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| California governor Gavin Newsom |
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| Gary Bauer thinks Trump's recent troubles prove that there is a conspiracy against him. |
But to one religious right spokesperson, it only proves a conspiracy geared to destroy Trump:
OneNewsNow approached Gary Bauer, president of American Values, about these latest condemnations – but he points out the left has been relentless in its attacks since before Trump was even elected. "They saw Donald Trump as an existential threat to them," he states. "They tried to do everything they could in his campaign in 2016 to stop him. After he won, they then tried one fact scandal after another."
Turning to the more recent anti-Trump accusations, Bauer describes the Woodward book and the Atlantic article as attempts to sway the electorate. "Now here we are in the final 60 days [of the campaign] that will determine whether President Trump can continue to take the country down this new road of reform [through] all the things he's doing – and the left will stop at nothing . . . I fully expect that literally every day there will be a new a line of attack to try to prevent the president from being re-elected."
Bear in mind that Bauer is the same dude who undermined the fight against the AIDS crisis when he worked in the Reagan Administration. Allegedly, he felt that AIDS was God's judgement and those who had it deserved what they got.
Bauer provides no proof of his claims which regards, which he probably sees as a minor concern when there is a juicy conspiracy theory to push. If there's one thing Bauer adores, it's implying that shadowy groups are in dark rooms spinning destructive plans against everything good and righteous. Or something like that. It's better than admitting that he and other religious right leaders pitched their wagons of support behind a con man whose house of cards is hopefully collapsing on his head with just enough cards left over to give them a couple of well-deserved bonks.
Truth be told, if there is a conspiracy against Trump then he should look in the mirror to see the ringleader. More specifically, look in the mirror and then direct his eyes downward. To his mouth.
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| Former 'The Apprentice' contestant Kwame Jackson |
As we ease into this week, which promises to be as chaotic as last week, let's look at a slightly comedic, but highly cautionary tale about a backfire of camp.
Once upon a time, there was a successful and openly gay producer by the name of Allan Carr. He invested money in several successful Broadway productions such as La Cage aux Folles and motion pictures such as Grease. He even won a Tony award. He also managed the marketing and ad campaigns for the motion pictures Tommy and Saturday Night Fever, which were also successful. In addition, he was known for his lavish and wild parties. All of that success meant that he could withstand a few failures, such as the motion picture disaster Can't Stop The Music.
Then came 61st Academy Awards, which he was hired to produce in 1989. It was a disaster. To put it honestly, it was tacky as hell The aftermath was like fire from the sky. The show was viciously condemned, sued by Disney, and ended up generally wrecking Carr's career? the late actor Gregory Peck was allegedly so mad that he threatened to return his Oscar?
But was it actually as bad as it was made out to be. I think so. But you decide after seeing the 11 minute opening which was the center of a lot of condemnation, including Disney's lawsuit (which was later dropped.)
I am glad someone put this together. Of all the things Fox News and its personalities have done over the years, this has to be the worst.
On Wednesday, we learned that Donald Trump knew that the coronavirus pandemic was serious but still continued to undermine efforts to combat it. This is a grade A scandal which should be seen as comparative to or worse than Watergate - the scandal which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
But Nixon didn't have what Trump has - an entire network working to undermine the righteous indignation people are feeling and rationalize all of his lies. I'm talking about Fox News and its personalities. The channel is probably the single reason why Trump has been hanging on by his fingernails even after all of his lies and basic incompetence. It is the number one news network in the country and it operates by over emphasizing Trump's few successes, hiding his many failures, and spinning his poor leadership to the point of inanity.
It's so bad that a lot of people are generally blase about Fox News and treat it like be splashed by a puddle or having bad day with the mindset being that it's simply one of those things which can't be helped so get over it.
But courtesy of the video above, this time is different.
Trump’s SCOTUS Shortlist is Filled with Anti-LGBT and Extremist Judges - Yesterday, Trump tried to take attention away from the scandal involving his downplaying of the pandemic even while knowing how serious it is by revealing a list of judges he would appoint if reelected. Long story short, this list would lead to more hell for LGBTQ people.
