The Roundup
Democracy wins in France, more backlash of Project 2025, how Roy Cohn is the key to understanding Donald Trump, people are taking on the Russian bots, and more!
Election News
Ever since French President Emmanuel Macron called for snap elections, there were worries that the pro-Putin right wing National Rally party would be overwhelmingly be voted into office, which would affect French support for Ukraine. Last weekend the left-wing New Popular Front Alliance won most of the seats in the French Parliament with Macron's centrist Ensemble alliance coming in second place. The National Rally placed third.
First the Labour Party won the elections in the UK and now the French voters have vanquished the far-right. If American voters overwhelmingly vote for Joe Biden (or whoever will ultimately be the Democratic nominee) in November then it will be a perfect hat trick of letting the Putin-allied far right know that they will not defeat democracy.
Is the Mainstream Media Really Helping Trump With His Campaign?
Joe Biden made this speech at this week’s NATO summit in Washington, DC that should erase all doubt as to his mental fitness for continuing to serve in the Oval Office. However it's not good enough for the mainstream media as they continue to harp on that previous debate performance from nearly two weeks ago.
In a way it's not a surprise because the mainstream media is owned by corporations that care more about raking in as much money as possible than actually inform the citizens. They are talking non-stop about Joe Biden's abysmal debate performance because they think that it will get more ratings or sell more newspapers.
But then I came across this tweet that has another theory on why the mainstream media and Donald Trump are completely entwined in a sick and twisted symbolic relationship that is incredibly bad for the freedom of the press: “Gonna say something a lot of you might not agree with. The media and Trump campaign have manufactured this entire narrative around Biden's age because the Trump campaign is BROKE & Doesn't have a functioning ground game in swing states. That's why all of this is happening.”
I think she has a very valid point. The mainstream media have loved Donald Trump ever since he published his Art of the Deal book in the 1980s because he made great copy, which led to things like newsstand sales, increased ratings, and related stuff. When Trump ran for president in 2016, it was just like manna from heaven for the media and he was given deferential treatment on a level I hadn't ever seen before. (Heck, I don't recall even Ronald Reagan getting that much fawning media treatment like Trump did.) Trump's financial problems have caused Trump to hold fewer rallies than in 2020. Normally the media would run fewer stories about Trump because Trump is campaigning less this year. But the media's corporate owners are dying for a Trump presidency so much (so they'll pay lower taxes) that they are helping Trump's campaign by distorting Joe Biden’s debate performance in an effort to help bring attention to Trump because Trump is too broke to campaign. When I attended journalism school at the University of Maryland at College Park, my professors would've consider that to be completely unethical. Of course it was before all of those frequent media consolidation beginning in the 1980s that now have the news media behaving in ways that would've vexed my old journalism professors.
Viktor Orbán and His Secret Meetings
Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán has been busy lately. Last week he flew to Moscow to visit Vladimir Putin. This week he went to the NATO summit in Washington, DC. The summit ended yesterday but Orbán decided to stay in the US just a little while longer by flying to Florida where he will spend the weekend with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate. That weekend trip has raised a lot of eyeballs because it's unusual for a visiting head of state to spend time with a former president instead of the current president. Plus this weekend visit is coming on the heels of his previous visit with Vladimir Putin, who also happens to be Trump’s BFF. You just have to wonder about whether something suspicious is going on.
The Lincoln Project's Preview of Donald Trump's Reelection, Including Implementing Project 2025
Like I wrote last week, the mainstream media, including even prominent liberal commentators like Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore, have been banging on the “Joe Biden Must Drop Out Now” bandwagon for over a week while ignoring more dangerous issues that are a direct threat to American democracy, such as Project 2025. It was actress Taraji P. Henson who went onstage at the BET Awards where she raised the issue of Project 2025, which people like Olbermann and Moore have decided to ignore.
As a documentary filmmaker, Michael Moore could've done a video (or even a series of short videos) about how Project 2025 is a threat to American democracy if he wasn't so busy telling everyone that having Joe Biden continue to run for reelection is “elder abuse.” But instead it's The Lincoln Project who did this video explaining how Donald Trump will end up implementing Project 2025 if he wins the election in November.
And speaking of The Lincoln Project, they also came out with this video featuring an AI-generated version of Fred Trump, Donald's father, giving his son a tongue lashing for Donald's latest antics and it's a hoot!
More Famous People Has Come Out Against Project 2025
Back in the 1980s the band Twisted Sister had its biggest hit with “We're Not Gonna Take It.” The band's lead singer, Dee Snyder, apparently took one look at Project 2025 and decided that he wasn't gonna take it and issued these tweets on Twitter/X about the danger of Project 2025 and why it should be overwhelmingly voted down.
But that's not all, folks! Lizzo made her own video denouncing Project 2025.
The more famous celebrities like Lizzo, Dee Snyder and Taraji P. Henson speak out on Project 2025, the more their fans will pay attention to this biggest threat to American democracy in years and maybe there will be such a full-scale resistance to this that Donald Trump will be overwhelmingly defeated at the ballot box in November.
A Look at Donald Trump's Past
In 2020 Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump, wrote a tell-all book about her family and how it shaped her uncle into becoming the biggest threat to American democracy ever. However, if you want to do an even deeper dive into Donald Trump's past, the best way to do it is by taking a look at Trump's first lawyer. Roy Cohn initially made his mark when he successfully prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges, which led the couple to being executed. He made an even bigger name for himself when he worked with Senator Joseph McCarthy during the senator's notorious investigations trying to expose suspected communists. Cohn's reputation deteriorated after McCarthy's downfall but he managed to make a comeback in 1971 when he agreed to represent Donald Trump after the Nixon Administration's Justice Department accused Trump of violating the Fair Housing Act for not allowing non-whites to rent Trump properties. For many years Cohn continued to work as Trump's lawyer until Trump abruptly abandoned Cohn after Cohn caught AIDS. Cohn became one of the many casualties of the AIDS epidemic when he died in 1986 at the age of 59.
By all accounts, Roy Cohn (along with Donald's father, Fred Trump) helped shaped Donald Trump into the man that he is today. If you want to take a closer look at Cohn other than reading the Wikipedia, the Bluestocking Bombshells Substack has a list of books, films, and documentaries about Roy Cohn that you can read or watch.
A Wikipedia Page to Check Out
I've recently learned of the existence of a Wikipedia page titled List of political disinformation website campaigns in Russia. It's a treasure trove of websites you should NOT use in order to get the latest news.
Taking on the Russian Bots
The bots from the Russian troll farms are doing everything possible to score a victory for Donald Trump along with making Americans stop supporting Ukraine and encouraging the growth of the Free Palestine movement. But now that the cat is out of the bag regarding the fact that many of these bots were created with ChatGPT, people on Twitter/X are having a great time with totally screwing up these bots.
It was just this week that a Russian bot farm targeting Americans was exposed.
Funny Tweet
This tweet shows why having some knowledge of at least one foreign language is so important.
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