Won't livetweet CPAC, but like 15 minutes in they're playing a video titled "YOUR VOTES CANCELLED," which lengthily suggests major fraud in the 2020 election. (Like, it ominously shows a CNN clip about how Biden started to look better late at night as ballots were counted.)
It then proceeds to a clips of people saying it was "impossible" and "very strange" that Biden gained ground as votes were counted on election night, then a clip of Rush Limbaugh saying it must have been the "vote fairy" arriving in swing states.
This is bad.
CPAC panelist TW Shannon of Oklahoma says that "mobs happen when people have a sense of hopelessness." For example, he says, "The reason that people stormed the Capitol was because they felt hopeless because of a rigged election." (Fair election, Biden won, etc.)
Wayne Dupree on the Capitol attack: "There was a lot of people there - Antifa was there, BLM was there, MAGA people were there, everybody was there. And if Joe Biden wants to talk unity, there was unity there on that day, because America is sick and tired of being pushed down."
Dupree, hesitating, continues re Capitol attack: "We’re sorry for – a lot of people are sorry for what happened there. But in watching the individuals do those things and whatnot, all I can say is somebody, uh, uh – I really don’t know. I – there's so many emotions with that.”
Conservative commentator Deroy Murdock, doing the first of the seven "protecting elections" talks, complains of "mysterious late-night ballot dumps" (didn't happen) involving "piles of ballots" being driven to counting facilities by out-of-state cars (this is all nonsense).
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In a new, more detailed anti-impeachment filing, Trump's legal team just yada-yada breezes past the incendiary parts of Trump's January 6 speech -- accusing the media of cherry-picking from the speech while itself doing egregious cherry-picking.
Trump's legal team also argues that Trump's comments in the months before the January 6 speech were "mischaracterized," and anyway, since the January 6 riot was pre-planned and also started before Trump finished his speech, Trump's speech couldn't have incited it.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the Trump filing.
Biden is talking about race. He discusses the George Floyd killing, saying it marked a turning point in views on racial justice; mentions the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Black and Latino people; criticizes "thugs" and "white supremacists" over the Capitol attack.
Biden says criminal justice reform is needed but isn't enough. He says racial equity "has to be the business of the whole of government" rather than one department.
Biden says he's rescinding Trump's ban on federal sensitivity and diversity training and notes he's ordered the abolition of the "offensive, counterfactual 1776 Commission."
“The world respects us again. Please. Don’t. Lose. That. Respect,” Trump says in his farewell video.
“Above all, we have reasserted the sacred idea that in America, the government answers to the people," Trump says. He adds, "We fought for the principle that every citizen is entitled to equal dignity, equal treatment, and equal rights, because we are all made equal by God."
Trump used his farewell video to repeat some of his favorite rally material, including, naturally, this lie: "We passed VA Choice."
NEW: This viral incident - 20M views on Twitter! - had nothing to do with the Capitol attack.
Video was taken at Charlotte airport Friday night. American Airlines says the screaming man had just been asked to get off a flight to Denver for refusing to comply with mask policy.
There was never any reason to believe this man had been put on a no-fly list related to the Capitol insurrection. But that claim went viral anyway - even though the caption on the original TikTok video had said it was a mask incident.
The woman who filmed and posted the original video later conceded she hadn't known for sure that it was a mask incident; caution was always warranted. But caution was extra-warranted on the "no-fly list" nonsense, which was conjured from thin air.
So I spoke to Ben Costiloe, tweeter of the inaccurate mega-viral impeachment tweet, to tell him it was wrong and that I'd be doing a fact check. He said good-naturedly: "Tear it a new one. Go for it, baby!" He said he's just a "nobody" dude who saw the info on his FB feed. 1/
Costiloe said he never knew if the info he tweeted was true - it just showed up on his Facebook and "made me feel good," and he thought he'd share. He said, "I don't want to mess up the world. I just wanted to make me feel good. It turns out it made a lot of people feel good." 2/
Costiloe said he had just 200 followers at the time he tweeted (now more than 2,700); he's just a guy living with diabetes in Texas. He said he was amazed at how viral the tweet went given his low following: 181,000 retweets and counting. 3/
Biden calls yesterday "one of the darkest days in the history of our nation" and "an assault on the rule of law." He says "don't care call them protesters; they were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. It's that basic, it's that simple."
Biden: "I wish we could say we couldn't see it coming. but that isn't true. We could see it coming. The past four years, we've had a president who's made his contempt for our democracy, our constitution, the rule of law clear in everything he has done."
Biden is delivering a broad denunciation of Trump, for everything from using language like "enemy of the people" to deploying the military to tear-gas peaceful protesters.