shelves, they’re steamed to remove a toxin called urushiol in their shells. Urushiol is the same toxin you find in poison ivy. Eating pre-steamed cashews can cause an allergic reaction and can be fatal if your allergies are severe.
Mangoes
Just like raw cashews, the skin, bark, and leaves of mangoes contain urushiol, the toxin in poison ivy. If you’re allergic to poison ivy, especially if that allergy is a bad one, biting into a mango can cause a severe reaction with swelling, rash, and even problems breathing.
Sep 18, 2023
Today's Beau
Trump pumps out the lies faster than I can write them down.
Former President Donald Trump delivered a laundry list of his familiar election lies and other false claims – plus some new falsehoods on subjects ranging from abortion laws to his policy on dealing with drug cartels – in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The show’s new moderator, Kristen Welker, promptly corrected some of the false claims; others were aired unchallenged. Here’s a fact check of 14 of the false claims, plus a check on another important claim for which there is no evidence.
This is not a comprehensive list of the inaccurate remarks Trump made in the interview.
Infanticide
Trump, attacking Democrats on abortion policy, claimed, “You have some states that are allowed to kill the child after birth.” He also said specifically, “You have New York state and other places that passed legislation where you’re allowed to kill the baby after birth.”
Facts First: This is false. Killing a child after birth is not allowed in any state, and New York did not pass legislation permitting infanticide.
A law New York approved in 2019 makes abortion illegal after 24 weeks with the exception of cases where the fetus is not viable or the abortion is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” The law does not legalize post-birth murder. Since its passage, however, it has been the subject of online misinformation falsely claiming it does.
There are some cases in which parents decide to choose palliative care for babies who are born with deadly conditions that give them just minutes, hours or days to live. That is simply not the same as killing the baby.
Brad Raffensperger’s comments
Trump, who is facing criminal charges over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia, defended the January 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump told numerous lies about supposed election fraud and pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to give him a victory in the state.
Trump said: “Brad Raffensperger, the head – who, by the way, last week said I didn’t do anything wrong. He said, ‘That was a negotiation.’ Brad Raffensperger, who I was dealing with, I appreciate that he said that. But he said last week, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Raffensperger did not say Trump didn’t do anything wrong on the January 2021 call; Raffensperger has been sharply critical of Trump’s behavior on the call.
Trump did not specify what he was talking about, but it’s possible he was mischaracterizing Raffensperger’s testimony at a late-August court hearing on the attempt by former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to get his own Georgia criminal case moved from state court to federal court. Nowhere in Raffensperger’s testimony did he say Trump didn’t do anything wrong or defend Trump’s words.
Rather, Raffensperger testified that “I didn’t take it as inappropriate” when Meadows told him on the January 2021 call that he (Meadows) hoped they could reach an agreement to allow the Trump side to look more fully at the election data. (Meadows had asked if, “in the spirit of cooperation and compromise,” they could “at least have a discussion” to seek a “less litigious” path forward.) That Raffensperger remark was in response to a question that was solely about Meadows’ words, not Trump’s words.
Raffensperger published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in early September criticizing efforts to use the 14th Amendment to get Trump disqualified from the 2024 ballot on the grounds that Trump engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against the US – Raffensperger argued that “denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American” – but Raffensperger didn’t even mention the call in that op-ed. When he was then asked about the call in a Fox interview about the op-ed, he said he had done due diligence before the call and knew that Trump’s various fraud claims were unfounded. He offered no defense of Trump’s conduct.
In his 2021 book, Raffensperger criticized Trump’s behavior on the call at length. He wrote “the president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong, and I was not going to do that.” He wrote that, regarding some of Trump’s language on the call, “I felt then – and still believe today – that this was a threat.” And he wrote that, at another point in the call, Trump was doing “nothing but an attempt at manipulation” by “using what he believes is the power of his position to threaten [another Georgia elections official] and me with prosecution if we don’t do what he tells us to do.”
A New York Times article about presidential records
Trump denounced the criminal charges against him over his retention of classified documents after his presidency. He said, “I fall within the Presidential Records Act. It’s very simple. It’s a civil thing. In fact, The New York Times of all institutions did a story, and it was headlined, ‘Please, please, please, Mr. President, could we take a look at the documents.’ And they said in the story that the only way you can get documents from a president is if you go there and say please. Because this is civil.”
