Democrat News

This post was originally published on this site

Senator Claude Malhuret’s stunning rebuke of Trumpism.

Source: Raw Story

French Senator Claude Malhuret this week delivered a blistering rebuke of President Donald Trump and X owner Elon Musk, and he compared their reign to that of an infamously debauched Roman emperor.

During a speech discussing European support for Ukraine against Russia, Malhuret lobbed insults directly at both the president and his billionaire benefactor.

“Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine in charge of purging the civil service,” he said in reference to Musk’s acknowledged use of the dissociative anesthetic. “We were at war with a dictator, we are now at war with a dictator backed by a traitor.”

Just stunning in its clarity of what we are now up against. The war against authoritarianism, both at home and abroad.

Malhuret’s full comments.

Statement by the Government, followed by a debate, pursuant to Article 50-1 of the Constitution, on the situation in Ukraine and security in Europe

Mr. President,

Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers,

My dear colleagues,

Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is evading, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington became the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester under ketamine in charge of the purification of the public service.

It’s a drama for the free world, but it’s first a drama for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, that he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and threaten you to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is on a flat stomach. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down in front of Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is undoubtedly accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a president of the United States capitulated to the enemy. No one has ever supported an aggressor against an ally. No one has ever trampled on the American Constitution, made so many illegal decrees, revoked the judges who could prevent it, dismissed the military staff at once, weakened all counter-powers and took control of social networks.

It is not an illiberal drift, it is a beginning of confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only a month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

I have confidence in the strength of American democracy and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war against a dictator, we are now fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very time that Trump passed his hand behind Macron’s back at the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against Europeans demanding the departure of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the oval office, the military service hide-and-seek gave moral and strategy lessons to the war hero Zelensky before dismissing him as a brother-in-law by ordering him to submit or resign.

That night, he took a step further into infamy by stopping the promised delivery of weapons. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first don’t make a mistake. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltics, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is the return to Yalta where half of the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with the first principle of prohibiting the acquisition of territories by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the aggressor, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to the spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

To me Greenland, Panama and Canada, to you Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe, to him Taiwan and the China Sea.

This is called “diplomatic realism” in the evenings of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago.

So we are alone. But the speech that we cannot resist Putin is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is doing badly. In three years, the so-called second army in the world has only managed to grab crumbs from a country three times less populated.

Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, and demographic collapse show that it is on the edge of the abyss. The American boost to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made during a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans come out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American release, to make it hold, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.

It will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to bypass Moscow’s accomplices even within Europe by a coalition of only voluntary countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

Secondly, require that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what the agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we would have to build the neglected European defense, for the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and sunk since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. It is to recognize that France was right for decades in pleading for strategic autonomy.

It remains to build it. It will be necessary to invest massively, strengthen the European Defense Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonize weapons and ammunition systems, accelerate Ukraine’s entry into the Union, which is today the first European army, rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence from French and British capacities, relaunch anti-missile and satellite shield programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And it will take much more.

Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be applied. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of weariness and fear of war, and especially in the face of Putin’s companions, the extreme right and the extreme left.

They pleaded again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr. Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defense.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is the capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain in Putin’s boot.

The peace of the collaborators who have refused for three years any help to the Ukrainians.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, Zelensky’s public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have ended up making Americans react.

Polls are falling. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News becomes critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in majesty. They control the executive, Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They begin to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means of their common defense, and to make Europe the power it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of all sacrifices.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.

This post was originally published on this site

Whoever’s idea it was to invite Tesla Cybertruck owners to participate in the Krewe of Orpheus parade, it was a bad one. The indestructible Cybertrucks incurred abuse, and several were damaged.

Source: Mashable

It’s not a good time to drive a Tesla Cybertruck — and not just because it’s been the subject of seemingly endless recalls and issues. Folks seem to not be happy with Elon Musk and they’re taking it out on Teslas, especially the impossible-to-miss Cybertruck.

Case in point: A Cybertruck got mercilessly and relentlessly booed at Mardi Gras in New Orleans this week. Video footage is pretty wild and, to be frank, a little funny.

As you can see and hear, the entire crowd rallies to boo the Cybertruck. This apparently happened at the Krewe of Orpheus parade during Lundi Gras on Monday, a day before Mardi Gras. Unconfirmed reports on Reddit and elsewhere claimed the trucks were bombarded with beads thrown in a not-so-friendly manner. It apparently got so aggressive that the a Cybertruck window broke despite Tesla claiming they’re near indestructible.

Teslas, and Cybertrucks in particular, have become the subjects of ire lately. Owners of the car have shared stories online of being relentlessly mocked. It makes sense; no physical item better represents Elon Musk’s whole deal than the Cybertruck. And a lot of people really don’t like Musk. Apparently, even the good times of Mardi Gras didn’t stop that hate.