Candace Owens: Affirming Transgender Children “Is Actually Satanic” - Awww. Ms. Thing thinks she was doing something this weekend by picking on trans folks. Makes me especially glad that afterwards, she went after Cardi B and Ms. B handled her on Twitter. |
| The group of evangelicals supporting Trump have been conveniently silent as his latest scandal tears the country apart. |
Unless you've been hiding under a rock or in a cave with fingers in your ears, you've probably heard about the latest involving Donald Trump. It's another huge scandal
According to Raw Story:
Watergate reporter Bob Woodward’s new book is coming out next week — and the leaked excerpts in it contain multiple damaging bombshells for President Donald Trump. The new book, entitled “Rage,” contains multiple revelations on a wide variety of topics ranging from the president’s handling of the novel coronavirus to his relationship with the American military to his strange affection for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
Trump said that he knew the coronavirus was five times more deadly than the seasonal flu — then admitted to playing it down in public.Audio recordings show that Trump told Woodward in early February that COVID-19 spread through the air and was much more deadly than the flu. Despite this, he continued to downplay its significance in multiple public statements. Just over a month after that, Trump admitted to Woodward that he deliberately downplayed the virus because he didn’t want to create a “panic.” “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump said on March 19th, shortly after he declared a national emergency. “I still like playing it down.”
I've had much success (waves to my 2017 GLAAD Media Award from across the room), lots of positive press (The Advocate, Newsweek, MSNBC), met lots of new friends and allies, and raised a little ruckus (blocked on Twitter by Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, 'Porno' Peter LaBarbera, Ryan T. Holmes, Matt Barber, multiple members of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Mass Resistance, and the Liberty Counsel. Blocked from commenting on Lifesite News and World Net Daily.)
I hope that I've succeeded in my original aim, which was to shine a bright spotlight on how religious right groups distort and cherry-pick science to denigrate LGBTQ people as unhealthy, diseased others out to 'recruit children,' 'wreck Christianity,' and cause general chaos.
So how long will I do this and what's my next move?
Gay Trump official throws tantrum when asked about homosexuality initiative - No matter how much frosting and icing you coat on manure, it's still manure Richard.
WATCH: Homophobic street preacher has sermon interrupted by big gay dance party - We do what we do and we do it well.
Conservative evangelicals make up a gigantic amount of his base and led by folks like Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress and groups like the Family Research Council, they have stuck by Trump in spite of every discovery of dishonesty, every lie, and every bit of chicanery learned about him.
And Trump definitely appreciates their support. In front of cameras, of course. But, if his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is to be believed what you see in front the cameras isn't exactly true:
President Donald Trump spoke condescendingly about evangelical Christians after holding a meeting with religious leaders before the 2016 election, his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen has said in a new book. Cohen, who broke with Trump to cooperate with the special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, is releasing a memoir Tuesday titled "Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump." The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the book before its release, reported one passage in which Cohen details what he says happened after Trump met with prominent evangelical leaders at Trump Tower in 2016 before winning the presidency. After the meeting was over, Cohen says, Trump said: "Can you believe that bulls---? Can you believe people believe that bulls---?"
"The cosmic joke was that Trump convinced a vast swathe of working-class white folks in the Midwest that he cared about their well-being," Cohen added, according to The Post. "The truth was that he couldn't care less." It's unclear what meeting Cohen was referring to, but Trump did meet with conservative Christian leaders in New York City in June 2016, according to NPR, which was allowed inside the private event.
Of course if this excerpt gains legs, expect evangelical leaders to engage in the usual rationalizations of their support of Trump. From "God chooses imperfect people" to "He was a baby Christian then. His faith is stronger," my guess is that their explanations will be epic and totally transparent. Cohen's revelation simply reveals the predatory relationship Trump and conservative evangelicals have. Most likely, Graham, Jeffress, and the rest know what Trump thinks about them. And while they can claim he has changed, they know he hasn't. One can easily measure Trump's behavior from the beginning of the 2016 campaign until now and easily come up with the the fact that Trump hasn't changed for the better. If anything, he's gotten worse.
If there has been any change since Trump took office, it's within the evangelical community. They no longer talk about values as much as they used to. They no longer pretend to look heavenward because their eyes are more on Trump than Jesus. And in some ways, they are working to somehow mingle Trump with Jesus. And it's not working. They are so busy trying to point to the halo they claim exist over his head that they are totally oblivious to horns and tails which have appeared on their persons due to their close proximity to him.
But they don't care. As long as he gives them power and appoints judges they think will rule their way, particularly against LGBTQ equality and abortion, Trump could urinate publicly on the White House lawn and they would call it nectar from heaven.