Facts First: Trump inaccurately described this New York Times article. The January article did not say the only way “you” can get documents from a president is saying please. Rather, the article explained that one particular entity, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), lacks “independent” enforcement power and is limited to polite requests – but that another entity, the Justice Department, enforces laws governing presidential documents and classified records. In other words, contrary to Trump’s suggestion here, the article did not say that the existence of the Presidential Records Act means there can be no enforcement, period, over presidential documents.
The Times article, whose online headline is “As Archives Leans on Ex-Presidents, Its Only Weapon Is ‘Please,’” explained that NARA is unable to compel ex-presidents to take action. But then the article said this: “Enforcement of the laws governing presidential records and classified documents is up to the Justice Department, which has opened investigations into the actions of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, who have each discovered classified records at their homes.” The article subsequently included a paragraph in which an expert was quoted as saying, “If there are violations of law, they can be referred to the Justice Department for action…But NARA itself has no police force or ability to enforce its own actions.”
Biden’s false claims
Trump said of Biden: “Look at all the lies he’s told over the last couple of weeks. He said he was at the World Trade Center and he wasn’t. He said he flew airplanes, right? He didn’t. He said he drove trucks, and he didn’t. Everything he says is, like, a lie.”
Facts First: Trump made a false claim here while denouncing Biden for making false claims: Biden has not said that he flew airplanes. This was not a one-time Trump mistake; he was even more specific at a September 8 rally, suggesting that Biden had claimed he “used to be a fighter jet pilot.”
It’s true that Biden has falsely claimed to have driven a tractor-trailer truck, though we aren’t aware of him saying this “over the last couple of weeks” as Trump said here. And Biden did make a false claim last week about when he visited the World Trade Center after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001; Biden visited Ground Zero, but he did so nine days after the attacks, not “the next day” as he claimed.
Trump’s comments about drug cartels
Welker said to Trump, “If elected, you say you would order the Defense Department to use special forces to inflict maximum damage on drug cartels.” But Trump responded, “I didn’t say that. No. People said I said that.” He repeated, “I didn’t say that.”
Facts First: Trump said that. In a video he released in January, which remains on his website, he said that, if elected president again, “I will order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber-warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.”
The media and the war in Ukraine
Trump claimed, “I will say this: something’s going on, and it’s not good for Ukraine. Because the news is no longer reporting about the war. The fake news. They don’t report about the war anymore. You don’t find much reporting. That means that Ukraine’s losing. Okay? I see very little reporting from NBC, your network. I see very little reporting from NBC, ABC, from CBS, from anyone about the war.”
Facts First: It’s not true that news outlets “don’t report about the war anymore,” though the amount of television coverage on broadcast news networks has certainly declined from the first months after Russia’s invasion in 2022.
CNN continues to do extensive daily reporting on the war on television and online. NBC News wrote in its own fact check of this Trump claim: “That is demonstrably false. In the last two weeks alone, NBC News has published dozens of stories and broadcasts on all platforms about the Ukraine war.” The fact check cited specific examples, then continued, “CBS News and ABC News have had dozens of articles and videos on their websites, too.”
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Trump criticized President Joe Biden for releasing a large quantity of crude oil from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to keep prices down in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and Trump claimed that this is a reserve “I had a lot to do with filling up for the first time ever.” Trump added later in the interview, “He wanted to have low gas prices for an election. And now, we have nothing left.”
Facts First: Trump made two false claims here. First, contrary to his repeated assertions, it’s not true that he filled up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; the reserve actually contained fewer barrels of crude oil when he left office in early 2021 than when he took office in 2017. Second, while the amount of crude in the reserve is at a 40-year low, it’s not even close to true that “we have nothing left” at present; the reserve remains the world’s largest even at its current level, with about 350.6 million barrels of crude as of the week ending September 8.
The fact that the amount of oil in the reserve fell during the Trump presidency is not all because of him. The law requires some mandatory sales from the reserve for budget reasons, and when Trump issued a 2020 directive to buy tens of millions more barrels and fill the reserve to its maximum capacity, Democrats in Congress blocked the required funding. Nonetheless, he didn’t fill up the reserve as he claims.
The size of the national debt
Trump said, “We have to save our country. We have $35 trillion in debt.”
Facts First: The national debt is very large, but Trump exaggerated its size. It is right around $33 trillion (it was $32.99 trillion as of Thursday, the latest day for which we have official data), not “$35 trillion.”