A Cybertruck owner remained defiant to the end.

Well, sort of. He did call the cops to get out of the parade safely (those beads can sting).

This post was originally published on this site

Trump, Musk and the DOGE crew have been hard at work creating as much chaos as possible and slashing and burning the federal government, but the liar Larry Kudlow and Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins Americans are trying to blame the bad news in the upcoming jobs report on Joe Biden.

We saw this routine from Newt Gingrich the other day where he blamed the upcoming Trump recession on Biden and Congress not getting their tax cuts passed quickly enough.

Now we’ve got this gaslighting where they’re pretending what Trump has been doing has been a positive for the economy instead of him destroying the strong economy that he inherited.

LARRY KUDLOW: You know, Brooke, the other part of this, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do on the egg story. It’s a hard story. You inherited that story.

USDA SECRETARY BROOKE ROLLINS: That’s right.

LARRY KUDLOW: Some very, very smart people are telling me that the jobs number that’s coming at the February jobs number that’s coming out Friday could be flat, even negative, Brookie!

The GDP now tracker from the Atlanta Fed is showing, I mean, for the first quarter, a minus two and a half or -2.8%, and we’ve had lousy numbers on things like housing and business investment.

My generic point here, with respect to affordability and the economy, is we’re going to have to suffer through some bad news!

This has nothing to do with Trump. Trump’s programs not in yet!

And I’ve got people on the left who are blaming Trump. How can you blame Trump when he wasn’t president when these seeds were planted?

USDA SECRETARY BROOKE ROLLINS: Well, you couldn’t be more right about that because we’ve only been here 30 plus days. You can’t turn an entire economy around in 30 days.

You can’t “turn an entire economy around in 30 days,” but as we’re finding out, you sure as hell can destroy one in that amount of time.

This post was originally published on this site

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu clapped back at Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, who doesn’t understand the US Constitution, after he claimed Democratic mayors are against comprehensive immigration reform if they refuse to help ICE agents round up and deport migrants.

The Boston Mayor quickly bashed Republicans during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on “Sanctuary Cities” led by QAnon Klan Mom Marjorie Taylor Greene for not doing anything to help the country outside of grandstanding and viciously cutting veterans, much needed cancer research and Medicaid.

GOSAR: How can you get a comprehensive immigration policy when you’re defying it from the very get-go? You’re building it on false premises and false tenets.

WU: Respectfully, Congressman, you could pass bipartisan legislation and that would be comprehensive immigration law.

The false narrative is that immigrants in general are criminals or immigrants in general cause all sorts of danger and harm.

That is actually what is undermining safety in our communities.

If you wanted to make us safe, pass gun reforms.

Stop cutting Medicaid.

Stop cutting cancer research.

Stop cutting funds for veterans.

That is what will make our city safe.

Bravo!

State and local authorities are not required to work with federal ICE agents or any federal authorities within the U.S. Constitution. WU is correct. MAGAts have created the false narrative that undocumented migrants are the only purveyors of crime in the country.

Here is the full exchange.

This post was originally published on this site

Senator Lindsey Graham, who once appeared to be a respected Senator, has now joined the MAGA cult, full stop.

Graham was Sen. John McCain’s right-hand man for many years and attacked Trump when he himself ran in the Republican presidential primaries. As a new CNN poll showed, the public abhored and rejected last night’s 99-minute Trump fiasco.

But in Lindsey Graham’s world, Trump should get a third term. Hey Lindsey, that’s illegal.

My take on President @realDonaldTrump’s address tonight: Inspiring, funny, compelling and the Democrats’ worst nightmare.

Trump 2028!

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 5, 2025

Trump has done nothing to aid the American people and instead is causing chaos, derision, prices to skyrocket and the stock market to collapse, while giving access to the public’s private data to the richest man in the world.

All the while, Trump insists he is a more fantastic president than George Washington. This is sick.

Buffoons like Graham stroke his ego and promote this insidious propaganda.

The selling of Graham’s soul to the Devil is complete.

Kenyatta: Trump in just six weeks has made life more expensive, has made America sicker, has made us weaker. And he got up on that stage and just lied to the American people. The only American energy that was unleashed was the full gaslighting that we saw in front of our face. pic.twitter.com/lLLLhmHDV2

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 5, 2025

This post was originally published on this site

Rep. Drunken Van Orden (MAGA-The Insurrection Inn) did an interview with Meg Ellefson on her podcast. They were talking about the protests by Republicans at Republican town hall meetings. At least I think it was DVO, but it might have been the alcohol talking:

DVO: Well, it’s not just Glenn there over uh… they’re disrupting Fitz’s meetings and uh… they did a whole bunch of Republicans around the country. And I just people have to understand you know I, I uh… well history buff and people in in uh… all people associated with the communist movement and the national socialist movement uh… used to get their way politically is they would do stuff like this. And they were called agitators. So, this is a time tested proven method or very far left and very far right groups to get their way and what I say very far right, I mean actual national socialists. So, here’s what I told everybody, we’ve been getting harassing calls. I just got more death threats last week, me personally. Uh… if anybody’s coming to any of these meetings that we have and they act in an unlawful manner by harassing people or if they’re being disruptive, refusing to leave the venue, we will have them arrested and charged with the Class B misdemeanor. I’m not going to put up with these agitators going disrespect and acting in unlawful manner to their fellow Wisconsinites or my staff, period.