As I've said so many times during this awful pandemic, one can't allow himself to get so serious. While it's true that we have no idea if it will end any time soon, keeping ourselves from going insane with fear involves taking some time out from the seriousness of it all to laugh.
And while this blog mainly focuses on calling out the lies of the anti-LGBTQ industry, I also want people to come here for comfort as well as knowledge. With that in mind, the above video is embraces the gay stereotype of "scary bitchy." One hundred movie insults? Come on. You know there's a gay one in there somewhere.
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| Franklin Graham |
Graham, who apparently functions with his eyes closed and his fingers stuffed in his ears, not only support Trump, but seems to believe that his reelection will cause God to 'spare America.'
From CBN:
"I think God brought him here for this season, for these four years. I'm just asking that God would spare this country for another four years to give us a little bit more time to do the work before the storm hits. I believe the storm is coming. You're going to see Christians attacked; you're going to see churches close; you're going to see a real hatred expressed toward people of faith. . .God uses men. He works through men and I believe Donald Trump is the president for a reason. I think God has put him in this position. Western civilization as we have known it, he is defending that."
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| Gina Ortiz Jones |
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| Don't let him fool you. Donald Trump doesn't care about LGBTQ even when exploiting us for reelection. |
. . . if Grenell was set to speak on Trump’s supposed LGBTQ rights achievements, he or someone else decided against it at the last minute. Unlike Black and female speakers who were used to try to soften Trump’s image regarding women and people of color by speaking about Trump supposedly championing their issues, Grenell mostly promoted conspiracy theories about unwarranted surveillance against Trump by President Obama. He also peddled the boilerplate nativist and racist ideas of Trumpism, lauding Trump’s “America First” policies and expressing that he was proud of “being called a nationalist.”
But oddly, nowhere in the speech by the man who preposterously championed Trump in the Log Cabin video as the “most pro-gay president in history,” did he state he was gay, let alone say anything about Trump and LGBTQ rights on the stage. This was a far cry from Trump’s 2016 convention, when Peter Thiel, the gay billionaire and Paypal founder, who was used by the RNC to convey an inclusive message, was very clear
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| Richard Grenell now works for Pat Robertson's group. |
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| A teacher in TX nearly got into trouble because of posters in her virtual classroom. |
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| Richard Grenell |
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| Richard Grenell thinks he can fool LGBTQ Americans into supporting Donald Trump. |
Wooden is a preposterously vehement anti-gay activist who has claimed that gay men regularly shove objects such as cellphones, baseball bats, and animals up their anuses and has insisted that by the time gay men reach middle age, they “have to wear a diaper or a butt plug just to be able to contain their bowels” because of “what happens to the male anus.”
A Texas appellate court has rejected a lawsuit against the City of San Antonio by conservative activists angered by council's decision not to allow Chick-fil-A to participate in an airport concessions contract.
On Wednesday, the Fourth Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's ruling that allowed the suit move forward. The appeals court agreed with the city's argument that law protects it from being retroactively forced to rebid the contract.
“We’re pleased that the Fourth Court of Appeals has dismissed this suit," City Attorney Andy Segovia said in a statement. "The plaintiffs tried to use the court to advance a political agenda, and we’re glad to see this matter put to rest.”
The five plaintiffs sued last September after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law prohibiting local governments from discriminating against businesses for their owners' religious beliefs. The plaintiffs argued the decision not to include Chick-fil-A in the contract stemmed from its donations to Christian groups.
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| Richard Grenell is a manipulative user. |
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| According to an upcoming book, Fox News personality and Trump cheerleader Sean Hannity has a totally different private view of Trump. |
Sean Hannity is among President Donald Trump’s most strident sycophants at Fox News, angrily lambasting anyone who questions anything that Trump says or does. But according to CNN reporter Brian Stelter’s forthcoming book, “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth,” Hannity has privately told colleagues that he believes Trump is “batshit crazy.”
Vanity Fair has published an except from Stelter’s book, which contains interviews with Hannity associates who spoke on condition of anonymity. In that except, Stelter quotes a Hannity associate as saying that the Fox News host “would tell you, off-off-off the record, that Trump is a batshit crazy person.” And a friend of Hannity, similarly, told Stelter, “Hannity has said to me more than once, ‘He’s crazy.’”
