The Trump Campaign’s Lies and Use of a Nazi-Era Symbol

Far right extremists, not Antifa, are the number one threat per DHS.

While Donald Trump may be ignorant of many historical facts and what is common knowledge to a majority of Americans - per John Bolton, Trump did not know the United Kingdom is a nuclear power - his campaign is not.  Thus, the recent use of a Nazi symbol that caused Facebook to take down Trump ads cannot be written off as mere ignorance.  The use of the symbol - a badge worn by Nazi political prisoners in concentration camps was no doubt used to send a message to the Neo-Nazis and white supremacist who make up the core of the Trump base of support (along with white evangelicals who belong to historically racist denominations). The other troubling aspect of the use of the symbol was that it was used to attack Trump's mythical boogeyman, Antifa, when the Department of Homeland Security's own documentation shows that neo-fascists - the antithesis of Antifa - is what posed the largest threat to law and order.  In short, the Trump campaign sought to deflect blame from its own base and blame a different group when the facts simply do not support the claim.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the use of the Nazi symbol and the active lying being advanced by the Trump campaign.   Here are excerpts:

President Trump’s campaign is under fire for employing a symbol once used by Nazis in a new batch of Facebook ads — a red inverted triangle that appeared alongside a warning about the dire threat posed by “antifa,” a loose motley group allied against neo-fascist activity.

An internal Department of Homeland Security document — which I obtained from a congressional source — makes the Trump campaign’s use of this symbol, and its justification for it, look a whole lot worse, by undercutting the claim that antifa represents any kind of threat in the first place.

After Facebook removed the ads amid an outcry, the Trump campaign continued to defend use of the image — which was used by Nazis to identify political prisoners — by claiming it’s a “common Antifa symbol.”

Meanwhile, Trump and his top officials have continued to blame unrest and violence at protests on antifa, to cast the violence more broadly as primarily left-wing in orientation.
But the DHS document I obtained undercuts this series of claims.

The [DHS] document — which is an assessment of ongoing “protest-related” threats to law enforcement dated June 17 — makes no mention at all of antifa in its cataloging of those threats.

The DHS document states that “anarchist and anti-government extremists pose the most significant threat of targeted low-level, protest-related assaults against law enforcement.” It bases this assessment on “the observed ideologies of recent attackers and the body of reporting of tactics noted by violent opportunists used over the last two weeks.” Thus, as of this week, “anarchist and anti-government extremists” pose the most serious ongoing threat, according to Trump’s own Homeland Security department.

The document defines “anarchist extremists” as:

groups or individuals who facilitate or engage in acts of unlawful violence as a means of changing the government and society in support of the belief that all forms of capitalism and corporate globalization should be opposed and that governing institutions are unnecessary and harmful to society.

Not only does this document not name antifa, this description of generic “anarchist extremists” does not remotely describe what we’ve come to understand “antifa” to be. While there might be some loose and occasional overlap between antifa and anarchists, antifa isn’t even a group, and adherents are characterized by specific resistance to perceived neo-fascist movements, which is wholly different from this definition of what motivates anarchist extremists.

This document shows that the government itself does not view antifa as a significant threat in the homeland,” Juliette Kayyem, a former DHS official who reviewed the document at my request, told me.

“The document shows how absurd the Trump campaign’s justification for using the symbol really is,” Kayyem added. “It undercuts their defense.”

The Anti-Defamation League has harshly criticized the Trump campaign for employing a symbol that “is practically identical to that used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps.”

The document also notes that “overall protest-related violence" has been "decreasing significantly during the last week,” which also undermines continued Trump fearmongering.

Notably, the continuing threat to law enforcement has been thrust to the forefront by the charging of Steven Carrillo for the alleged killing of one security officer and the wounding of another. Carrillo is an alleged adherent of the “boogaloo boys,” an extremist movement trying to exploit protests to incite race war.

The DHS document actually does cite the “Boogaloo movement” as a threat in this context. It notes that Carrillo is likely associated with it, defining it as “a term used by some violent extremists from a variety of movements who seek to incite a race war or the collapse of society.”

And yet, according to CNN reporter Marshall Cohen, Trump has yet to mention this as a threat, even though, as Craig Timberg demonstrates, it’s increasingly obvious this threat is becoming a serious one.

Similarly, another leaked intelligence document earlier this month assessed the greatest threat as coming from “lone offenders with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideologies,” not from antifa.

The new DHS document shows that the non-assessment of the threat of antifa hasn’t changed — even as the claims about antifa continue.

The broader story here, as Isaac Stanley-Becker details, is that the continued fearmongering about antifa by Trump and many top officials seems designed to distort the true nature of these multiracial, largely peaceful and broadly representative national protests in a very fundamental way.

If Trump or his campaign says something, assume it is a lie until documented otherwise.