We didn’t publish a fact check when he claimed at a campaign rally on September 8 that it was $34 trillion, but this is now an exaggeration of an exaggeration – and $2 trillion is certainly a significant difference.
The price of bacon
While discussing inflation, Trump said, “Things are not going, right now, very well for the consumer. Bacon is up five times.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim that the price of bacon has quintupled over the last few years – which CNN previously debunked when he made it earlier this month – is grossly inaccurate.
The average price of bacon is higher than it was when he left office, but it is nowhere near “up five times.” The average price of sliced bacon was $6.502 per pound in August 2023, compared with $5.831 in January 2021, according to federal data – an increase of about 11.5%, not even close to the 400% increase Trump keeps claiming.
Military equipment left to the Taliban
Criticizing the way Biden handled the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Trump repeated a claim about how much military equipment was left to the Taliban when the Afghan government and armed forces collapsed.
“We gave $85 billion worth of equipment to the Taliban,” Trump said.
Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.
As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.
Trump and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline
Trump said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Look, I had a very good relationship with him. And yet nobody was tougher on Russia than me. I stopped Nord Stream 2. You never heard of Nord Stream 2 – that was the pipeline – until I got involved. I said, ‘Nord Stream 2.’ People that were sophisticated, military people, and political people never heard of Nord Stream 2. I had it ended. The pipeline was dead.”
Facts First: It’s not true that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was “dead” during Trump’s presidency or that he “had it ended.” While he did approve sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already estimated to be 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.
Second, while we don’t know what any particular “military people” and “political people” might have said to Trump, it’s not true that, in general, “you never heard of Nord Stream 2” before he began discussing it as president. Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic discussion before Trump took office. In fact, Biden publicly criticized it as vice president in 2016. Trump may well have generated increased US awareness of the project, but he certainly wasn’t the one to bring it to the federal government’s attention.
The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine early last year. The pipeline was damaged later in the year in what has been described as an act of sabotage.
Trump blames Pelosi for January 6
Trump repeatedly attempted to blame Democratic California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker of the House on January 6, 2021, for the riot that day at the US Capitol – claiming she rejected his offer, days prior, of 10,000 National Guard troops. Trump said, “Listen: Nancy Pelosi was in charge of security. She turned down 10,000 soldiers. If she didn’t turn down the soldiers, you wouldn’t have had January 6.” He said explicitly, “She’s responsible for January 6.”
Facts First: Trump’s claims about Pelosi are comprehensively inaccurate.
First, the speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. Capitol security is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, a body that includes the sergeants at arms of the House and the Senate. (The Senate was led at the time by a Republican, Sen. Mitch McConnell; McConnell is not at fault either, but Trump has not blamed him while casting blame on Pelosi.)
Second, there is no evidence for the claim that Pelosi rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 National Guard troops in advance of January 6. Her office has explicitly said she was not even presented with such an offer, telling CNN last year claims to the contrary are “lies.” Pelosi said on MSNBC on Sunday: “The former occupant of the White House has always been about projection. He knows he’s responsible for [the riot], so he projects it onto others.”
Third, even if Pelosi had been told of an offer of National Guard troops, she would not have had the power to turn it down. The speaker of the House has no authority to prevent the deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard, which reports to the president (whose authority is delegated, under a decades-old executive order, to the Secretary of the Army).
Fourth, it’s worth noting the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol found “no evidence” Trump gave any actual order for 10,000 Guard troops, and the Biden-era Pentagon told The Washington Post in 2021 it has no record of any such order. Miller testified to the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol that Trump had, in a January 5 phone call, briefly and informally floated the idea of having 10,000 troops present on January 6 but did not issue any directive to that effect. Miller said, “I interpreted it as a bit of presidential banter or President Trump banter that you all are familiar with, and in no way, shape, or form did I interpret that as an order or direction.”
Fifth, at around 3:49 p.m. during the riot, Pelosi was filmed while on the phone with Miller urging him to hurry Guard troops to the Capitol, telling him “just get them there” and to “just pretend for a moment this was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege.” Trump made no such plea; the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol found that Trump did not call any “high-level Defense official” during the riot, that Trump never ordered a Guard deployment – Miller did so – and that Trump never instructed any law enforcement agency to assist.
Pelosi said on MSNBC on Sunday: “Chuck Schumer and I begged him to send the troops, again and again.” She added, “These Trumpites were attacking the Capitol, fighting the police, threatening my life and the life of the vice president — we’re turning down the troops?”
