Pence Lies and Refuses to Utter 'Gay' at World AIDS Day Event

Over the last 20 years or more, a parade of closeted self-loathing gays - almost all Republicans (think Ed Schrock, Larry Craig, Dennis Hastert, etc. - have pushed an anti-gay agenda in the apparent belief that it (i) provides camouflage to the outside world of their inner most thoughts/longings, and (ii) somehow dispels the reality of their true sexual orientation.  All of which brings me to Mike Pence, a man who displays every stereotype of these  disturbed individuals.  Today is World AIDS Day and for the second year in a row, Der Trumpenführer delegated Pence as his representative at the White House's World HIV/AIDS Day event.  Not surprisingly, Pence could not even bring himself to utter the word "gay."  Worse yet, Pence lied profusely about the Trump/Pence regime record on fighting AIDS/HIV.  Rather than bringing a "new and renewed American commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS here and around the world," the Trump/Pence regime has been slashing funding to AIDS/HIV programs and diverting funding to finance the brutal family separations programs along the Texas border. The Advocate looks at Pence's disingenuous lies:

For the second year in a row, homophobic vice president Mike Pence refused to acknowledge the LGBTQ community in his remarks during the White House's World HIV/AIDS Day event. And as the Democratic National Committee highlighted, Pence also lied repeatedly during his remarks.

Pence — previously faulted with exacerbating an HIV crisis by opposing a needle exchange program when he was Indiana's governor — claimed the Trump administration was doing all it could to battle the scourge of HIV.

"Let me bring greetings from a friend of mine who is a leader committed to the health and well-being of the American people, and has brought new and renewed American commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS here and around the world," Pence said . . . . "I bring greetings from the 45th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump."

In fact, Trump repeatedly cut funds for HIV prevention and treatment and diverted money from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program to fund his family separation policy at the U.S./Mexico border. Trump also infamously fired the entire 16-member Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and has yet to restaff the group. Trump has also derailed a national HIV strategy by refusing to appoint anyone to lead the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. Trump also announced a "Deploy or Get Out" rule, which could translate to HIV-positive service members kicked out of the military.

Without irony, Pency also honored the 15th anniversary of PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which works to address AIDS in developing nations, mostly in Africa. Pence's boss cut funding for PEPFAR; The Daily Beast reported those cuts could lead to the deaths of 300,000 people a year.

Trump/Pence Cut Funding for Programs to Counter Violent Extremism

In addition to is incendiary rhetoric and wink and nods to white nationalists and Christian extremists, Donald Trump and his accomplice, Mike Pence, have done other things to allow extremism grow in America.  For one, their regime has cut funding for programs that seek to counter extremism, especially extremism involving whites.  Statistically more violence has been wrought in America by white extremists - almost all by angry white males -  than by all Islamic extremism combined.  Yet, this regime continues to turn a blind eye to this reality and, instead, demonizes immigrants and non-Christians and, of course the legitimate media.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the Trump/Pence effort to kill programs that focus on fighting the extremism that more and more defines the Trump/Pence base. Here are highlights:

Set aside the question of whether President Donald Trump’s rhetorical flirtations with white nationalism enabled Saturday’s mass shooting in Pittsburgh. What’s undeniable is that his administration has hobbled the infrastructure designed to prevent such murders.

In the waning days of Barack Obama’s administration, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a set of grants to organizations working to counter violent extremism, including among white supremacists. One of the grantees was Life After Hate, which The Hill has called “one of the only programs in the U.S. devoted to helping people leave neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups.” Another grant went to researchers at the University of North Carolina who were helping young people develop media campaigns aimed at preventing their peers from embracing white supremacy and other violent ideologies. But soon after Trump took office, his administration canceled both of these grants. In its first budget, it requested no funding for any grants in this field.  It’s part of a pattern of neglect.

