A Daily Reid: A racist, woman-hating president, and a media that won't defend itself
The U.S. faces a perfect hate storm - a vicious president, and a media that's willing to trade abuse for access
Happy Friday Jr., everyone. Hope all is well! As for me, I’m still fuming over Donald Trump’s serial racist rants against Somalis (“Donald, it’s ‘Somalis,’ not ‘Somalians,’ you ignorant Twit) including his attack on Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar. The attacks should have surprised no one who has been paying even the slightest attention to Trump, whose mind is decaying at a rate faster than the venal sufficiency of his ankle veins.
Trump’s scatological hatred of Africans has a history; one laid out by his former attorney Michael Cohen in congressional testimony in 2019:
Well last night on The Joy Reid Show, Ilhan Omar responded:
But what also bothers me, is the rather tepid response of the mainstream media to this and other attacks on people of color and women — white and of color alike — by this president and his consistently nasty vice president, who I will never forget called then-Vice President Kamala Harris “the trash,” days before the 2024 election…
… which, for those paying attention, is synonymous to calling a woman “garbage.”
Oh, and Trump is now also calling for Omar’s removal from the United States.
The sexism and racism that Trump and Vance have both been able to get away with over the years is stunning, particularly when you take in the fact that often, women in particular inside the media absorb these attacks with almost zero reaction or comment from their fellow journalists.
Where is the White House Correspondents Association? Where is the pushback or media self-defense from this predatory, miserable man? The White House has made it clear he’s not going to stop and his team supports the continued abuse. Yet the WCHA homepage and press page seem to be little more than odes and demands for more access journalism.
It’s the “access at all costs” ethos that seems to require journalists, particularly women journalists, to sacrifice their dignity in exchange for the opportunity to ask the president a follow-up-free question.
The Bomber Found
Meanwhile, one of the great mysteries surrounding the January 6th insurrection appears to have been solved, at least in part. An arrest has been made in the strange case of the pipe bombs planted in front of the Democratic and Republican national committee headquarters on January 5, 2021.
Per AP:
The arrest marks the first time investigators have publicly identified a suspect in an act that had long vexed law enforcement, spawned a multitude of conspiracy theories and remained an enduring mystery in the shadow of the dark chapter of American history that is the violent Capitol insurrection.
The suspect in custody has been identified as Brian Cole Jr., of Woodbridge, Virginia, though officials offered no details about a motive or whether the placement of the bombs, which never detonated, had any connection to the riot at the Capitol a day later.
And here’s the CNN report from earlier today:
So now all of you Internet sleuths can stop saying it was Marjorie Taylor Greene (I promise you, that was a thing…)
The Blame the Admiral Game
Pete Hegseth continues his lifestyle of talking loud, and taking responsibility for nothing. His use of Signal to text out details of a classified mission is now officially under investigation by the Pentagon’s office of inspector general. You can read their report for yourself here. Of course, Whiskey Pete thinks he’s been exonerated and takes zero responsibility for endangering the troops he overseas and our national security.
Perhaps at least he can take responsibility for this tom-foolery:
Meanwhile, the Four Star Admiral Hegseth tossed under the bus for the war crimes on the high seas that have been taking place since September under his direction and Donald Trump’s apparent personal orders:
… briefed members of Congress today and went before a closed door, classified hearing to explain why a second strike was called on a paralyzed ship bombed by SEAL Team Six with a hellfire missile on September 2nd — a strike that killed the two survivors — a pretty straightforward war crime.
In the classified meetings with Admiral Frank Bradley, in which they were shown the additional video missing from Trump and Hegseth’s boasty tweets, some (read Democratic) lawmakers who emerged didn’t seem convinced that all was right and legal. Here’s what Senator Jim Himes of Connecticut had to say:
But of course, leave it to slavery-defender Tom Cotton of Arkansas to justify the war crimes… (and leave it to Bari Weiss’ CBS to lead with him…)
Himes is right. The video should be released publicly. The American public has a right to know what fresh crimes, post Iraq war torture and fake-info invasion, and current ICE disappearances following the Trump 1.0 era of family separation, are being committed in our name.
In addition, Hegseth’s story just doesn’t add up. On September 2nd, he said he watched the strike:
Then when things got hot, he had other things to do and couldn’t be bothered to watch the killing to the end:
And there’s also Hegseth’s documented, longtime desire to loosen the restraints on warmaking, so that little things like the Geneva Convention don’t hold the warriors back.