Trump’s indictments
Trump referred to the four indictments against him as “Biden indictments.” He repeatedly claimed that Biden told Attorney General Merrick Garland to “indict him,” saying at one point that Biden “went to the attorney general of the United States, and he told them, ‘Indict Trump.’”
Facts First: This claim is not supported by any evidence. There is no sign that Biden has been involved in the decision to criminally investigate or prosecute Trump, let alone any proof that he personally went to Garland and urged him to indict Trump. Biden said in June that he had not spoken to Garland on the subject and was “not going to speak with him.”
Grand juries made up of ordinary citizens – in New York, Georgia, Florida and Washington, DC – approved the indictments in each of Trump’s criminal cases. The two federal indictments were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Smith was appointed in November 2022 by Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is not proof that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort, much less that Biden directed it.
The 2020 election
Trump repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him and he claimed that he was the real winner.
Facts First: These claims are false. The election was not rigged, Trump lost fair and square to Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232, and there is no evidence of any fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state.
"It Was My Decision"
Whenever some YouTuber / commentator / pundit says "Trump is toast" or "Trump torpedoes his whole defense" or "Trump admits blah blah blah", I have to wonder if they've heard or read any of their own stuff in the last 8 years - like the 437 times everybody and his fuckin' uncle predicted "This is the coup de grâce!"
Trump will eventually take the big fall, but it happens when it happens.
In the meantime, most of us are over here wanting to believe justice will prevail, while Trump and his MAGAloons are counting on the rabble raising enough of a fuss to counteract the silliness of Law-n-Order.
We are being tested. And the test - just like democratic self-government - is a thing of our own making. Self-devised and self-administered.
And if we fail, it'll be because we've self-sabotaged.
Sep 17, 2023
Today's Reddit
The comments are kinda surprisingly divided. There's plenty of "Yeah but what about..." and "double standard", and an attempt to hijack the thread into "Why are they all so old!?" - which seems a bit non sequitur until I stop and remember that's how a lot of "conservative" argumentation goes.
But there's also quite a bit of criticism that seems rooted in what I can hope is a genuine feeling of "This has gone too far - these idiots are embarrassing".
We can hope, but I'm still wondering why nobody even tried to correct her name. Several commenters referred to her as "Laura". Curious.
Cameras only work to see conservatives
byu/alanboston inConservative
Today's Tweext
Yes - we need to stop the groomers who exemplify immorality in their daily public behavior. We must protect our impressionable children from being negatively influenced by leaders conducting themselves in wholly inappropriate ways.
It's the books!
It's the media!
It's the video games!
WTF is wrong with these fucking people?
Here is Rep. Lauren Boebert on the House floor speaking about banning YA books that display “offensive and very inappropriate” themes and here she is at the Denver theater last Sunday where she and her date were caught on camera groping each other publicly. pic.twitter.com/kQEgbCjzAI
— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) September 17, 2023
The Church
Religion has been a main component of politics ever since the first less-than-terribly honorable shaman figured out he could get his fellow cave dwellers to do things he wanted done if he could spin out a really good ghost story about something his imaginary friend told him in a dream a coupla nights ago after eating those funny tasting mushrooms he found.
So it never comes as a big surprise when I learn a little more about what a giant shit-bird-failure the Catholic church has been at some very important moments - moments when people really needed a little moral authority in the face of some very bad actors doing some very bad things.
And the more we learn about some of that shit-birdery, the less reason we have to be surprised by any of it.
At least Pope Francis has the balls to come out with it. So good on you, Frank - maybe you could persuade some of the other theocrats to own up to their shit.
Letter shows Pope Pius XII probably knew about Holocaust early on
Wartime Pope Pius XII knew details about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews in the Holocaust as early as 1942, according to a letter found in the Vatican archives that conflicts with the Holy See's official position at the time that the information it had was vague and unverified.
The yellowed, typewritten letter, reproduced in Italy's Corriere della Sera on Sunday, is highly significant because it was discovered by an in-house Vatican archivist and made public with the encouragement of Holy See officials.
The letter, dated Dec. 14, 1942, was written by Father Lother Koenig, a Jesuit who was in the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany, and addressed to the pope's personal secretary at the Vatican, Father Robert Leiber, also a German.
Vatican archivist Giovanni Coco told the Corriere that the importance of the letter was "enormous, a unique case" because it showed the Vatican had information that labour camps were actually death factories.