(Hannity's) friends told me he was burnt out for long stretches of the Trump presidency. Being the president’s “shadow chief of staff,” as he was known around the White House, could be a thrill, but it was also a serious burden. Hannity counseled Trump at all hours of the day; one of his confidants said the president treated Hannity like Melania, a wife in a sexless marriage. Arguably, he treated Hannity better than Melania. Hannity’s producers marveled at his influence and access. “It’s a powerful thing to be someone’s consigliere,” one producer said. “I hear Trump talk at rallies, and I hear Sean,” a family friend commented.
Hannity chose this life, so no one felt sorry for him, but the stress took its toll. “Hannity would tell you, off-off-off the record, that Trump is a batshit crazy person,” one of his associates said. Another friend concurred: “Hannity has said to me more than once, ‘he’s crazy.’”
But Hannity’s commitment to GOP priorities and to his own business model meant he could never say any of this publicly. If one of his friends went on the record quoting Hannity questioning Trump’s mental fitness, that would be the end of the friendship.
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| Conspiracy theory group QAnon, whose members think that Obama is part of a group of Satanic pedophiles and cannibals, just got praised Wednesday by Donald Trump. |
Speaking during a press conference at the White House, Trump courted the support of those who put stock in the conspiracy theory, saying, "I heard that these are people that love our country." It was his first public comment on the subject.
The QAnon conspiracy theory baselessly claims that there is a "deep state" apparatus run by political elites, business leaders and Hollywood celebrities who are also pedophiles and actively working against Trump. View described it as meta conspiracy theory that provides an underlying narrative for other baseless theories. According to View, its followers believe that this "worldwide cabal of satanic pedophiles" run "all the major levers of power," including government, media, business and Hollywood.
QAnon theorists believe that were it not for Trump's election in 2016, the cabal would stay in power, View says. But Trump, working with the military, is actively putting an end to it, according to the theory. An anonymous poster named Q shares cryptic tips that followers then decode to learn the ways in which the "deep state" controls the world, how Trump is battling and marching orders to join in, said Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that researches misinformation in the United States.
A Yahoo News report from August 2019 says that the FBI identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic extremist threat, and it specifically mentions QAnon. The majority of QAnon supporters say they are peaceful and most of their activities remain online, View said. "The danger is essentially that there have been multiple instances where QAnon followers have taken their beliefs offline in violent or dangerous ways," he added. View cited multiple cases of violence connected to QAnon believers. In June 2018, Matthew Wright, motivated by his belief in QAnon, blocked the bridge near the Hoover Dam with a homemade armored vehicle. He later pleaded guilty to making a terrorist threat.
Lindell is pushing oleandrin as a potential therapeutic for COVID-19. Last week, he was added to the board of Phoenix Biotechnology, which makes oleandrin, receiving a financial stake in the company, CNN reported. Lindell confirmed to CNN Monday that Trump participated in a July meeting at the White House regarding the use of oleandrin, an extract from the plant Nerium oleander, as a potential coronavirus treatment.
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| 'The Owl House' character Luz Noceda makes history . |
A federal judge on Monday blocked a Trump administration rule that would allow healthcare providers to discriminate against transgender individuals, one day before the rule was set to take effect.
US District Judge Frederic Block found that the landmark US Supreme Court ruling earlier this summer expanding workplace protections for LGBTQ individuals applied in a legal fight over anti-discrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act. It's one of the first cases to apply the Supreme Court's decision to other areas of federal law — in this case, healthcare.
The Supreme Court ruled that workplace discrimination based on "sex" included discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Block, who sits in the federal district court in Brooklyn, found that the administration's plan to remove gender identity from the ACA's anti-discrimination provisions could not stand in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County.
"The Court reiterates the same practical concern it raised at oral argument: When the Supreme Court announces a major decision, it seems a sensible thing to pause and reflect on the decision’s impact," Block wrote. "Since HHS has been unwilling to take that path voluntarily, the Court now imposes it."
The case before Block involves Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination in health programs that receive federal funding. Under the Obama administration, the Department of Health and Human Services adopted rules in 2016 that made clear that Section 1557 applied to discrimination based on gender identity.
A federal judge previously blocked the Obama-era rules from being enforced and sent the matter back to the Department of Health and Human Services. The Trump administration moved to get rid of the gender identity protections altogether. On June 12, the administration announced a final rule that would strip away the gender identity language.
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| Eleanor Holmes Norton |