I had some thoughts on this mess last night on the show:
And not all Republicans are ready to just kneel down and let the war crimes fly:
And we’re learning more about the resignation of the Admiral who previously ran operations in Caribbean — its now pretty much confirmed that it was over the boat strikes and their questionable legality.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked a top U.S. Navy admiral to step down after the military chief expressed concern about the “murky” legality of the lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, according to a report.
The shock departure of Admiral Alvin Holsey one year into his tenure as head of U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in the Caribbean, was announced by Hegseth on Oct.16.
It followed “months of discord” between the pair that intensified in the summer when the Trump administration began bombing the alleged drug boats, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing two Pentagon officials and former officials.
“You’re either on the team or you’re not,” Hegseth reportedly told 60-year-old Holsey during a meeting this year. “When you get an order, you move out fast and don’t ask questions.”
Lawmakers and experts told the newspaper that asking the four-star military chief to stand aside during an escalating military operation was “an extraordinary move.”
The Independent has contacted the Pentagon for comment.
It comes as Hegseth has been accused of “war crimes” over his handling of the deadly strikes, which have so far killed more than 80 people, as tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela intensify.
The alleged tension between Hegseth and Holsey has been previously reported, which Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell dismissed as “fake news” at the time.
“This is a total lie. Never happened. There was no hesitation or concerns about this mission,” Parnell said in a post on X.
I would like to volunteer as tribute, if Admiral Holsey would like to do a media interview.
Let’s see how the media ecosystem absorbs the regime’s excuses, given that they’re already accepting that we are in fact at war with … boats …
Graphic depictions of two survivors being killed by a second US military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug ferrying boat have provoked outrage where previously there was none – or at least relatively little.
A firestorm of controversy has greeted a recent Washington Post report which suggested that a deadly attack on a vessel carrying 11 people in the Caribbean was followed with a second assault after the initial strike failed to kill everybody onboard.
Since September, the Trump administration has relentlessly targeted vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific suspected of being used by “narco-terrorists” to export illicit narcotics to the US – killing at least 81 people in more than 20 strikes.
The administration has insisted the strikes are legal under the rules of war, arguing that the US is engaged in armed conflict with traffickers, whom it accuses of being in league with Venezuela’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, to flood the US with illicit narcotics.
The rationale has been widely rejected by most legal experts, who have pointed out that the US is not in conflict with an armed group involved in attacking its territory or its assets abroad.
But only after the Washington Post reported that the first strike on 2 September was followed by a so-called “second tap” – allegedly to comply with an order from Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, to “kill everybody” onboard – has the issue assumed wider resonance. The follow-up strike reportedly killed two survivors clinging to the side of the vessel.
Amid speculation that a war crime or even murder may have been committed, the Republican-led armed service committees in the Senate and House of Representatives – until now, acquiescent to the demands of Donald Trump – have vowed to investigate.
Fuelling the urgency, say legal analysts, are suspicions that the strikes violate long-established laws of warfare, even if the White House’s highly contentious claims that it is at war are accepted.
Greater piquancy is added by the allegation that the strike occurred in compliance with an order from Hegseth. Days before the Post’s report, the defence secretary threatened to recall Mark Kelly, a Democratic senator, to active military duty to face court martial for his role in a video, created with fellow Democrats, advising service personnel that they have a right to disobey illegal orders.
“Even if we buy into their framing that the individuals on these vessels are combatants, it would still be unlawful to kill them if they are hors de combat, which means they’re incapacitated,” said Rebecca Ingber, a professor at Cardozo law school and a former legal adviser to the state department.
“It is manifestly unlawful to kill someone who’s been shipwrecked. This is such a longstanding textbook principle of the law of armed conflict.”
The prohibition is made explicit in the Pentagon’s own Law of War manual.
To say nothing of the fact that we are counting on the media that cheered on the Iraq war to take on the fact that we soon might be at war with Venezuela to take that country’s oil. Something that apparently, that country’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate would greatly appreciate, so long as we make her the president.
A subject I debated last night on TJRS with Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Here’s the segment (hopefully I’ve successfully set the start to the 24 minute mark…)
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