In the letter, Koenig tells Leiber that sources had confirmed that about 6,000 Poles and Jews a day were being killed in "SS-furnaces" at the Belzec camp near Rava-Ruska, which was then part of German-occupied Poland and is now in western Ukraine.
"The newness and importance of this document derives from a fact: now we have the certainty that the Catholic Church in Germany sent Pius XII exact and detailed news about the crimes that were being perpetrated against the Jews," Coco told the newspaper, whose article was headlined: "Pius XII Knew".
Asked by the Corriere interviewer if the letter showed that Pius knew, Coco said: "Yes, and not only from then."
The letter made reference to two other Nazi camps - Auschwitz and Dachau - and suggested that there were other missives between Koenig and Leiber that either have gone missing or have not yet been found.
Supporters of Pius say he worked behind the scenes to help Jews and did not speak out in order to prevent worsening the situation for Catholics in Nazi-occupied Europe. His detractors say he lacked the courage to speak out on information he had despite pleas from Allied powers fighting Germany.
The letter was among documents Coco said were kept in haphazard ways in the Vatican's Secretariat of State and only recently handed over to the central archives where he works.
Suzanne Brown-Fleming, director of International Academic Programs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, told Reuters in an email that the release showed that the Vatican was taking seriously Pope Francis' statement that "the Church is not afraid of history" when he ordered the wartime archives opened in 2019.
"There is both a desire for and support for a careful assessment of the documents from a scientific perspective - whether favourable or unfavourable in what the documents reveal," she said.
In an email to Reuters, David Kertzer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Pope at War", a 2022 book about the Pius years, said Coco was a "top notch, serious scholar", centrally placed in the Vatican to unearth the truth.
Brown-Fleming, Coco and Kertzer will be part of a major conference on Pius and the Holocaust next month at the Pontifical Gregorian sponsored by Catholic and Jewish organisations, the U.S. State Department and Israeli and American Holocaust research groups, among others.
At least Pope Francis has the balls to come out with it. So good on you, Frank - maybe you could persuade some of the other theocrats to own up to their shit.
Letter shows Pope Pius XII probably knew about Holocaust early on
Wartime Pope Pius XII knew details about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews in the Holocaust as early as 1942, according to a letter found in the Vatican archives that conflicts with the Holy See's official position at the time that the information it had was vague and unverified.
The yellowed, typewritten letter, reproduced in Italy's Corriere della Sera on Sunday, is highly significant because it was discovered by an in-house Vatican archivist and made public with the encouragement of Holy See officials.
The letter, dated Dec. 14, 1942, was written by Father Lother Koenig, a Jesuit who was in the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany, and addressed to the pope's personal secretary at the Vatican, Father Robert Leiber, also a German.
Vatican archivist Giovanni Coco told the Corriere that the importance of the letter was "enormous, a unique case" because it showed the Vatican had information that labour camps were actually death factories.
In the letter, Koenig tells Leiber that sources had confirmed that about 6,000 Poles and Jews a day were being killed in "SS-furnaces" at the Belzec camp near Rava-Ruska, which was then part of German-occupied Poland and is now in western Ukraine.
"The newness and importance of this document derives from a fact: now we have the certainty that the Catholic Church in Germany sent Pius XII exact and detailed news about the crimes that were being perpetrated against the Jews," Coco told the newspaper, whose article was headlined: "Pius XII Knew".
Asked by the Corriere interviewer if the letter showed that Pius knew, Coco said: "Yes, and not only from then."
The letter made reference to two other Nazi camps - Auschwitz and Dachau - and suggested that there were other missives between Koenig and Leiber that either have gone missing or have not yet been found.
Supporters of Pius say he worked behind the scenes to help Jews and did not speak out in order to prevent worsening the situation for Catholics in Nazi-occupied Europe. His detractors say he lacked the courage to speak out on information he had despite pleas from Allied powers fighting Germany.
The letter was among documents Coco said were kept in haphazard ways in the Vatican's Secretariat of State and only recently handed over to the central archives where he works.
Suzanne Brown-Fleming, director of International Academic Programs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, told Reuters in an email that the release showed that the Vatican was taking seriously Pope Francis' statement that "the Church is not afraid of history" when he ordered the wartime archives opened in 2019.
"There is both a desire for and support for a careful assessment of the documents from a scientific perspective - whether favourable or unfavourable in what the documents reveal," she said.