In Obama’s last year, according to the former director, George Selim, the office boasted 16 full-time employees, roughly 25 contractors, and a budget of more than $21 million. The Trump administration has renamed it the Office of Terrorism Prevention Partnerships, and cut its staff to eight full-time employees and its budget to less than $3 million. Under Obama, the Office of Community Partnerships housed an interagency task force on Countering Violent Extremism, or CVE, that included officials detailed from the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. Today the task force exists in name only. This decline can’t be chalked up to general budget cuts. . . . The cuts stem instead from two biases. First, in keeping with their law-and-order mentality, Trump officials would rather empower the police to arrest suspected terrorists than work with local communities to prevent people from becoming terrorists in the first place, as the Office of Community Partnerships did. Second, they believe the primary terrorist threat to Americans is jihadism, not white supremacy. The Office of Community Partnerships committed the sin of working on both. In 2017, the FBI concluded that white supremacists killed more Americans from 2000 to 2016 than “any other domestic extremist movement.” But Trump advisers have shrugged off these inconvenient facts. In an interview in 2017, White House Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka declared that there “has never been a serious attack or a serious plot [in the United States] that was unconnected from ISIS or al-Qaeda.” When critics cited the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Gorka responded,  “It’s this constant ‘Oh, it’s the white man. It’s the white supremacists. That’s the problem.’ No, it isn’t.” Eric Rosand, a former senior State Department official, told BuzzFeed that Gorka “played a significant role in denying CVE grant funding to groups that work to de-radicalize neo-Nazis and other far right extremists.” When Trump supporters insist that he’s a steadfast foe of white supremacy, his critics often cite his history of ambivalent responses—or nonresponses—to anti-Semitism. But Trump’s words aren’t anomalous; he’s put his money where his mouth is.

Trump Fires Entire HIV/AIDS Council

Trump surrounded by anti-gay evangelicals.

As Newsweek is reporting, Der Trumpenführer has fired the entire White House HIV/AIDS Council notifying the members of the council via letters delivered via FedEx.  In my view, this, combined with other proposals made over the last eleven months is a continuation of Trump's war on the LGBT community.  Why the funding cut proposals and firings?  In the minds of Trump's evangelical base, HIV/AIDS is a gay disease that gays deserve to suffer. for their "sinfulness."  For those who do realize that it is a heterosexual disease rampant in the black community in America and large parts of Africa, sadly, the  racism that seems to motivate a majority of white evangelicals makes the consequences of drastic funding cut backs of no concern.  As for Trump, his history of anti-black racism makes it easy to understand why he cares nothing about the horrific consequences that funding cut backs would wreak on Africa and minority populations.  Here are highlights from the Newsweek piece:

President Donald Trump fired the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) Wednesday, reportedly informing them without explanation with a letter delivered by FedEx.

The mass dismissal of the advisors marked another nadir in the administration’s dealing with the council. In June six members resigned from PACHA writing in an open letter, published in Newsweek, saying the Trump White House was pushing for legislation that would harm people living with HIV.

Scott A. Schoettes, a Chicago-based HIV/AIDS activist and one of the members of the advisory panel who resigned over the summer, tweeted yesterday that the remaining council members had been fired for calling President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence “dangerous.”

“Remaining #HIV/AIDS council members booted by @realDonaldTrump. No respect for their service,” Shoettes wrote on the social media site. “Dangerous that #Trump and Co. (Pence esp.) are eliminating few remaining people willing to push back against harmful policies, like abstinence-only sex ed,” he added.

Sources with knowledge of the terminations told the Washington Blade that council members had been fired despite having more time on on their appointments.

Gabriel Maldonado, CEO of the LGBT and HIV/AIDS group Truevolution and a remaining member of PACHA said the reasons for the firings remain unclear but may have been borne of a desire by the Trump administration to clear out appointments made by his predecessor Barack Obama.

HIV/AIDS activists have been deeply critical of the White House’s approach over the past year. In the 2018 fiscal year budget Trump has sought huge cuts to programs including $150 million on HIV/AIDS at the Centers of Disease Control. The administration has also sought more than than $1 billion in cuts from global programs like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria.

Just under a year into his first term, Trump is also yet to appoint an HIV/AIDS chief, the first time since Bill Clinton created the position in 1993 that a president has failed to do so.