Facing Reelection, Trump Expands His Anti-LGBT Agenda

In the ramp up to the 2020 presidential election, rather than build a wider base of support, Donald Trump, a/k/a  Der Trumpenführer, is working 24/7 to further divide the nation and to energize his Christofascist and white supremacist base by pandering to their prejudices and pushing an agenda to harm those that his toxic base hates. Among the Christofascists, no group is more hated than the LGBT community (followed by Hispanics, blacks and non-Christians).  As a consequence, Trump is rolling back policies adopted over the 8 years of the Obama administration and seeking to grant special rights to Christofascists to discriminate a will based upon claims that their religious beliefs are offended by the targets of their hatred. As we move through 2020, expect the Trump/Pence regime's anti-LGBT agenda to intensify.  The Advocate looks at both what has already been done to harm LGBT Americans and what may still be forthcoming.  Here are highlights:

In 2019, the Trump administration dramatically expanded upon discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ policies implemented in the first two years of this administration that are harming the health and well-being of LGBTQ people not just in America, but around the world.

It rolled back sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination provisions in health care, employment, and housing. It appointed more anti-LGBTQ federal court judges. And it retreated even further from global leadership on the moral stance that LGBTQ rights are human rights.

Alarmingly, other policies that are not specifically aimed at LGBTQ people, such as restricting asylum hearings in the United States only to people who have been denied asylum in another country, and global religious “freedom” initiatives, are disproportionately affecting LGBTQ people.

Collectively, these policies are unwinding decades of progress that have been made by LGBTQ people and their allies to build access and equity for LGBTQ people in public life. Most tragically, people are dying as a result.

In June, the Department of Health and Human Services released a proposed rule that, if finalized, would reverse a provision in the Affordable Care Act which prohibits anti-LGBTQ discrimination in health care settings. Six regulations prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination in health insurance and elder care were also repealed in 2019. In November, HHS released another proposed rule that would remove regulatory provisions that explicitly prohibit organizations that receive HHS grant funding from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, and religion. . . . . These programs are vital to millions of Americans, especially for marginalized communities, including LGBTQ people, who already experience pervasive discrimination that acts as a barrier to accessing care and services.

Last year also saw the implementation of discriminatory policies first announced in 2017. In April, a ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military that was first announced via a series of tweets by President Trump in 2017 went into effect after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the ban, lifting injunctions imposed by lower courts. An estimated 13,600 transgender servicemembers are now at risk of being discharged.

Things don’t look any better for 2020. On Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, Vice President Mike Pence attended services at Holy City Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tenn., where he also addressed the congregation. After Pence spoke, Bishop Jerry Wayne Taylor sermonized that LGBTQ people have been possessed by a “demonic spirit” and that the devil was “trying to destroy the foundation of marriage and cut off the reproductive process” because “two men can’t have a baby, two women can’t have a baby.” The service was streamed live over the White House’s YouTube channel, where it can still be viewed.

The harm experienced by LGBTQ people under the Trump administration is extensive and dangerous. We have every reason to believe things are only going to get worse in 2020. Simply hoping that these proposals never gain traction is not a strategy. We must mobilize to oppose and reverse them.

 If you have LGBT friends or family members, it is critical that you vote Democrat in November 2020 to end Trump's misrule. 

Federal Court Blocks Trump Plan to Spend Military Funds on Border Wall

Those of us who took "government" and "civics" courses in high school - back in the "olden days" in the view of some - learned that Congress enacts the laws and authorizes federal government spending and that the president and the rest of the executive branch are tasked with implementing those laws and implementing the spending enacted by Congress. Apparently, either Der Trumpenführer missed out on those classes or, more likely, he views himself as above the law - a monarch, perhaps.  El Paso County in Texas sued to block Trumps effort to divert $3.6 billion in funding allocated by Congress for military construction and projects to build his ridiculous wall (which where constructed is being regularly shown to to not be able to keep refugees out).  Today, a federal court - the other co-equal branch of the federal government - ruled the action was illegal and granted a permanent injunction to block the misapplication of the Congress' allocated funds.   The racist Trump/Pence regime will likely appeal, but the higher courts ought to affirm the district court ruling if they apply the law and do not improperly play politics. The Washington Post has details:

A federal judge in El Paso on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s plan to pay for border barrier construction with $3.6 billion in military funds, ruling that the administration does not have the authority to divert money appropriated by Congress for a different purpose.

The Trump administration was planning to use those funds to build 175 miles of steel barriers, and the court’s permanent injunction is a setback for Trump’s pledge to erect 450 linear miles of fencing by the end of next year.

District Court Judge David Briones, a Bill Clinton appointee, said in his ruling that the administration’s attempt to reprogram military construction funds by emergency proclamation was unlawful and that the plaintiffs in the case were entitled to a permanent injunction halting the government.

[T]he ruling affects roughly one-third of the money the president plans to spend on his signature project. Briones’s decision does not apply to other money available to the administration, including reprogrammed military counternarcotics funds.

The ruling marked the first instance of a local jurisdiction successfully suing to block construction of Trump’s border barrier.

El Paso County, one of the two plaintiffs in the suit, had argued that the new barrier was unwanted by the community and would inflict permanent harm on its reputation as a welcoming, cross-border place.

Kristy Parker, an attorney with the nonprofit group Protect Democracy who represented the plaintiffs, said the decision means [Trump] the president cannot spend money on the project that wasn’t authorized by Congress.

“The president can’t use the National Emergencies Act to override a congressional appropriations decision,” Parker said. “That specifically means he cannot use funds appropriated for military construction and divert it for use to build border barriers.”

Kudos to the federal judge.