In an email to Reuters, David Kertzer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Pope at War", a 2022 book about the Pius years, said Coco was a "top notch, serious scholar", centrally placed in the Vatican to unearth the truth.
Brown-Fleming, Coco and Kertzer will be part of a major conference on Pius and the Holocaust next month at the Pontifical Gregorian sponsored by Catholic and Jewish organisations, the U.S. State Department and Israeli and American Holocaust research groups, among others.
Another One Down
Scorecard:
- Prigozhin & Utkin assassinated
- Girkin imprisoned
- Surovikin tortured & exiled
- Kadyrov comatose
They're all war criminals, and none will be missed. The system is eating itself.
Key Putin Ally Ramzan Kadyrov Is Critically Ill: Ukrainian Report
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is reportedly in critical condition amid his ongoing health problems, according to Ukrainian intelligence.
Andriy Yusov, a representative for the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence, told the Belarusian news site Nexta that Kadyrov's current health status had been confirmed by both "medical and political circles." The Chechen leader has reportedly faced health problems due to ongoing kidney issues and recently blamed his worsening health on his personal doctor.
"This is not about injuries. Other details need further clarification," Yusov told the outlet, according to a report from Nexta posted to X, formerly Twitter. "He has been sick for a long time, and we are talking about systemic health problems."
Yusov's comments were also confirmed by Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform. Obozrevatel, an online Ukrainian media outlet, reported earlier this week that Kadyrov had fallen into a coma and was flown to Moscow to seek treatment.
A close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kadyrov has been nicknamed "Putin's attack dog" and has supported Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, including deploying his own troops to fight along the front lines.
The Chechen leader was also one of the first public figures to condemn the brief Wagner Group rebellion against Moscow in June, led by the now-deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The U.S. State Department sanctioned Kadyrov last month for his reported role in the deportation of Ukrainian children from Russia-occupied territory, an ongoing act by the Kremlin. In a video message earlier this month, Kadyrov demanded that the U.S. sanctions, which also targeted his mother, Aymani Kadyrova, be removed, and called Washington's decision "a deliberate and cynical disregard for all ethical norms."
"I had already ceased to be surprised by the illogical sanctions decisions of the US and the West," Kadyrov said in his video. "And suddenly again, now my own dear mother has been put on the list. The entire world knows that she is engaged only in charitable activities."
Kadyrov was also accused earlier this week of murdering his personal physician and former Chechen deputy prime minister, Elkhan Suleymanov, who the Chechen head reportedly blamed for his sudden worsening health. According to the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, which claims to have inside information from Russian security forces, Kadyrov accused Suleymanov of poisoning him and was rumored to have buried the doctor alive.
Newsweek previously reported that there has been no hard evidence to support claims of Suleymanov's death, although his whereabouts have been widely unknown since October 2022, when Kadyrov removed him from his post as deputy prime minister.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment Friday evening.
Sep 16, 2023
Bimbert Update
Having first doubled down, and strenuously denied everything, once the video came out, Lauren Boebert issued a pretty good approximation of the Standard Non-Apology Apology.
There's plenty of excuse-making and self-absolution in her statement, so while I have to say she made it sound more sincere than usual, I ain't buyin' it because I think it's an appeal to the Evangelicals she's been sucking up to.
“I simply fell short of my values”: Lauren Boebert issues apology after being removed from “Beetlejuice” performance
The Republican congresswoman said “while none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that”
Embattled U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert issued an apology Friday evening for her behavior during a performance of “Beetlejuice” in Denver on Sunday, saying she “fell short of my values.”
The Republican congresswoman, who was ejected from the musical along with a male companion, also apologized for misleading reporters when her campaign’s manager told news outlets she hadn’t been vaping inside a theater at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Video obtained by 9News through an open records request refuted that claim.
“The past few days have been difficult and humbling, and I’m truly sorry for the unwanted attention my Sunday evening in Denver has brought to the community,” Boebert’s statement said. “While none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that.”
She added: “There’s no perfect blueprint for going through a public and difficult divorce, which over the past few months has made for a challenging personal time for me and my entire family. I’ve tried to handle it with strength and grace as best I can, but I simply fell short of my values on Sunday. That’s unacceptable and I’m sorry.”
Boebert filed for divorce from her husband, Jayson, in April. A different man accompanied her to the “Beetlejuice” performance Sunday. The pair were captured on surveillance video holding hands as they left the Buell Theater.