ELLEFSON: FAFO

DVO: All right, well, but we’re not doing it. Republicans are too nice

First off, DVO owes me a new monitor because I had a spit take on the Republicans are too nice line.

Secondly, it’s not surprising that DVO would call out the misdemeanor classification since he’s probably been warned about that when he was screaming at a teenage girl working in a public library because of a PRIDE book display or when he drunk raged at a group of teenaged pages in the Capitol building.

However, the surprising part is that he was whining about the town hall meetings in the first place, especially considering he’s never even held one. He recently skipped a meeting with the Farmer’s Union. And when there was supposed to be a town hall last week, he cancelled it because too many people showed up:

📺 LA CROSSE: Derrick Van Orden hastily moves meeting across town to hide from his own constituents.

“Van Orden’s staff changed the location … which some of those who signed up say their registration was removed and they were not told about the location change.” pic.twitter.com/OZWHUHR7yR

— Joe Oslund (@joe_oslund) March 2, 2025

But there’s more. There’s always more.

DVO was supposed to have another town hall meeting, but abruptly changed the location and rescinded people’s tickets – without even notifying them:

📺 EAU CLAIRE: @derrickvanorden office cancels a meeting with constituents.

“Staffers cancelled after learning more than 100 people were interested in going. They say they only agreed to a meeting of 24.” pic.twitter.com/rvtyrwtK74

— Joe Oslund (@joe_oslund) February 27, 2025

Here’s a pro tip for DVO: First, you gotta at least make an honest attempt at holding a real town hall before you can whine about them.

And as a bonus pro tip: You can’t complain about Nazis when you act like one.

H/T Heartland Signal for the top video

This post was originally published on this site

MAGA scumbag (but consummate liar) Peter Navarro resurfaced on Fox News Wednesday and proclaimed that Mexican drug cartels have taken over Canada.

Navarro, with a straight face, blamed our neighbor to the north for overdose deaths in the US.

It’s Interesting that jailbird Navarro was nowhere to be found throughout Trump’s election and transition. Too crazy for Trump is an accomplishment.

“What I want to say to every world leader who gets up in arms when all we’re asking for is fairness and to have them stop killing our people is, please, listen to us,” Navarro said.

Fairness? WTF is he talking about?

The Trump/Musk administration is changing their tariff tune from economic fairness into a war on drugs. Imposing massive tariffs helps no one. It raises prices to Americans and will not stop the flow of drugs into the country. If we had an easy solution, Nancy Reagan’s “just say no to drugs” would have been successful 40 years ago.

NAVARRO: Canada could do a lot more.

Canada has been taken over, Brett, by Mexican cartels. They bring up these pill presses and printers and the medicines that they fake.

You can’t tell the difference.

Farmer companies can. You need a spectrographer to do it.

Canada is now being considered, ya know, fentanyl gang murderers. This man is as delusional as he’s ever been.

MAGAts come up with bogus talking points that are then fed through Fox News and other MAGA outlets and soon the cult will label all Canadians as murderers

Canada is forcing our people to ingest fentanyl.

Gotcha.

This post was originally published on this site

Four senior members of Yambo’s administration have held secret discussions with some of Kyiv’s top political opponents to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, coincidentally, just as Trump aligns with Putin in seeking to push him out of his job! Via Politico:

The senior Trump allies held talks with Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, a remorselessly ambitious former prime minister, and senior members of the party of Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy’s immediate predecessor as president, according to three Ukrainian parliamentarians and a U.S. Republican foreign policy expert.

The discussions centered on whether Ukraine could hold quick presidential elections. These are being delayed in line with the country’s constitution because Ukraine remains under martial law. Critics of holding elections say they could be chaotic and play into Russia’s hands, with so many potential voters serving on the front lines or living abroad as refugees.

The Trump aides are confident that Zelenskyy would lose any vote due to war fatigue and public frustration over rampant corruption. Indeed, his poll ratings have been in decline for years, although they have picked up in the wake of last week’s Oval Office brawl, when the Ukrainian leader was shown the door after being berated by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The most recent poll shows Zelenskyy still comfortably ahead in the race for the presidency.