Theater officials told The Colorado Sun on Monday that two patrons were “escorted from the theater” Sunday, but declined to say who they were, citing privacy concerns. However, surveillance video obtained by The Colorado Sun and other news outlets, as well as Boebert’s 2024 reelection campaign manager, confirmed it was the congresswoman.
Brian Kitts, director of marketing and communications for Denver Arts and Venues, said the patrons were talking loudly, vaping and using cameras during the performance. They were warned during an intermission, but the behavior continued into the second act, at which point the two were asked to leave.
As they were being escorted from the property, the two people said “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board,’ (and) ‘I will be contacting the mayor,’” according to a security incident report obtained by The Sun from the city through an open records request.
Boebert’s campaign manager, Drew Sexton, told reporters earlier this week that Boebert wasn’t vaping, but didn’t deny that she was using her phone and being boisterous. That was disproven by the video obtained by 9News, which clearly showed the congresswoman exhaling smoke or vapor.
“Whether it was the excitement of seeing a much-anticipated production or the natural anxiety of being in a new environment, I genuinely did not recall vaping that evening when I discussed the night’s events with my campaign team while confirming my enthusiasm for the musical,” Boebert’s statement on Friday night said. “Regardless of my belief, it’s clear now that was not accurate. It was not my or my campaign’s intention to mislead, but we do understand the nature of how this looks. We know we will have to work to earn your trust back and it may not happen overnight, but we will do it.”
Boebert said she has “learned some humbling lessons these past few days” — a complete departure from how her staffers brushed off the situation earlier in the week.
The bombastic congresswoman, who has been at the center of several controversies since being elected in 2020, nearly lost her reelection bid last year to Democrat Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman, in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which is traditionally a Republican stronghold.
The 3rd District is expected to be a battleground in 2024, which Democrats and Republicans each committing resources to the district, which spans across the Western Slope into Pueblo and southeast Colorado.
The Sun on Monday began asking questions about Boebert’s behavior at the “Beetlejuice” performance. Anthony Fakhoury, Boebert’s congressional spokesman, said “there’s no comments from our office regarding anything that occurred.”
On Tuesday evening, Sexton confirmed that Boebert had been ejected from the musical, joking that he could “confirm the stunning and salacious rumors: in her personal time, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is indeed a supporter of the performing arts (gasp!).” Security camera footage from the Buell Theater started being posted by news outlets that night.
Boebert’s staff also arranged and then canceled a meeting with a Colorado Sun reporter in Washington this week.
Boebert’s apology Friday isn’t the first she’s issued.
She apologized in July after being seen throwing away a tribute pin for one of the children killed in the Uvalde school shooting. In November 2021, Boebert issued an apology for anti-Muslim remarks she made in reference to Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who is Muslim.
Beyond the “Beetlejuice” incident, Boebert has been in the news this week for joining other Freedom Caucus members in threatening to hold up passage of federal budget bills that would prevent a government shutdown.
“Spending is the most important issue (for my constituents) right now,” Boebert told The Sun in Washington. “Everywhere that I go people are having a hard time buying groceries, affording gas, getting to work, paying for their child care, affording the homes that they live in— or the homes that they would like to live in. We have got to get the spending under control in Washington, D.C.”
She’s also pushing for a vote to impeach President Joe Biden in the House.
“I’m ready for a straight up and down vote on the floor: yes or no, impeach Joe Biden,” Boebert told reporters Tuesday after the Freedom Conference news conference. “My vote is ‘yes.’”
ie: "I'm flawed, but forgiven (just like Trump)."
I’m sorry but is he actually openly rubbing Boebert’s tits while she puts her hands in his crotch to rub on his penis while in a crowded family theater or am I crazy???🧐 pic.twitter.com/GnfZcOREji
— Kaylan_TX (@Kaylan_TX) September 15, 2023
He got in there enough to tweak her nipple, and it's not like she found that objectionable.
The Republican congresswoman said “while none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that”
Embattled U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert issued an apology Friday evening for her behavior during a performance of “Beetlejuice” in Denver on Sunday, saying she “fell short of my values.”
The Republican congresswoman, who was ejected from the musical along with a male companion, also apologized for misleading reporters when her campaign’s manager told news outlets she hadn’t been vaping inside a theater at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Video obtained by 9News through an open records request refuted that claim.
“The past few days have been difficult and humbling, and I’m truly sorry for the unwanted attention my Sunday evening in Denver has brought to the community,” Boebert’s statement said. “While none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that.”
She added: “There’s no perfect blueprint for going through a public and difficult divorce, which over the past few months has made for a challenging personal time for me and my entire family. I’ve tried to handle it with strength and grace as best I can, but I simply fell short of my values on Sunday. That’s unacceptable and I’m sorry.”
Boebert filed for divorce from her husband, Jayson, in April. A different man accompanied her to the “Beetlejuice” performance Sunday. The pair were captured on surveillance video holding hands as they left the Buell Theater.
Theater officials told The Colorado Sun on Monday that two patrons were “escorted from the theater” Sunday, but declined to say who they were, citing privacy concerns. However, surveillance video obtained by The Colorado Sun and other news outlets, as well as Boebert’s 2024 reelection campaign manager, confirmed it was the congresswoman.
Brian Kitts, director of marketing and communications for Denver Arts and Venues, said the patrons were talking loudly, vaping and using cameras during the performance. They were warned during an intermission, but the behavior continued into the second act, at which point the two were asked to leave.
As they were being escorted from the property, the two people said “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board,’ (and) ‘I will be contacting the mayor,’” according to a security incident report obtained by The Sun from the city through an open records request.
Boebert’s campaign manager, Drew Sexton, told reporters earlier this week that Boebert wasn’t vaping, but didn’t deny that she was using her phone and being boisterous. That was disproven by the video obtained by 9News, which clearly showed the congresswoman exhaling smoke or vapor.
“Whether it was the excitement of seeing a much-anticipated production or the natural anxiety of being in a new environment, I genuinely did not recall vaping that evening when I discussed the night’s events with my campaign team while confirming my enthusiasm for the musical,” Boebert’s statement on Friday night said. “Regardless of my belief, it’s clear now that was not accurate. It was not my or my campaign’s intention to mislead, but we do understand the nature of how this looks. We know we will have to work to earn your trust back and it may not happen overnight, but we will do it.”
Boebert said she has “learned some humbling lessons these past few days” — a complete departure from how her staffers brushed off the situation earlier in the week.
The bombastic congresswoman, who has been at the center of several controversies since being elected in 2020, nearly lost her reelection bid last year to Democrat Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman, in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which is traditionally a Republican stronghold.
The 3rd District is expected to be a battleground in 2024, which Democrats and Republicans each committing resources to the district, which spans across the Western Slope into Pueblo and southeast Colorado.
The Sun on Monday began asking questions about Boebert’s behavior at the “Beetlejuice” performance. Anthony Fakhoury, Boebert’s congressional spokesman, said “there’s no comments from our office regarding anything that occurred.”
On Tuesday evening, Sexton confirmed that Boebert had been ejected from the musical, joking that he could “confirm the stunning and salacious rumors: in her personal time, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is indeed a supporter of the performing arts (gasp!).” Security camera footage from the Buell Theater started being posted by news outlets that night.
Boebert’s staff also arranged and then canceled a meeting with a Colorado Sun reporter in Washington this week.
Boebert’s apology Friday isn’t the first she’s issued.
She apologized in July after being seen throwing away a tribute pin for one of the children killed in the Uvalde school shooting. In November 2021, Boebert issued an apology for anti-Muslim remarks she made in reference to Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who is Muslim.
Beyond the “Beetlejuice” incident, Boebert has been in the news this week for joining other Freedom Caucus members in threatening to hold up passage of federal budget bills that would prevent a government shutdown.
“Spending is the most important issue (for my constituents) right now,” Boebert told The Sun in Washington. “Everywhere that I go people are having a hard time buying groceries, affording gas, getting to work, paying for their child care, affording the homes that they live in— or the homes that they would like to live in. We have got to get the spending under control in Washington, D.C.”
She’s also pushing for a vote to impeach President Joe Biden in the House.
“I’m ready for a straight up and down vote on the floor: yes or no, impeach Joe Biden,” Boebert told reporters Tuesday after the Freedom Conference news conference. “My vote is ‘yes.’”
The whole banana:
Today's Beau
We need to keep in mind that even though most of us are already convinced of Trump's gross criminality, proving it in court is a whole different thing, especially knowing there are 20 million very noisy rubes defending him, many of whom are willing to break things in order to help him smarm his way out of trouble.
Let us proceed - with a cautious alacrity.
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