The official line from the U.S. administration is that Trump is not interfering in Ukraine’s domestic politics. This week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick denied his boss was “weighing into Ukrainian politics,” adding all that Trump wants is a partner for peace.

Nope, he wouldn’t DREAM of it.

Is it just a coincidence that already-debunked claims of Zelenskyy corruption are popping up all over again in MAGA and Russian propaganda outlets?

Ha, ha! What a kneeslapper! “Partner for peace”! That’s all what Putin wants, amirite?

Dear God, I hate these people.

This post was originally published on this site

In a February article of her Reframing America newsletter, Antonia Scatton wrote, “For sixty years, a billionaire-funded network of corporations, politicians, PACs, news networks, churches, foundations and think tanks have demonized ‘Washington’ and government itself – public attacks that we [on the left] have abjectly failed to counter. For this reason, too many Americans see drastic action as justifiable. Some even see Trump’s willingness to break the law to do it as the actions of a uniquely great leader.”

I’ve “only” been blogging about Fox News and the right-wing for 20 years, but I can attest to that.

Scatton has a number of suggestions to reframe the debate. She offers talking points to be used on social media, a letter to the editor or just talking to your neighbors. The topics include Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, crypto as the real Ponzi scheme, and my favorite: Elon Musk and his DOGE bro billionaires.

Say this, she writes:

Elon Musk is a CORPORATE RAIDER. He bought a MAJORITY SHARE of Donald Trump. This is a HOSTILE TAKEOVER of the U.S. Gov’t. He’s DOWNSIZING the workers and STRIPPING IT FOR PARTS.

Elon Musk is OUTSOURCING BUSINESS to other companies he owns and acquiring PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY and SENSITIVE CONSUMER DATA. He will SADDLE IT WITH DEBT and LEAVE IT BANKRUPT.

I like this one even better: Paint the billionaires as the parasite class. Instead of sharing immigrant Elon Musk’s smear of Americans using their government’s services, we should say again and again who the real parasites are. For example:

The richest corporations and individuals have a moral obligation to pay their fair share for the public resources and services provided by the American people, from which they have gained the lions’ share of the benefit.

Tax cuts for the rich KILL JOBS and DESTABILIZE THE ECONOMY. They already have more money than they can sensibly or productively use.

More money for the already rich and corporations enables mergers, job cuts, outsourcing and AI worker replacement, and fuels speculation that causes market bubbles and crashes! You know what creates jobs? Higher wages, tax cuts for workers, and public investment. This drives demand and creates job growth!

Trump’s tax cuts for the rich blew a giant hole in the revenue side of the federal budget equation. Now he wants to do it again.

Elon Musk is not just an immigrant but a likely illegal immigrant who already makes many BILLIONS from existing contracts with the federal government, as I recently wrote. None of those contracts have been deleted in his DOGE purge. Instead, he just gave himself a new one that could be worth a few more BILLION.

I hate to quote Steve Bannon but he was not wrong when he called Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant” last month. “He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions,” Bannon also said. Of course, Bannon probably wants to play-act as God with his own misguided vision for the country’s history, values or traditions, but I digress.

The bottom line is that instead of complaining about what Musk does, it’s time emphasize what he is: He’s a parasite extraordinaire (as our own Karoli Kuns put it) sucking the taxpayer-funded blood out of our federal government and our life-saving and life-enhancing services for the sake of enriching himself and his other billionaire bros further.

This post was originally published on this site

Remember the story a few weeks ago where Trump lawyers tried to gin up a criminal investigation and freeze EPA grant funds from the Biden administration? And not one, but two career prosecutors resigned and refused to pursue the case?

Ed Martin, the MAGAt who helped organize the Stop The Steal movement, is now the head of the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, and he was the man behind this fake scandal. Many prominent attorneys were so shocked by this attempted frame up, they suggested Martin should be disbarred.

See if you can connect these dots in this letter that’s going around in D.C.:

“Hi DC lawyer friends:
Trump/Pam Bondi loyalists are currently making a bid to take over the DC Bar: Her brother is running for President and Alicia Long (who I believe is US Attorney Ed Martin’s chief deputy right now) is running for Treasurer. The bar has a big role in licensing and discipline, so very worth paying attention to, and if, like me, you have never thought about DC Bar elections before, this may be the year to cast your vote/tell a friend. Voting opens April 15, here’s what the website says about it:

The 2025 D.C. Bar general and Communities elections will run from April 15 to June 4.

Voting is exclusively online. Eligible voters (all active D.C. Bar members in good standing as of February 28) will receive an email link to the general election ballot, as well as to the ballots for their D.C. Bar Communities, from Direct Vote (via Survey & Ballot Systems), an independent vendor administering the 2025 D.C. Bar elections.”

Basically, if you know any attorneys in the D.C. Bar, please forward this to them. Let’s stop these evil bastards.